“Muscle Memory devastated me.” —Kiese Laymon

When a searing pain starts in Lilly Dancyger’s hip at twenty-six years old, she goes to see a doctor, expecting an explanation and a treatment plan. Instead, what follows is an eleven-year search for a diagnosis—and the recalibration of her identity from a fit and healthy bartender and dancer to a person who is in pain. Remembering her chaotic childhood, during which ballet classes were a rare stabilizing force, Dancyger becomes convinced that if she can just get well enough to dance, ballet will help her conquer chronic pain.

Muscle Memory is a quietly seething braided memoir in three acts: part personal account of a lifelong relationship with ballet; part pain narrative; part researched examination of classical ballets. Dancyger exposes the systematic dismissal of women’s suffering, tests the linkages between chronic pain and trauma, and looks for answers in The Firebird—a folktale-turned-ballet about the bargains we make to free ourselves.