Nordring

August Bournonville's Konservatoriet

There's a word in Irish, dúchas, which, roughly translated, means 'heritage'. That doesn't completely capture the word's nuances. It also means 'bred in the bone', 'in the bloodline', something which is inescapably yours, that is completely impressed on you and in engagement with which you are completely secure. Watching the principals and soloists of Royal Danish Ballet in a Bournonville programme at Sadler's Wells last night, I kept thinking of dúchas. The continuity of the style has been unbroken since Bournonville's day, treasured in Denmark's ballet culture and passed on in the extended family of its national ballet (not to mention the dancing families which are so characteristic of Danish ballet).

It was a very hot summer night, and I was tired after a day putting the Tablet arts pages together. But as soon as the curtain rose on Konservatoriet, my mind was popping with questions, as I've not seen very much of Bournonville. The steps were very familiar, but it was the accents that were so unusual: accent up, not down, on the count - and vertical rather than lateral. Endless changements, enviably fluent sissones, a lightness of body and spirit. A stage world in which man is an equal partner(a rarity in the nineteenth century).....and a real sense of the times for which the work was made. The style speaks in a single register, and I suspect I'd get bored with endless Bournonville. But there haven't been many evenings of delight at the theatre this year - and this was one.

Brian Loftus, who taught one of the classes to which I went today. recalls something of the old dancing master and he might well have been very at home in Bournonville's world. Brian is standing in for Marguerite - and I really must write a sketch of a Brian class - he's a completely delightful one-off, arch and terrificly incisive. This evening I went to Sandra Doling's class at the RAD. It was my first time to her class (to which I've moved from another RAD class because it's at a better time) and I was a little - actually quite a lot - in over my head. But it was really interesting watching the mechanics of the fouette turn. Technically beyond me, but I have no objection to trying 'girly steps' in a ballet class - it's all highly interesting material, and I will attempt things, 'girly' or not, if they're remotely in my grasp (but these fouettes weren't). The more I explore ballet, the more I rue the self-consciousness that crippled me when I was younger.

It's been really hot - and this has been my first notionally free day for almost a fortnight. I had intended to come to stop, but Pippa, my wonderful physio, who holds me together in lots of ways, pretty well ordered me to go to class. She thinks my body might begin to fall apart, if I were to stop.

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