Publication Date: April 2024

by Georgia Finnegan

In a vivid and entertaining writing style, Grace & Grit begins with a short history of ballet, bringing its past into present-day Minnesota. This lineage traces how ballet, a euro-russe-centric dance, eventually made its foray into Minnesota. Ballet’s graceful movements hearken back to the courts, kings, and aristocracy of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries; today’s steps and bravura techniques mark ballet’s grit and dramatic changes that occurred in the twentieth century. Grace & Grit is an indispensable book for the ballet enthusiast, someone new to ballet, or for winning a convert.

An authentic history of ballet in Minnesota has not been written. Differing opinions surround the questions of when and where ballet made its thriving presence. Grace & Grit intends to verify ballet’s first roots in Minnesota and the dance artists who were significant conduits for its growth. Extensive research and interviews with ballet and dance artists, choreographers, artistic directors, educators, and balletomanes provided Grace & Grit with a literary kaleidoscope of historical facts and stories.

Grace & Grit has a salient theme throughout the book: revealing and highlighting those organizations built upon a ballet foundation and dancers who adhere to a technically strong ballet training and performing. The book ends with the dawning of artistic visionaries who pushed ballet beyond the barre, studio walls, and proscenium stages. Various performance venues, including the great outdoors, and dancers of various ethnicities, socio-economic levels, abilities, and ages also took center stage.

Grace & Grit will be the written voice for various Minnesota ballet artists and supporters. Their riveting stories and fascinating photographs of artistic athleticism will reveal Minnesota legends that ballet has already created while inspiring new dancers to create new legends.

About the Author

For Georgia Finnegan, the core of her being yearns to write and to dance. She chose ballet training, and with resiliency, motivation, and determination Georgia kept ballet a vital part of her life. When Afton Press gave her the opportunity to write a nonfiction narrative history of ballet in Minnesota, Grace & Grit became the capstone for her years as a creative force in the Twin Cities ballet and dance community.

As founder of Saint Paul City Ballet, she continued its growth and development, garnering foundation and corporate support. She is a firm believer that the arts, in partnership with corporate, community, and state support, increase the economic vitality and aesthetic beauty of Minnesota.

Georgia embraces ballet as a storytelling art, passed down from ballet teachers and choreographers to student dancers. Through her interviews, writing, and research, she discovered many fascinating and intriguing ballet and dance stories. These stories commemorate great ballet personalities of the past as well as the dance artists of today. Grace & Grit became the stage upon which these stories dance.

Georgia lives in Minneapolis with her artist husband and dance enthusiast, Erik Saulitis.