Speed and panache

A few years ago, the director of a London-based ballet company publicly challenged the way ballet is taught in Britain. More recently, additional havoc was caused by an article by an equally prominent journalist who lamented our schools’ apparent inability to produce first-rate stars. In each instance, British ballet teachers and directors of prestigious ballet schools professed themselves outraged, and replied with vitriolic, though often narrow-minded, letters to the editor and lengthy articles. The lesson to be learnt was clear: stay away from commenting on dance-training in this country if you do not want to open the proverbial can of worms and fall into the (again) proverbial snake-pit. Still, considerations about indigenous dance-training inevitably sprang to mind while watching two performances of the Bolshoi season in London, which concluded successfully last week.