I am not a dancer. Neither disco nor drunken nor proper. But sometimes when I'm asked – rarely – to name a favourite piece of writing, I refer to a 5000-word or so feature that appeared in the New Yorker, which was about ballet shoes. I read the whole thing though I have never been to a ballet in my life.
Until last night, when I was sitting at my computer wildly procrastinating about transcribing that last 45 minutes of my 25 hours – and 30,000 words – of interviews from China and Russia, and I received a text from my friend M: “Do you want to go to the opera but we have to leave in ten minutes.” The opera was actually Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden, and for this momentous occasion – first ballet, first time inside the Royal Opera House – I turned up uncombed and unwashed. Which was quite a contrast to the sumptuousness on stage. Scenery, costumes, music. But god, ballet is daft. Of course, it is beautiful and the dancers are extremely elegant, and the athleticism is astonishing. But its narrative makes an opera storyline look complex. The tights are hilarious. The pointe just looks painful. And I can't imagine that those women have ever eaten in their lives.