The long goodbye

There’s been a clutch of middle-aged danseuses taking leave of life in one way or another recently. We’ve seen the abject (Mariinsky star Diana Vishneva’s solo show at the Coliseum) and the magnetic (Alessandra Ferri mournfully channelling Virginia Woolf at the Royal Ballet). A fortnight ago, the Paris Opéra’s aristocratic Aurélie Dupont retired from the stage in one of her great roles, as did American Ballet Theatre’s stellar women Paloma Herrera and Xiomara Reyes in New York.

For top ballerinas and their fans it’s a harsh act of killing, a flower cut off in its fullest bloom. Darcey Bussell has said she sank into depression when she retired at 38, which lifted only when she returned to showbiz and telly. Sylvie Guillem took a more characteristic option at that age, pushing on from classical ballet into contemporary dance, a lodestar for new choreography. In fact, she’s had a generative effect on British dance over the past dozen years not unlike that in the US of Mikhail Baryshnikov, lucky us.