50 shades of ballet? Melanie Hamrick on her steamy novel that makes ‘Black Swan’ seem tame

By JOCELYN NOVECK
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Melanie Hamrick recently had to wrest a copy of her steamy new novel out of the hands of the curious 6-year-old son she shares with Mick Jagger, replacing it with the more appropriate “The Cat in the Hat.” Wise move: Hamrick’s “First Position” (get the pun?) is what they call a romance novel but might easily have been called “Fifty Shades of Ballet.” Hamrick, who spent 16 years at American Ballet Theatre, writes about a young dancer, Sylvie, who joins a prestigious national ballet company. Hamrick says she wanted to give readers a good time, but also a view of ballet “behind the gilded curtain.”