A welcome attendant

I think many more men would want to explore ballet in depth if they ever crossed the threshold of a dance studio. It's a real stretch - both physically and mentally. The mathematics of dance are compelling, as also is the implied invitation to think of one's body as something akin to a geometry set. We are so inexpressive with our bodies - and rely on words and a limited range of body cues to communicate with each other. With a trained dancing body, you really can get beyond that and become an architect, quarrying shape and meaning from the space around you.

Learning to dance makes you realise how many muscles and nerve endings you've never used and never known existed. It starts a completely new conversation between you and your body. At one level, we are our bodies, while at another level we hardly know them at all. It's as if there's an inner world there waiting to be colonised, tilled, cultivated. And smashing through these partitions to open up new rooms in the body, is a metaphor for a parallel process in the mind. I may not move exquisitely - at least not often - but, by God, the ballet class is a powerful method of self-analysis (and I don't mean looking in the mirror. A dancer once assured me that 'the mirror lies'. It does.)

It's strange being a man in a ballet class. Almost invariably you will be the only male there. And, if truth be told, I rather enjoy that and feel just a teensy bit wary if another male turns up. I suddenly start feeling competitive in a way that doesn't work for me.

Balanchine said that 'ballet was woman' with man a welcome attendant. Suzanne Farrell - and I shall have to comb through her autobiography Holding on to the air for the quote - thanked her various male partners for the self-effacing grace with which they supported her in her career. I should never have minded being a background figure drawing attention to a ballerina and to the nobility of woman. I feel a little like Twyla Tharp's Mr Worldly Wise. According to the act II libretto,

"Mr Worldly-Wise wakes in a land he does not know. it is the universe of Mistress Truth-on-Toe and her company. He observes their movements with astonishment. Here is a realm of order and proportion and community and grace, in which activity never conquers dignity, and work is not a matter of vanity. Mr Worldly-Wise has before him the example of undispersed souls, and he looks and learns. Suddenly Mistress Truth- on-Toe invites him to join their company. Hoping he may be worthy of a place among them, he accepts her invitation and finds his place. It is far from the centre."

I loved Mr Worldly Wise and Bruce Sansom is the only person I've ever met who agreed with me. There are a few ballets that are markers in my inner space and that is one of them.

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