Movement means more than exertion: it brings purpose and freedom. It’s an animating force within everyone, young and old, sleek and stiff

The scene opens on a sparse, black-walled stage. There are no wings and the only lighting is a strip of orange light on the floor of the stage that hints at a volcanic source, a threat from below

The idea for the new ballet was sown in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague when Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon spent the morning turning the pages of an eighteenth century thesaurus that displayed the objects from the famed collection—the kunstkamer— of Albertus Seba

The whole world, it seemed, was seeking succour in the park. Every age and stage of humanity was there, every kind of dog and lots of runners. There was every shade of green in the late evening sunshine of late summer in Melbourne

The dancing body is a marvel, and when many dancing bodies collect together as a whole, they acquire a kind of grandeur

‘Ballet,’ George Balanchine famously said, ‘is woman.’ He was referring to the ballerina, that quintessence of loveliness. But the ballerina needs a ballet company⎯and, by extension, an artistic director⎯to realise her art, and, in this regard, ballet is all too often man