DANCE FICTION: LET’S START A SHELF
Dance Fiction: what a great idea. There should be a shelf in every Waterstones. Maybe, in some bookshop somewhere, there is one – but it’ll be in the Teens and Children’s section; Dance Fiction seems to be a genre we are supposed to grow out of. Kids can choose classics like Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes, or something more contemporary such as Veronica Bennett’s Fish Feet (a 15-year-old chap with a football-ballet dilemma, wonderful stuff) – but grown-ups usually have to wander over to Biography. Please bombard me with indignant recommendations, but the only dance novels I’ve enjoyed are Adele Geras’ Hester’s Story and Sarah Bird’s The Flamenco Academy – unless I count the process of writing my own humble offerings.
I can’t quite believe I’m writing this. As an 11-year-old wooden giraffe of a girl at the back of the Grade Three ballet class, it didn’t look likely that I’d ever have the tiniest part in the dance world. That was okay, I was going to be an author; the school had even sent one of my stories to Pony Magazine. Then I grew up – a further six inches in fact, and not only was it getting even harder to control my lolloping limbs, but I couldn’t think what to write about anymore. I switched to music. Ten years later I was a piano teacher at the Royal Ballet Lower School of all places – I couldn’t believe my luck. But after a few years I grew restless, played keyboards in a couple of bands, and then took the more drastic step of leaping over to science. Another ten years, and I was a post-doctoral vision scientist. Still restless. Dancing obviously wasn’t going to happen, but I was still hoping I’d come up with an idea for a novel.
Then one night, coming home after a Carlos Acosta performance at Covent Garden, that idea came. After a few months I was writing Men Dancing – the adventures of a weary scientist who, after a chance meeting in a train, becomes obsessed with a male ballet dancer who is ‘a ravishing fusion of athleticism and art, virility and gentleness.’ It’s a dance-themed novel about a balletomane who starts to feel like her whole life is a complex dance with the men and boys in her life. A literary consultant’s verdict was ‘Great, but nobody wants to read about a male ballet dancer. Write a different book’ – so I was delighted when a publisher disagreed and took me on.
For my second novel, I wanted to explore the dilemma of the single woman with a ticking body clock, but needed a stimulus to shake this woman out of her doldrums. Once again, dance came to my rescue: the Sadlers’ Wells Flamenco Festival convinced me that, if there’s an art that can come whirling in and make a difference to your life, it’s flamenco. In the story, my character’s best friend tries to cheer her up after a heartbreak by taking her to the London Flamenco Festival, and then books lessons for her to learn ‘how to rotate [her] wrists and work the fingers like the opening and closing of a flower; raise [her] arms like the wings of an eagle taking flight; use [her] toes and heels to make rhythms and patterns on the floor, always a tierra, into the earth.’ Flamenco Baby is dance-inspired rather than dance-themed; the dance – and the music and character of flamenco – acting as a catalyst and then playing a supporting role and companion on her journey. (It has certainly become more than a companion to me. You can read about ‘How I turned flamenco’ on www.cherryradford.co.uk).
I’m now often asked if I’m a dancer. This delights me of course, but it’s odd that people seem to think that only a dancer could write my novels – even though both are written from a non-dancer’s point of view. Writers’ online forums suggest that dance scenes are often a challenge, mainly due to a worry over describing steps or simply not knowing what it feels like to dance. I’ve never found it any harder than writing about anything else, as the same rules apply: you watch (a lot), you respond, and then – within the context of what is happening with your characters – you describe. You don’t need to be a professional dancer to do that, any more than you need to be a sexologist to describe a love scene; what matters is the human communication, and more than a minimal description of steps or body parts gets in the way of that.
That’s not to say that I haven’t undertaken a lot of research. There were bank-breaking ballet-a-week seasons at the Royal Opera House, company classes, backstage tours, dancer’s biographies and salsa lessons for Men Dancing; a rack of CDs, numerous live performances, an intensive flamenco course in Granada (exactly as taken by the protagonist), guitar lessons and (Spanish) interviews for Flamenco Baby. But as with all research – whether it’s flamenco, Asperger’s Syndrome or lighthouses – I think you have to let most of it just sink into your subconscious. My novels are read by a wide range of women (and a few men), so I never assume my readers have any more than an open mind about dance.
