The dancers profiled in First Position represent the pinnacle of their art over the last century. Author Toba Singer polled scores of dance critics, dance teachers and professors, and active and retired professional dancers to create a list that represents the best of the various styles of ballet from the last hundred years. The result is a collective biography that introduces the reader to dancers both with household names and those known mostly to ballet aficioinados. Profiled dancers include Carlos Acosta, Alicia Alonso, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Erik Bruhn, Lazaro Carreno, Margot Fonteyn, Carla Fracci, Gelsey Kirkland, Li Cunxin, Muriel Maffre, Natalia Makarova, Arthur Mitchell, Rudolf Nureyev, Anna Pavlova, and Maya Plisetskaya.

Toba Singer is the Dance Selector and Senior Program Director of the Art and Music Center of the San Francisco Public Library. She graduated from New York City's High School of Performing Arts and has lived and written in Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, and Charleston, West Virginia. She has been a steelworker, chemical refinery operator, presser and sewing machine operator, and airlines worker. Her articles have been published in the Charleston Gazette, San Francisco Chronicle, Dance Magazine, Dance Europe, voiceofdance.com and criticaldance.com. Singer produced Dance to Live, Live to Dance and served on the board of Robert Moses' Kin dance company. She studied dance with Svetlana Afanasieva, Nina Anderson, Perry Brunson, Cora Cahan, Jane Dudley, Richard Gibson, Zory Karah, Donald McKayle, Francoise Martinet, Augusta Moore, Gertrude Shurr, and Kahz Smuda. Her son James Gotesky dances with Houston Ballet.