Today’s ballerinas are too perfect
‘Ballet is woman,’ Balanchine once gnomically pronounced. A remark not to be taken too literally, but essentially true. Like every afflicted balletomane, I can map out my lifelong passion for the art in terms of my adoration from afar of a succession of ballerinas – any awe I feel for their male counterparts is something quite different. First for me came Margot Fonteyn, of course – though I saw her only through the autumn of her career, when her body was stiffening and she relied on some divine inner grace to make an effect. (Meredith Daneman’s magnificent biography illuminates this weirdly complex woman, with her steely self-control, enormous generosity and
