The Paris Dancer
Anyone hankering for more glitz and glamour as BBC TV’s Strictly Come Dancing packs up the glitterball for another year may find solace in this stylish evocation of the dance scene in 1930s Paris. The Paris Dancer brings to life the golden era of music halls, where gossipy dancers in cramped and smoky dressing rooms slip on their stockings in preparation for the only show in town.
The story is inspired in part by the real-life story of Florence Waren, a South African dancer who worked for the resistance in occupied France during World War II. Rayner tells her story through Annie, a Jewish immigrant who arrives in Paris with ambitions to join the Ballet Russes, but who ends up at the Bal Tabarin, a music hall once as famous as the Moulin Rouge. It is 1938, and the drums of war are beating louder.
A second narrative, set in 2012, sees Mim travel to New York to sort out the affairs of her great-aunt Esther. Within her aunt’s papers, Mim finds a memoir of Esther’s time at the Bel Tabarin, in which she recalls her developing friendship with Annie. Mim is fleeing grief, and finds solace in dance, as she embarks on a love affair with a young man called Lucky during a dizzying New York summer.
Rayner’s prose captures the magic of dance, how two people glide and move across the floor: the steps, the holds, the costumes. But dance here is not just a technical coming together, it is a way that human beings, despite darkness and grief, find intimacy and love. It is a sweeping historical novel about the healing power of art, and the courage and vulnerability it takes to step beyond grief.
