William Forsythe

Not really PC to say this (and I wouldn't say it elsewhere), but the more I see - and hear - of William Forsythe, the more I wonder about choreographers and their intellectual hinterland. Dance training, and the extent to which it excludes everything else, means that intellectually curious dancers often have to be autodidacts, with little formation or discipline to help them catch up later on (unless schooling is really conscientious - and it tends to indulge boys overly, turning a blind eye to much else, if they can dance). And people wonder why ballet has a creativity problem.....

Forsythe prefers obscurantism to intellectual clarity. His choreography, even now, has flashes of insight - but the moments of interest at Sadler's Wells last night I could have absorbed over a few minutes on a CD-ROM. It didn't make an evening's theatre - and I'm getting disheartened at drives in the rush-hour across London for experiences that leave me indifferent.As it was, we bolted at the second interval. In Forsythe's 'ballet ballets' he deconstructed ballet in an exciting way, but he now lacks gridlines for whatever artistic purposes he has left.

On a cheerier note, Lucy in Marguerite's class has a job in Mary Poppins. "Second chimney-sweep from the right!", she told me.