Never has there been a more appropriate time for the phrase, ‘write what you know.’

I've really enjoyed every Sarah Mayberry book I've read. Until now.
(Check out Her Best Friend and Hot Island Nights.)

There should be a law forbidding people from writing books or making movies about ballet unless they are or were ballet dancers, because it’s always so badly screwed up. I should have liked this book – it featured ballet and Paris, two of my favourite things – but I very nearly went completely insane instead.

“She has her career to get back to as a prima ballerina of the Sydney Dance Company.”

That sentence sums up why this book got one star. I was practically tearing my hair out at how inaccurate it was.

This one just solidified that one star rating:

“She’d learned all the ballet technique phrases in French because she’d been passionate about her craft.”

Uh, no. Actually, ballet technique IS in French! Every ballet student – from France to Australia to America to Korea – uses French terminology for ballet steps.

So, what’s wrong with the first sentence (“prima ballerina of the Sydney Dance Company”)?
The Sydney Dance Company performs brand spanking new contemporary dance, and for most of its history was run by a man who went out his way NOT to include ballet in the repertoire. There is no corps de ballet, because it is not a ballet company. They don’t train in pretty ballet skirts and wear pointe shoes all day, because it is not a ballet company. They don’t dance Giselle or Romeo and Juliet or The Nutcracker, because it is not a ballet company!! The two companies are as similar as the Metropolitan Opera and Guns N Roses are in music!

Now, pray tell, how can one be a ballerina in that company? Apart from anything else, the title of ‘prima ballerina’ is reserved for only the best, the most famous international ballet stars. The term 'ballerina' can only be given to the stars of a company. Everyone else is a stock standard 'ballet dancer'. There certainly isn’t a dancer alive who would be arrogant enough to call themselves a 'prima ballerina'!

We keep hearing about how Maddy toured the world with SDC, dancing the leading roles in the classic ballets. Seeing as how they don’t perform ballets, I’d like to know how she performed Giselle, and danced Juliet on tour in France!

Here are a few of the things that had me going mad in frustration:

• If you’re a dancer you train for hours every day. You don’t take months off at a time, eating like a pig and sightseeing, and then suddenly jet off to Amsterdam and join a dance company.

• Footwear = Pointe SHOES, ballet SHOES – the only people who wear ‘slippers’ are old biddies in nursing homes (or me, when nobody’s here). You DO NOT roll out of bed, put on a pair of pointe shoes and start dancing. That’s what a warm-up class is for. And before warm-up class you’d likely do some other kind of warm-up (jogging, Pilates). Dive straight into pointework and you’re likely to give yourself a nasty injury.

• You don’t often stand en pointe in bare feet! Maddy models for Max's sculptures, where she holds impossible poses for impossible lengths of time. You can’t stand still doing an arabesque en pointe for ten minutes! In the nude and in bare feet!

• I seriously doubt Maddy was inspired to become a ballet dancer because she saw Anna Pavlova on television. Anna Pavlova was born in 1881!

• Becoming a soloist is not reaching the pinnacle of a ballet career – that’s only halfway to the top. You’d be aiming for principal artist. And the chances of ‘seeing your name in lights’ are nil, seeing as how movie theatres do that, not ballet theatres.

• You do not get into a ballet company by having an interview! How are they supposed to know if you’re a good dancer by that? You audition, and in Europe it’s often a ‘cattle-call’ audition, in a room with hundreds of people, many of whom are eliminated after just walking across the room.

• When Max’s niece was demanding ‘the cat’ (chat) in French, Maddy WOULD have known what she wanted, because the ‘pas de chat’ is one of the most famous dance steps – you have to know some French to be a ballet dancer!

• It’s the PARIS Opera Ballet (or the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris), not the ‘Garnier Opera Ballet’!

• The Nutcracker begins with a Christmas party, not men doing grand jeté after grand jeté across the stage!

• Twenty-nine is NOT that old! Maddy watches a ballet and decides her body is too old to manage what they’re doing on the stage. Uh, most ballet dancers are just starting to dance leading roles in their late twenties – many Paris Opera Ballet dancers don’t even make the position of Étoile (star) until they’re in their thirties! Someone I know was just now promoted to principal artist in a ballet company, and she’s Maddy’s age! Her career is just taking off! True, many dancers retire early, but those who are going to make it as stars are most certainly around in their thirties (and forties).

• The Dutch company for ‘senior’ dancers Maddy joins in this book is for the over 40s – Maddy is TWENTY-NINE!!!!

• Very few ballet dancers outside of the former Soviet Union train on wooden floors these days. In Australia, you’d be hard-pressed to find any studios not using Tarkett flooring.

• Sydney Dance Company does not follow a ballet company hierarchy – because it’s not a ballet company. You don’t have the dancers divided in the corps de ballet and coryphées and soloists and all the rest.

Apart from the ballet stuff, this was my eighth Sarah Mayberry book, and the first one where I didn’t buy the relationship or believe they loved each other.

If you have no knowledge of the dance world, then you might enjoy this. Sarah Mayberry is an excellent writer. Unfortunately I knew too much not to be infuriated by the inaccuracies, and I couldn’t look beyond them to enjoy this preposterous fairytale version of a dance story. ( )