Still Point

What a delight to find that the showy cast of this titillating, gossipy roman a clef , set in the tiny world of New York's fictitious Perrot Ballet, includes no sulky prima ballerinas. Instead, the major drama spins around aging dance master Achille Perrot, a classic autocratic and exacting artist, and his impatient lead dancer, Alexander Ives, who covets the choreographer's crown. Meantime, Alexander's on- and offstage partner, Caroline Harbison, a dancer mainly beautiful in motion, unhappily watches her longtime lover drift toward a pretty, jejune ballerina recently elevated from the corps. Stage left is Perrot Ballet patron Eveline de Charny, a rapacious dilettante whose debauched father shares her interest in a talented, thoroughly self-destructive male dancer. Arts journalist Weisgall aptly captures the hunger of the dancers and the hangers-on, and laces her stagy, yet smoothly told, commercial debut with wry humor. As a front-row seat on the rivalries and sheer hard work that lie beneath the beauty of Swan Lake , it's pure satisfaction. (May)