REREAD: While others DANCE
Jul. 28th, 2014 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllWhile others DANCE: Barbara Beacham Phoenix 1991
(That is how the title is set up on the front cover, the spine and the title page, although it’s the calmer ‘While others dance’ in the British cataloguing library information.)
By the time I got my hands on this, I was already a big fan of ballet stories (having come across the Sadlers Wells series, at least, if not Drina etc) and boarding school stories (Mallory Towers, St Clare’s, the Chalet School and non-serials) so this was bound to appeal to me as a child. It’s set in the time it was published, the early nineties, although, apart from a very few aspects like playing music on a cassette, it could have been set at any point going back a few decades earlier. Of course, there’s a family tree at the beginning of the book with dates of birth – which I think is a mistake as it spoils a revelation that comes halfway through the book. I’m all for family trees or maps if relevant, but this should have been provided at the back. The story also has a Christian flavour, although it’s very lightly done – the heroine learns that prayer works, that sometimes the answer to prayers is ‘no’ but that that can be part of God’s plan for God’s children. This is mainly confined to conversations between the heroine and her room-mate, with no reference to the Bible, for instance, and is much less religious than the general trend of books eighty years its junior (even The Ogilvies' Adventure touched on the ideals of submission to serve others and peace-making, although it avoided having its heroine carry them out.)
What Roslin Willoughby cares about the most in life is ballet. She has loved dancing since her doctor suggested it for her back two years ago, despite the resistance of strict, rather cold and old-fashioned Aunt Sarah, who is her guardian. Aged 11, her life turns upside down when her aunt and uncle are to go to Bangladeshho for three years for his job. She is to be sent to boarding school and not a ballet school as she would dearly love. Indeed, there is to be no ballet for Roslin there!
The school is in Templeton Hall, which is, of course beautiful. It’s run by three sisters (another staple along with the orphaned heroine, strict aunt who leaves the country and family secrets to be unearthed) who knew Roslin’s aunts and her dead parents in their childhood years. Their tit-bits about those days and Roslin’s nice room-mate, fellow new girl Kate, make Roslin think the school is less awful than she thought it would be. But her dancing is confined to practicing in the dorm, and salt is rubbed into the wound by the fact that Kate, like ‘school ballerina’ Deeda, goes to town for lessons with Miss Webster, who taught prima ballerina Elizabeth Paul. Roslin’s timetable is filled with extra music lessons, for her father was musical. She likes music, but she loves ballet.
Throw in Deeda’s constant odd (spiteful) behaviour towards Roslin and the fact that her aunt Sarah was so repressive – Roslin knows very little about her dead parents, so the glimpses of their childhoods are precious to her - and these are all very familiar girlsown-y elements. There’s no talk of lessons beyond the music ones, there’s a bit of hockey, a few visits to the san, known as sick bay, and the story, like the term, comes to an end with a school show. Rereading it, I found I did remember bits of that show and could work out the secrets and mysteries that puzzled Roslin so – and feel very annoyed at the adults who’d kept them from her and allowed her to get into such a spin. Furthermore, one could point out that lecturing Roslin on her dishonesty Because of How Much She Loves Ballet, while keeping secrets from her at her aunt’s behest is a bit hypocritical, although the headmistress isn't held to account for that in the story.
It was a zip through – aimed at readers of Roslin’s age or younger. As I say, it contained lots of elements I have a long-standing fondness for, but for all that Roslin had bouts of strong emotional turmoil, it’s something of a glancing book, using an extreme, but oft-used in girlsown, type of plot to underline its message.
(That is how the title is set up on the front cover, the spine and the title page, although it’s the calmer ‘While others dance’ in the British cataloguing library information.)
By the time I got my hands on this, I was already a big fan of ballet stories (having come across the Sadlers Wells series, at least, if not Drina etc) and boarding school stories (Mallory Towers, St Clare’s, the Chalet School and non-serials) so this was bound to appeal to me as a child. It’s set in the time it was published, the early nineties, although, apart from a very few aspects like playing music on a cassette, it could have been set at any point going back a few decades earlier. Of course, there’s a family tree at the beginning of the book with dates of birth – which I think is a mistake as it spoils a revelation that comes halfway through the book. I’m all for family trees or maps if relevant, but this should have been provided at the back. The story also has a Christian flavour, although it’s very lightly done – the heroine learns that prayer works, that sometimes the answer to prayers is ‘no’ but that that can be part of God’s plan for God’s children. This is mainly confined to conversations between the heroine and her room-mate, with no reference to the Bible, for instance, and is much less religious than the general trend of books eighty years its junior (even The Ogilvies' Adventure touched on the ideals of submission to serve others and peace-making, although it avoided having its heroine carry them out.)
What Roslin Willoughby cares about the most in life is ballet. She has loved dancing since her doctor suggested it for her back two years ago, despite the resistance of strict, rather cold and old-fashioned Aunt Sarah, who is her guardian. Aged 11, her life turns upside down when her aunt and uncle are to go to Bangladeshho for three years for his job. She is to be sent to boarding school and not a ballet school as she would dearly love. Indeed, there is to be no ballet for Roslin there!
The school is in Templeton Hall, which is, of course beautiful. It’s run by three sisters (another staple along with the orphaned heroine, strict aunt who leaves the country and family secrets to be unearthed) who knew Roslin’s aunts and her dead parents in their childhood years. Their tit-bits about those days and Roslin’s nice room-mate, fellow new girl Kate, make Roslin think the school is less awful than she thought it would be. But her dancing is confined to practicing in the dorm, and salt is rubbed into the wound by the fact that Kate, like ‘school ballerina’ Deeda, goes to town for lessons with Miss Webster, who taught prima ballerina Elizabeth Paul. Roslin’s timetable is filled with extra music lessons, for her father was musical. She likes music, but she loves ballet.
Throw in Deeda’s constant odd (spiteful) behaviour towards Roslin and the fact that her aunt Sarah was so repressive – Roslin knows very little about her dead parents, so the glimpses of their childhoods are precious to her - and these are all very familiar girlsown-y elements. There’s no talk of lessons beyond the music ones, there’s a bit of hockey, a few visits to the san, known as sick bay, and the story, like the term, comes to an end with a school show. Rereading it, I found I did remember bits of that show and could work out the secrets and mysteries that puzzled Roslin so – and feel very annoyed at the adults who’d kept them from her and allowed her to get into such a spin. Furthermore, one could point out that lecturing Roslin on her dishonesty Because of How Much She Loves Ballet, while keeping secrets from her at her aunt’s behest is a bit hypocritical, although the headmistress isn't held to account for that in the story.
It was a zip through – aimed at readers of Roslin’s age or younger. As I say, it contained lots of elements I have a long-standing fondness for, but for all that Roslin had bouts of strong emotional turmoil, it’s something of a glancing book, using an extreme, but oft-used in girlsown, type of plot to underline its message.
