Set against the backdrops of London’s gilded Alhambra music hall, Diaghilev’s dazzling Ballets Russes, and the upheavals of the First World War, Rose and her children, Nina and Walter, pursue their ambitions, loves, and dreams. Dance and music shape their identities, helping each to find their place in the world.
Spanning the years 1875 to 1921—an era of profound artistic and social change—fact and fiction interweave in this tapestry of birth, sacrifice, and renewal. Art—both serious and comic—is at the story’s beating heart.
Excerpt
PRELUDE.
Backstage at the Alhambra Theatre, London, 1875. A baby has been abandoned at the stage door.
Further along the corridor, Tommy squeezes past the Majiltons: the three acrobats, still in their multi-coloured tight-fitting outfits, idle with other turns, all done for the night. In the basket, what had been a mewl has risen in volume. Curious, they follow him to the Green Room, an all-purpose place to meet and mend.
At a large table strewn with damaged costumes and headdresses, Molly, a seamstress, is repairing a crimson velvet jacket. ‘What on earth…?’ she jerks at the sound, pricking her finger, then sweeps aside clutter, making room. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ She peers at a red-tipped nose of a tightly swaddled baby.
They gather – doorman, artistes, seamstresses, a carpenter nursing a bandaged hand…
Molly removes the bundle and begins unpeeling layers of sacking and woollies then a dark purple silk shawl. She peeps under a make-shift nappy, declaring, ‘A girl, and not long born.’ As she prepares to rewrap the wee thing, the shawl catches her attention. ‘I recognise this.’ So instead, the babe is made snug in the velvet jacket – sharp needle removed.
Shaking out the square shawl, Molly folds it into a triangle and drapes it over her shoulders. Her fingers explore clusters of tiny pricks in the fabric where it had been drawn together and artificial flowers pinned to a bodiced bosom. ‘That operetta, Don Juan, remember?’ Another seamstress takes it saying: ‘And before that, didn’t we use it in Beauties of the Harem?’ She slings it low around her hips, loosely knotting it at the side.
‘Who,’ Molly speculates, ‘left the corps de ballet all of a sudden?’
‘I let out Alice’s costume – twice,’ a seamstress recalls.
‘Miscarried,’ Molly says. ‘She’s behind the bar at The Crown now.’
‘What about that slip of a girl from up north,’ Tommy asks. ‘Haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Died some weeks back,’ Molly says. ‘Her lungs.’
More names crop up, names are dismissed.
Word spreads of the unexpected arrival, and more crowd in. Loudly they proclaim their astonishment at this baby lying among bits of fabric, gilt-foil, and sequins.
‘Who’ll take her to the Foundling Hospital?’ Someone asks. No one offers.
Molly cradles the baby, now sucking its thumb. ‘Oh, the wee mite’s starving.’ She gulps, feeling something tug in her stomach.
‘Poor bebe, let me ’old her,’ Madame Pitteri says. The plump, golden-haired ballerina arrives, still wearing her Act Two, Queen Snowdrop, costume. ‘She must ’ave a name.’ She searches for a note tucked in the shabby basket, then, finding none, insists: ‘I gift my own, Giovannina.’
‘Giovannina,’ Molly tries.
‘Rather long for a tiny girl,’ someone says.
‘And not very English,’ another whispers.
‘Victoria, after her Majesty? Vicky?’
And still they arrive. What seems the entire corps de ballet shrugs off tiredness, cramming in. Musicians, instruments packed, pause before heading into the cold November night.
A broad-brimmed hat with an ostrich feather is produced into which slips of paper are deposited.
A scrap of paper is retrieved and unfolded. ‘Rosalinde!’
‘Ah,’ A violinist claps. He’s a fan of Die Fledermaus. ‘Dear baby Rosalinde!’
‘Rosa perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’
No one recalls how Rose is settled upon. No one knows why she isn’t handed over to the authorities who deal with abandoned babies. No one – least of all Molly – recalls why she, a young single woman, forever repairing costumes from Monsieur Alias’s atelier, takes the baby home. Did everyone, including the theatre manager rush away, leaving others, eventually her, to deal with the unwanted problem? Had something of The Flower Queen ballet’s magic seeped backstage to cast a spell protecting this little thing?
Whatever the case, the die is cast. Rose, cared for by Molly, becomes the first-born child of the jewel of London’s theatreland: the Alhambra Palace Theatre, Leicester Square.
Anna Holmes
Stories with big themes written as page-turners are Anna M Holmes’s speciality.
With an extensive background in dance and theatre, Dance of the Earth is a story she has longed to write.
Her novels—The Find, Wayward Voyage, and Blind Eye—are all typified by deep research.
Anna worked as a radio journalist before embarking on a career in arts management. Originally from New Zealand, she now lives in South-West London.
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