Everything is not “beautiful at the ballet,” to quote the famous number from “A Chorus Line” --- far from it, if you are to believe this exceptionally frank and often scathing book by dancer Georgina Pazcoguin, the first Asian-American female soloist in the history of New York City Ballet.

I have been a fan of the company since the 1950s --- ever since I was a tubby little girl in red Mary Janes sitting mesmerized in the theater. I’ve seen star dancers come and go; founders George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins die; their replacement, Peter Martins, resign under a cloud of scandal; and a new directorial team emerge not long before the pandemic. And I’m a fan of Pazcoguin herself, a powerful and highly individual dancer who stands out from the tall blond “bunheads” in the company.

Starting in 2017, there was an avalanche of gossip about an unhealthy culture for women at New York City Ballet, focusing on accusations of sexual harassment and abusive behavior on the part of artistic director Martins (who denied them all) and several prominent male dancers (only one returned to the company, and he is now about to retire). Pazcoguin’s account confirms all this and makes it personal, highlighting the many times she locked horns with Martins (clearly the villain of the piece) and suffered provocation from fellow dancers.

She is admirably fair about the requirements of ballet, admitting that partnering can involve “nebulous” physical boundaries between man and woman (“[T]here sometimes is choreography where a man’s face will end up within intimate proximity to crotch”). Yet she insists on the difference between that and casual offstage insults: for example, being tongue-kissed by an older dancer in the elevator or having her nipples tweaked during class by someone who “assumed 24/7 access to my body.”

"Georgina Pazcoguin is gutsy, resilient and a surprisingly vivid writer. I have the feeling that no matter where tomorrow takes her, she’ll stay on point."

SWAN DIVE, however, is not just a complaint about the “toxicity” of the ballet world. While Pazcoguin is clearly invested in portraying herself as a rebel, she also possesses enormous discipline, talent, drive --- and an evident love for her art. “When all the bullshit is swept aside,” she writes, being a ballerina is “complete and utter magic.”

You read that right: Pazcoguin is fond of four-letter words. What makes her dance memoir unusual isn’t so much the subject matter --- others have dealt with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, injuries, sex, drugs, angst --- but her brash, irreverent voice. Ballet has such a pristine, formal image that it’s a shock (and, actually, rather refreshing) to see it described in such impudent terms.

The early portions of SWAN DIVE, though, are pretty typical of a dance autobiography. A little girl or boy sees a performance and falls in love. The lucky and gifted are selected first for New York City Ballet’s elite academy, School of American Ballet, and then (maybe) for the company itself. Promotions from the corps de ballet follow --- or not.

It’s when Pazcoguin gets to her years as a company member that her account takes on issues specific to Martins’ regime. The first is her body. In her very first “fat talk” with the boss, at age 17, he zeroed in on her thighs, which, according to him, weren’t thin enough.  She resorted to an insane diet of 720 calories a day, developed bulimia and finally had liposuction. She has no regrets about the surgery, even though she feels that the aesthetics of ballet can and should encompass a degree of physical diversity.

The second issue is Pazcoguin’s biracial identity (her father is Filipino). “[G]enerally, if you were a member of the New York City ballet and you had black hair, you could enjoy a career of dancing in the B cast or as an evil villain,” she writes. Her own typecasting was as “an ambiguously ethnic, badass female.” Martins refused to consider her for more purely classical roles and thought of her only in “character” parts like Maria in “West Side Story Suite.” In “The Nutcracker,” the annual moneymaker that she dubs “Nutbuster,” she was inevitably given the sultry Coffee solo or, even worse, the Chinese Tea dance, in its original form “over-the-top offensive.” Ultimately, she became an activist, founding, with arts advocate and author Phil Chan, an initiative called Final Bow for Yellowface, urging dance companies to banish Asian stereotypes.

Many dancers don’t have a normal childhood or adolescence --- they sacrifice it all for ballet --- so as adults, according to Pazcoguin, they often go slightly wild in their time off. Thus SWAN DIVE devotes an awful lot of pages to unedifying subjects like the local dive bar; hangovers in company class; her affair with a married dancer; the rowdy coed-camp atmosphere in Saratoga, the company’s summer home, and on tour (do we really need a comprehensive list of her favorite international cities?). Other beefs: coy, annoying footnotes that could just as well be in the main text, and the italicized and numbered Swan Dives, or pratfalls, she inserts in the narrative (meant, I’m sure, to illustrate that ballerinas can be clumsy, too, but it’s a lame device).

Pazcoguin is at her best when talking about the texture of a dancer’s everyday existence: class, rehearsal, performance. In a couple of cases she does a play-by-play of certain sequences in ballets I know and love, and it’s thrilling. But that brings me to an important question: Who, exactly, is this book for? Not little girls, that’s for sure, as it’s too bawdy. It’s probably a great read for fully fledged ballet-loving adults who want a racy peek behind the red velvet curtain and snowy tutus. On the other hand, it’s quite in-groupy and specialized; unless you’re already familiar with the company, it may not pack much of a punch.

The appeal of SWAN DIVE may be broadened in the last part of the book, when Pazcoguin goes (temporarily) Broadway, appearing with American Dance Machine for the 21st Century (which performs excerpts from classic musicals) and in a starry revival of “Cats.” Could her “second act” lie in that world rather than at the ballet? Maybe. Now in her 30s, she doesn’t want to teach, the usual retirement path for dancers. “But,” she says, “I’ve got a biting wit and a real-estate license I’m not afraid to use.”

Good for her. Georgina Pazcoguin is gutsy, resilient and a surprisingly vivid writer. I have the feeling that no matter where tomorrow takes her, she’ll stay on point.