Where would you expect to read the latest on the politics of the ballet world? A broadsheet’s arts pages, Twitter, #ballettok – or a bonkbuster from your library’s romance section?
Two recent novels put romantic longing and steamy couplings alongside discussion of body politics, feminism and #MeToo in ballet. First Position, written by ex-American Ballet Theatre (ABT) dancer Melanie Hamrick and published by Mills & Boon, is being billed as Black Swan meets 50 Shades. Its heroine is talented but dysfunctional ballet dancer Sylvie Carter, who falls into a series of passionate trysts with a star principal. Pas de Don’t (a play on “pas de deux”, a term for a duet) by Australian journalist Chloe Angyal centres on New York dancer Heather Hays, who after being dumped by her fiance takes up a job at the Australian National Ballet and gets into a forbidden romance with a colleague.
The summaries may seem romance-by-numbers, and the tropes are all there – instant sizzling attraction, obstacles and misunderstandings, a satisfying finale – but what’s notable is the knowledge behind them. Ballet is not just an atmospheric setting, or an excuse to put the characters in tight lycra, but something the authors themselves have lived. Hamrick was in the corps de ballet at ABT for 16 years (incidentally, she’s also Mick Jagger’s partner, which doesn’t do the book marketing any harm). Angyal trained in dance all through childhood. So in Hamrick’s book, yes, there’s intense competition, jealousy, drugs, sabotage – all the cliches dancers hate, which earn the Black Swan comparison – and there’s fantasy, via people who live in incredible apartments and drink a lot of champagne. But it all comes alongside descriptions of prepping pointe shoes, the box of rosin dancers use to stop themselves slipping, itchy stage makeup, and the smells of sweat and hairspray.
She also captures the anticipation of being in the wings, the “pulsing, organic high that will buzz through my veins” once she gets out on stage. And the specifics of dancing at the highest level, of dedicating your youth to excelling in a specific pursuit, only to make it and then find yourself lost among a dozen other identically talented little swans. She talks of keeping quiet and fitting in to get to the top, then finding that audiences want star dancers with strong personalities; of the tension between being a dancer of exactitude and precision but also one of instinct and drama.
Hamrick has the dancer’s deep understanding of living through your body. She is good on physical sensation, both on stage and in bed, and she dives straight into the sex – you only have to wait 20 pages for the first orgasm. Angyal’s book is a slow burn, romantic in tone, but with politics more on show. Angyal previously wrote the non-fiction book Turning Pointe, interviewing dancers about ballet’s place in the 21st century, discussing gender, race and class, and she’s put a lot of that research into Pas de Don’t.
At her fictional Australian National Ballet, a new director, Peter McGregor, has come in to sweep away the old ways, and Angyal collates all the changes that are happening in real ballet companies around the world. He brings in a counsellor to support dancers’ mental health; he won’t let them dance when they’re injured; dancers wear tights and ballet shoes matching their skin tone, rather than only in blush pink; and they can wear their hair any length, colour or texture. It might seem crazy to some that these things are still topics for debate, but ballet moves very slowly. (It is moving, though: first soloist Joseph Sissens at the Royal Ballet now wears his hair in locs, and had cornrows for his Nutcracker Prince).
McGregor commissions a bunch of female choreographers to make up for the overwhelming dominance of men in the repertoire, something that all the major companies have been doing in the last decade, attempting to catch up with gender equality. And Angyal shows the breaking down of hierarchies – in some companies in the past, lowly corps de ballet members might not even speak to principals – and talks about dancers being trained to obey orders, and not value their own voice. It’s so close to life that she even invents a dance critic who comments on a dancer’s weight, in a barely veiled imitation of New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay’s quote about a dancer having eaten “one sugar plum too many”.
Both books are strong on power dynamics – often a key ingredient in a saucy romance, but also a serious talking point in ballet. They have dancers who are so talented that their bad behaviour goes unchecked (just as Rudolf Nureyev’s volatile moods were indulged because his dancing was genius), and they especially confront abuses of power, in the wake of ballet’s own #MeToo crises.
In Hamrick’s book, Sylvie is “chosen” by Sebastian Alvarez, the company’s assistant director, for private lessons that turn into a secretive affair. He tells her what to do, what to wear, what to drink, what kind of dancer to be, and humiliates her when he’s done with her. In Pas de Don’t, heroine Heather Hays is engaged to star dancer Jack Andersen, in another relationship that stinks of coercive control. He takes credit for her success, puts her down, probes her insecurities, succeeds in making her reliant on him and is verbally abusive.
Both books track the highs and lows of ballet, the absolute devotion of its dancers, and the moments of transcendence it can bring, but they’re also about freedom – from controlling men, and from the restrictions of a controlling art form that they adore, but want to love on their own terms.
Extended lines: quotes from the books
From First Position:
“The heat from her body comes at me like an assault. Her energy is always like that … I feel like prey in the wild. When she’s around, I can feel her there. As if she’s waiting to pounce.”
“I look at Jocelyn and immediately regret it. When the two of us make eye contact it’s like a lit match meeting gasoline … She burns bright and hot and fast, often burning those who aren’t afraid to touch her. And those who are. I feel as though I am merely the toxic environment that erupts and explodes when it crosses her fire.”
“When I dance I feel like a vessel. I don’t experience hunger or thirst. Pain and exhaustion take on a different sort of tolerable life. Carnal desire is set aside from the dance itself. The hands on you don’t feel the same as they would off the stage. But tonight, it is something different. I am deeply aware of the heat from his body as it touches my skin … I am unable to feel nothing.”
From Pas de Don’t:
“Heather couldn’t help but notice it was a very nice ass … even by ballet standards, sitting high and round above hamstrings so defined they looked like bridge cables under his tanned skin. Whoever this guy turned out to be, she’d never be able to forget that under those sweatpants he had a perfectly sculpted butt.”
“She slid off him and knelt between his legs, relishing the view of his taut, muscular thighs. God bless every ballet teacher who ever made this man do pliés, she thought.”
“[She was] exactly where she was supposed to be. The thought fuelled her muscles, buoyed her jumps and made her feet faster and more precise than usual, her body anticipating each note and clinging to every balance as if it was unbearable to let go … She had been broken and betrayed, but she’d found the courage to break free, and that’s what she was now: free, whole and more powerful than she’d ever known.”
