After World Ballet Day, I’ve had several messages about ballet- I am always happy to chat ballet. I’ve given many recommendations on companies to watch and ballets to catch. For this week’s culture post, I thought that I would share some of my favourite historical fiction books about ballet! Read on….
There are sadly very few historical fiction books about ballet out there, at least for adults. You can find a decent number of children’s and young adult books about ballet, but not for adults. Here is hoping that some authors take up the mantle!
The Painted Girls, Cathy Marie Buchanan
1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.
Marie throws herself into dance and is soon modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. There she meets a wealthy male patron of the ballet, but might the assistance he offers come with strings attached? Meanwhile Antoinette, derailed by her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie, must choose between honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde.
Why You Should Read This…
If you are familiar with any ballet-related artist, it will be Edgar Degas. The Impressionist painter had a number of different subjects, but many of his finished (and unfinished) works are of the ballet world in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century. Buchanan has created a story around the world that Degas explored and immortalised. (I find it fascinating that although ballet originated in France, there are few fictional books about the French ballet world.) This is an excellent piece of historical fiction!
The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers, Kerri Turner
Valentina Yershova’s position in the Romanov’s Imperial Russian Ballet is the only thing that keeps her from the clutches of poverty. With implacable determination, she has clawed her way through the ranks to soloist, utilising not only her talent, but her alliances with influential rich men that grants them her body, but never her heart. When Luka Zhirkov – the gifted son of a factory worker – joins the company, her passion for ballet and love is rekindled, putting at risk everything that she has built.
For Luka, being accepted into the company fulfills a lifelong dream. But in the eyes of his proletariat father, it makes him a traitor. As war tightens its grip and the country starves, Luka is increasingly burdened with guilt about their lavish lifestyles.
While Luka and Valentina’s secret connection grows, the country rockets toward a revolution that will decide the fate of every dancer.
For the Imperial Russian Ballet has become the ultimate symbol of Romanov indulgence, and soon the lovers are forced to choose: their country, their art or each other…
Why You Should Read This….
I know that given the state of the world, including anything to do with Russia is questionable. However, Turner is an Australian author and this is a piece of historical fiction so I am including it! The Imperial Ballet held a fascinating position in Russian society. One could join the ballet as a peasant and find themselves in the company of the Tsar. Throw in a World War and a country-wide revolution, and the ballet is no longer the safe-haven it was for many dancers. It gives a very different view of dancers in the past, and just how much of a contrast there can be with the dance world now.
A Company of Swans, Iva Ibbotson
For nineteen-year-old Harriet Morton, life in 1912 Cambridge is as dry and dull as a biscuit. Her stuffy father and her oppressive aunt Louisa allow her only one outlet: ballet. When a Russian ballet master comes to class searching for dancers to fill the corps of his ballet company before their South American tour, Harriet’s world changes. Defying her father’s wishes and narrowly escaping the clutches of the man who wishes to marry her, Harriet sneaks off to join the ballet on their journey to the Amazon. There, in the wild, lush jungle, they perform Swan Lake in grand opera houses for the wealthy and culture-deprived rubber barons, and Harriet meets Rom Verney, the handsome and mysterious British exile who owns the most ornate opera house. Utterly enchanted by both the exotic surroundings and by Rom’s affections, Harriet is swept away by her new life, completely unaware that her father and would-be fiancé have begun to track her down…
Why You Should Read This…
I debated on whether or not to include this book, as it is technically classed as a romance novel, but it is quite a popular book. The romance is definitely at the heart of this novel rather than the ballet, but it does give an excellent idea of a twentieth-century ballet company. Nowadays, you may see a permanent-touring company doing broad tours, or a housed company doing a small tour. However, in the middle of the twentieth century, many housed companies did much longer and further tours- a British company touring South America would have not been out of the odds at all. A Company of Swans certainly gives excellent insight into that!
The True Memoirs of Little K, Adrienne Sharp
Exiled in Paris, tiny, one-hundred-year-old Mathilde Kschessinska sits down to write her memoirs before all that she believes to be true is forgotten. A lifetime ago, she was the vain, ambitious, impossibly charming prima ballerina assoluta of the tsar’s Russian Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. Now, as she looks back on her tumultuous life, she can still recall every slight she ever suffered, every conquest she ever made.
Kschessinka’s riveting storytelling soon thrusts us into a world lost to time: that great intersection of the Russian court and the Russian theater. Before the revolution, Kschessinska dominated that world as the greatest dancer of her age. At seventeen, her crisp, scything technique made her a star. So did her romance with the tsarevich Nicholas Romanov, soon to be Nicholas II. It was customary for grand dukes and sons of tsars to draw their mistresses from the ranks of the ballet, but it was not customary for them to fall in love.
