In her award-winning book, Clair-de-Lune, Australian author Cassandra Golds employs balletic grace and skill to weave a breathtaking fairytale about a talented young dancer who cannot speak. We were lucky enough to chat to Cassandra about the book.

How did the idea for Clair-de-Lune come about?
It started with a picture: I could see a girl at the barre in a 19th century ballet studio, and a mouse watching from a mouse hole nearby. And somehow I knew that the girl could not speak …

Can you tell us a bit about your own background in ballet?
I studied ballet by the Cecchetti method at the Burlakov School of Ballet in Penrith, where I grew up. It was one of the most memorable and influential experiences of my life.

What kind of research did you do for the book?
Clair-de-Lune is set in the 1850s, so I had to read up on ballet in the 19th century. I also saw two fascinating documentaries: Elusive Muse, the story of Suzanne Farrell and her mentor, legendary choreographer George Balanchine, and another one in which Isabelle Fokine discussed her grandfather Mikhail’s choreography for Anna Pavlova’s signature solo, ‘The Dying Swan’.

Do you think that ballet is a crucial element to the story, or could you still have told Clair-de-Lune’s story if you’d made her, say, a basketball player or a violinist?
I guess Clair-de-Lune could have had some other calling … but I had a particular kind of story in mind when I began. I wanted to write something flamboyant and baroque and romantic and intensely emotional. And the world of ballet, with its elaborate culture and traditions, and a body of legend that goes back generations, seemed the perfect background for my purposes. Plus, I wanted to write about relationships between girls and mothers and grandmothers, and about the dangers of shutting out men. Ballet seemed perfect for that, too.

You’ve mentioned that you loved Lorna Hill’s Sadler’s Wells series when you were a kid, and also Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. What is it about ballet, do you think, that makes it such a compelling storyline for readers?
I think it’s the mixture of romance and discipline. There is nothing more magically lovely than the romantic ballets of the 19th century. And there is nothing that is harder work than becoming a skilled enough dancer to actually dance one of those roles. To work almost impossibly hard to attain such an exquisite ideal is a fascinating story in itself. It’s a metaphor that any idealistic person can understand. And anyone who lives life at that kind of pitch is going to have intense feelings about people too. So passion – and conflict caused by the tremendous demands of the art – becomes a fruitful theme as well.

Ballet and tragedy complement each other powerfully onstage, but for some dancers the mad scene doesn’t end when the curtain falls. Forget Giselle – the real lives of ballet dancers are often more devastating than those of the characters they portray.

Nijinsky’s remarkable Diaries, scribbled just before he was committed to an insane asylum, chronicles the rambling thoughts of a man who is descending into schizophrenia. Isadora Duncan turned to drinking after the drowning deaths of both her children, and later died shockingly in an automobile accident. Gelsey Kirkland went through a harrowing battle with eating disorders and drug addiction, but lived to tell the tale in her 1986 memoir, Dancing on My Grave.

Sometimes a dancer’s unhappy life will come full circle and end up back on stage. Boris Eifman based his 1997 ballet, The Red Giselle, on Olga Spessivtseva , an exceptional dancer who was plagued by mental illness for most her life. Jiří Kylián wrote his 1987 piece, Heart’s Labyrinth, about the tragic suicide of one of his dancers at the Netherlands Dance Theater.

Whatever the reasons for their torment – mental illness, addiction, poverty or perfectionism – the paradox underpinning it all is that these dancers brought great happiness to their audiences, despite their own suffering. And in doing so they showed us that the fine line between joy and sorrow is more like a smudge; in fact, it’s hardly there at all.

Image01 Nijinsky in L’après-midi d’un faune, 1912. Photography Baron Adolf de Meyer
Image02 Karsavina and Nijinsky in Le spectre de la rose

(Helpful tips from ballet fiction)

1. Get yourself orphaned
Every reader of ballet fiction knows that becoming an orphan is the critical first step in a professional dancing career. The most convenient scenario is if they simply died when you were very young, like Drina’s parents in Jean Estoril’s popular Drina series from the ‘50s and ‘60s. But better still if you can …

2. Get yourself impressively orphaned
The mother of the mute main character of Clair-de-Lune, Cassandra Golds’ exquisite novel from 2004, was a famous ballerina herself and – can you believe it – actually died onstage, while dancing the role of a dying swan. Tragic, yes. But also a pretty cool detail for Clair-de-Lune’s future bio.

3. Get a horrid cousin
The next step after getting yourself orphaned is to obtain a horrid cousin. In Lorna Hill’s beloved Sadler’s Wells series, Veronica is forced to go and live with her aunt, uncle and horrid cousin, Fiona, after her father dies. Horrid cousins are integral personalities for the beginner dancer to be exposed to, as their backstabbing and bitchiness help prepare the novice for the professional dance world.

4. If your parents insist on staying alive, it’s preferable that they try to suffocate your dance dream
Many mothers in real life tend to be hyper-enthusiastic and totally supportive of their children’s dance careers. Ballet fiction demonstrates that these ballet mums are definitely going about it the wrong way. Far more conducive to a successful ballet career is if your mother tries to foil your ambitions at every plot point.

In Edward Stewart’s popular 1979 book Ballerina, one of the main characters, Christine, comes from a rich family whose mother doesn’t consider dance a worthwhile profession. Which of course only makes her daughter all the more determined to do it.

5. Get adopted by someone eccentric
If you’ve followed Steps 1 and 2 correctly and lost both your parents in a most moving way, you’ll definitely be in the market for an eccentric guardian. This could be an aunt or uncle, but it’s better if you can find an eccentric archaeologist to adopt you, as exemplified most charmingly in Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 favourite, Ballet Shoes.

6. Avoid getting dramatically murdered
Once you finally succeed in joining a professional ballet company, expect to become entangled in criminal intrigue, as per the highly popular ballet crime spoofs of the ‘30s and ‘40s written by Carol Brahms and SJ Simon.

The first in the series, A Bullet in the Ballet, opens during a performance of Petroushka with the main dancer being shot, followed swiftly by the murder of his replacement. It goes without saying that surviving such professional mishaps are crucial if you expect to have a long and rewarding dance career.