Review: Dancing on Thorns

Rebecca Horsfall, Dancing on Thorns (Arrow 2005)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1540649.dancing_on_thorns

A love story between two fascinating characters set to ballet, with poetry, tears and raptures

For some reason she can’t herself explain, Nadia Petrovna, dowager étoile from the Diaghilev era, plucks awkward Jean-Baptiste St. Michel from the Académie in Paris for a scholarship at her Islington Ballet studio.
Michel is the son of a famous choreographer working abroad, whom he has not seen in years, and after he leaves his mother for a career in ballet, they, also, become estranged.
His uncle Jim dies, leaving him a large flat in Pimlico, which he and his Italian ballerino friend Primo convert into a dance studio and party pad. Enter Jonni, who has come to London as an aspiring actress and meets Michel at a party. As boys do, Michel casually lets Jonni know he’s been sleeping with his pas de deux partner Lynne, who casually informs Jonni that ‘we’ve all slept with each other in our gang’. He rudely ignores her for 90 pages while she follows along, infatuated by him and by his world, eventually being rewarded with a lover who, despite lack of commitment, makes love the way he dances.
Michel is propelled into a lead role, and he catches the eye of Martyn Greene, artistic director of the British National Ballet. Islington’s head choreographer Charles Crown reveals his hand. Far from scrutinising his every plié out of opprobrium, as had been Michel’s impression, Crown has spotted his promise and has been moulding him for stardom. Jonni follows him, cooking for the dance troupe, as he climbs the ladder of success.
I had always heard that the world of professional ballet was a competitive, bitchy scene, but the dancers in the Islington corps, here, love each other deeply, and these profound friendships carry them through the failures and successes of show biz and the highs and heartaches of their personal lives.
In the end, in order to make things right, Michel has to confront his demons, and Jonni has to take a risk.
Many interesting characters come onto the scene: the proud, statuesque prima ballerina Annette; the handsy actor Grant Noble; the leading actress full of wise words Maggie Lane; Leum the director who swears by saying ‘oh, panties!’; Roly, who went to a (dirty world in the ballet world) ‘stage school’; Carlotta di Gian-Tomaso, nicknamed the Giant Tomato; the tutor Marcus who became Marina; Jonni’s ‘tight-lipped, fifteen-denier tan-stockinged’ mother Veronica; the fat, vitriolic arts critic Boyle.
All contribute to a story painted in all the colours of the rainbow, featuring some really beautiful writing. It’s a long novel, but I couldn’t put it down.