The affair could not endure: when Nicholas ascended to the throne as tsar, he was forced to give up his mistress, and Kschessinska turned for consolation to his cousins, two grand dukes with whom she formed an infamous ménage à trois. But when Nicholas’s marriage to Alexandra wavered after she produced girl after girl, he came once again to visit his Little K. As the tsar’s empire—one that once made up a third of the world—began its fatal crumble, Kschessinka’s devotion to the imperial family would be tested in ways she could never have foreseen.
Why You Should Read This…
Mathilde Kschessinska is one of the most fascinating dancers in ballet’s history. Not necessarily for her talent, though she was exceptionally so. She was the perfect example of the ballet elevating your social status in Imperial Russia- she had an affair with the future-Tsar, and then moved on to two of his cousins. I actually have been saving this one to read, but I have heard excellent things from friends and will update this once I’ve finished!
The Italian Ballerina, Kristy Cambron
A prima ballerina. Two American medics. And a young Jewish girl with no name . . . At the height of the Nazi occupation of Rome, an unlikely band of heroes comes together to save Italian Jews in this breathtaking World War II novel based on real historical events.
Rome, 1943. With the fall of Italy’s Fascist government and the Nazi regime occupying the streets of Rome, British ballerina Julia Bradbury is stranded and forced to take refuge at a hospital on Tiber Island. But when she learns of a deadly sickness that is sweeping through the quarantine wards—a fake disease known only as Syndrome K—she is drawn into one of the greatest cons in history. Alongside hospital staff, friars of the adjoining church, and two Allied medics, Julia risks everything to rescue Italian Jews from the deadly clutches of the Holocaust. But when one little girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina arrives at their door, Julia and the others are determined to reunite the young dancer with her family—if only she would reveal one crucial secret: her name.
Present Day. With the recent loss of her grandfather—a beloved small-town doctor and WWII veteran—Delaney Coleman returns home to help her aging parents, even as she struggles to pick up the pieces of her own life. When a mysterious Italian woman claims she owns one of the family’s precious heirlooms, Delaney is compelled to uncover what’s true of her grandfather’s hidden past. Together with the woman’s skeptical but charming grandson, Delaney learns of a Roman hospital that saved hundreds of Jewish people during the war. Soon, everything Delaney thought she knew about her grandfather comes into question as she wrestles with the possibility that the man she’d revered all her life had unknown ties to Rome and may have taken noble secrets to his grave.
Why You Should Read This…
I have already featured this book individually, but I wanted to include it here again. This is another case of ballet being in the background rather than front and centre, but it still a fantastic book. Find my full review here: https://anhistorianabouttown.com/book-bite-the-italian-ballerina/!
The Chosen Maiden, Eva Stachniak
The passionate, sweeping story of Bronia, an extraordinary ballerina forever in the shadow of the legendary Nijinsky–Russia’s greatest dancer and her older brother.
Born on the road to dancer parents, the Nijinsky children seem destined for the stage. Vaslav is an early prodigy, and through single-minded pursuit will grow into arguably the greatest–and most infamous–Russian ballet dancer of the 20th century. His talented younger sister Bronia, however, also longs to dance. Overshadowed by Vaslav, plagued by a body deemed less than ideal and struggling against the constraints of her gender, Bronia will have to work triply hard to prove herself worthy.
Bronia’s stunning discipline and mesmerizing talent will eventually elevate her to the highest stage in Russia: the prestigious, old-world Mariinsky Ballet. But as the First World War rages, revolution sparks in Russia. In her politics, love life and career, Bronia will be forced to confront the choice between old and new; traditional and groundbreaking; safe and passionate.
Why You Should Read This…
This is from one of my favourite authors and a Polish-Canadian author at that! Bronia, along with her brother, are two of the most famous dancers to come out of Imperial Russia but they actually both considered themselves Polish. Vaslav’s career is well-documented, but Bronia has been largely forgotten in the last century. Stachniak brings her dance career and life back into the spotlight with The Chosen Maiden, and does it in a way that you cannot stop reading. If you are at all familiar with ballet history, this is definitely the book for you as you will recognise many figures!
If you are interested in non-fiction books about ballet, I’ve also got you covered: https://anhistorianabouttown.com/history-of-ballet-books/!
What authors are on your list of the best historical fiction about ballet?
Cheers,
The Historian
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