Yesterday I had a really good day. First of all, I think I have cracked a really tricky essay I’m writing about the use of Freudian theory in historical methodology… I have been very bored doing it!

Then, I was feeling twitchy so I went down to Covent Garden for a ballet class at Pineapple. Pineapple is kind of like Steps in New York, I guess. It’s a place where you can do lots of different classes, but jazz is the main speciality. I don’t go there often, but as it’s holiday time at The Place and I had an urge to do a ballet class off I went.

I was not disappointed. I haven’t done a ballet class like it for quite a long time. The teacher took us through each exercise at lightning speed, giving us a lot of time to dance. It was very crowded - there might have been 40 people in the class, but it was a very well behaved class. We managed to get through every stage of the traditional run-through of a ballet class in an hour and a half - a full barre, and in centre tendus, adage, 2 pirouette exercises, 2 petit allegro exercises and a really fun grand allegro to finish. I’ve decided I don’t care that I’m not that good at turning - I LOVE to jump and quite often we never get around to it in my regular classes because there’s a lot of teaching going on. This is a good thing - I started going to the Place because the class sizes are limited to 25 and everyone gets attention from the teachers - but sometimes it’s nice to be given a set of exercises to do and just dance away for an hour and a half.

Get ready for a lot of cliches… After yesterday’s rather damning review of the Bolshoi, I have revised my opinion to a certain extent. I had a very very good time last night at Don Quixote. I’m still not convinced that the corps are very good, but this was a minor irritation. As Kitri we had Natalia Osipova, a corps dancer just 3 years out of school. She was incredible. As was Denis Matvienko as Basil. Together they stole the show. Sometimes it annoys me, all the bows and curtain calls, but these two could have had more. Their dancing was quite breathtaking, and in a way, this isn’t a cliche - several times the sold out opera house all went ‘aaah!’ simultaneously. Osipova turns like she was born to do it - she looked as though she was having a wonderful time - executes multiple pirouettes and looks as if it wasn’t for the inconvenience of the music changing, she could have just gone on turning forever. Matvienko was a great jumper and turner - towards the end he fell after a series of very complicated jetes en tournant face first onto some stairs. He came back moments later and did some fabulous fouette turns (are they fouettes, the turns that the boys do?) as if nothing had happened. They danced very well together, too, the lifts being particularly spectacular. They will be a pair to watch out for in the future, I should think. The production was wonderful too, very colourful. All in all it was a fabulous night.

(Above we have from left to right - Artem Shpilevsky as Espada, Irina Zibrova as Mercedes (I think), Alexei Loparevich as Don Quixote, Ospiova as Kitri, Matvienko as Basil, Nelly Kobakhidze from the 2nd variation, and Alexander Petukhov as Sancho Panza.)

Here’s a fabukous review of the performance from The Evening Standard.