Playfulness

I didn't fall asleep at Rambert. Actually it was a terrific evening with a fantastically playful piece by Mark Baldwin called Constant Speed, a danced exploration of Einstein's theory of relativity. Once you get past the idea that the dancers stand for quarks, molecules, atoms etc, and reach the heart of the work, it's a piece about playfulness - all heightened by the choice of music (Liszt).

When I was a young radio producer, I made a programme about Ivan Illich. I'm not sure I understood half of what he said, and I probably behaved like a starstruck groupie. In the interview he spoke about the importance of the 'practice of graceful playfulness'.

I never forgot 'graceful playfulness' and I've tried to live by that. And when I go to ballet class, it's very much in my head. I love the structured play of ballet, and I don't think I've known such absorption, as I experience in class, since the games we played as children.

I just wish I were a little younger. My muscle memory knows balancé-balancé-chassé-pas de bourrée- en dehors pirouette - turn - en dedans pirouette - posé turn -posé turn - chaîné-chaîné- off. But the problem is giving it shape and turning it into a little performance. I don't know if I'll ever do that. But I lose - and gain - myself in the attempt. Childish this, but I even love the names of the steps and the memories of the combinations, which I repeat to myself as lovingly as I did lines of poetry when I was young.

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