My current work-in-progress is more about music and language than dance, but I’m sure I’ll return to it for inspiration – or rather, as has happened so far, it will return to me. Until there are more of us incorporating dance into our fiction – rather than murder or parallel universes – you’ll find me in General, under R.
(Published in Dance Today, London, October 2014)
I can’t quite believe I’m writing this. As an 11-year-old wooden giraffe of a girl at the back of the Grade Three ballet class, it didn’t look likely that I’d ever have the tiniest part in the dance world. That was okay, I was going to be an author; the school had even sent one of my stories to Pony Magazine. Then I grew up – a further six inches in fact, and not only was it getting even harder to control my lolloping limbs, but I couldn’t think what to write about anymore. I switched to music. Ten years later I was a piano teacher at the Royal Ballet Lower School of all places – I couldn’t believe my luck. But after a few years I grew restless, played keyboards in a couple of bands, and then took the more drastic step of leaping over to science. Another ten years, and I was a post-doctoral vision scientist. Still restless. Dancing obviously wasn’t going to happen, but I was still hoping I’d come up with an idea for a novel.
Then one night, coming home after a Carlos Acosta performance at Covent Garden, that idea came. After a few months I was writing Men Dancing – the adventures of a weary scientist who, after a chance meeting in a train, becomes obsessed with a male ballet dancer who is ‘a ravishing fusion of athleticism and art, virility and gentleness.’ It’s a dance-themed novel about a balletomane who starts to feel like her whole life is a complex dance with the men and boys in her life. A literary consultant’s verdict was ‘Great, but nobody wants to read about a male ballet dancer. Write a different book’ – so I was delighted when a publisher disagreed and took me on.
For my second novel, I wanted to explore the dilemma of the single woman with a ticking body clock, but needed a stimulus to shake this woman out of her doldrums. Once again, dance came to my rescue: the Sadlers’ Wells Flamenco Festival convinced me that, if there’s an art that can come whirling in and make a difference to your life, it’s flamenco. In the story, my character’s best friend tries to cheer her up after a heartbreak by taking her to the London Flamenco Festival, and then books lessons for her to learn ‘how to rotate [her] wrists and work the fingers like the opening and closing of a flower; raise [her] arms like the wings of an eagle taking flight; use [her] toes and heels to make rhythms and patterns on the floor, always a tierra, into the earth.’ Flamenco Baby is dance-inspired rather than dance-themed; the dance – and the music and character of flamenco – acting as a catalyst and then playing a supporting role and companion on her journey. (It has certainly become more than a companion to me. You can read about ‘How I turned flamenco’ on www.cherryradford.co.uk).
I’m now often asked if I’m a dancer. This delights me of course, but it’s odd that people seem to think that only a dancer could write my novels – even though both are written from a non-dancer’s point of view. Writers’ online forums suggest that dance scenes are often a challenge, mainly due to a worry over describing steps or simply not knowing what it feels like to dance. I’ve never found it any harder than writing about anything else, as the same rules apply: you watch (a lot), you respond, and then – within the context of what is happening with your characters – you describe. You don’t need to be a professional dancer to do that, any more than you need to be a sexologist to describe a love scene; what matters is the human communication, and more than a minimal description of steps or body parts gets in the way of that.
That’s not to say that I haven’t undertaken a lot of research. There were bank-breaking ballet-a-week seasons at the Royal Opera House, company classes, backstage tours, dancer’s biographies and salsa lessons for Men Dancing; a rack of CDs, numerous live performances, an intensive flamenco course in Granada (exactly as taken by the protagonist), guitar lessons and (Spanish) interviews for Flamenco Baby. But as with all research – whether it’s flamenco, Asperger’s Syndrome or lighthouses – I think you have to let most of it just sink into your subconscious. My novels are read by a wide range of women (and a few men), so I never assume my readers have any more than an open mind about dance.
My current work-in-progress is more about music and language than dance, but I’m sure I’ll return to it for inspiration – or rather, as has happened so far, it will return to me. Until there are more of us incorporating dance into our fiction – rather than murder or parallel universes – you’ll find me in General, under R.
(Published in Dance Today, London, October 2014)
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