Games worth playing

The Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House

It is a well-known fact that ballet lives, thrives and survives in a world of its own. By the time the ‘new’ ideas developed in other artistic contexts have seeped through its thick artistic, technical, cultural and social barriers, the other arts have already moved on. Luckily, such a time warp is visible only to those who are keeping an eye on what goes on in the performing world, and not to those die-hard balletomanes who prefer to ignore whatever happens outside the boundaries of their point-shoed dream-world. It is not surprising, therefore, that when ideas from other artistic fields are successfully transplanted into ballet, most ballet-goers go wild with enthusiasm, regardless of the fact that the developments they believe to be new might in fact be almost 50 years old.