BALLETOMANIAC

Christmas for me has few essential ingredients and they are mostly DVDs. “A Christmas Carol”, “Pickwick Papers”, “Fledermaus”, “The Merry Widow”. On radio I listen to the Messiah and the carol service from King's College Chapel in Cambridge. The pinnacle of Christmas is reached for me when I watch, as I do every year, Miyako Oshida, the ultimate Sugar Plum Fairy, and her Prince, Jonathan Cope, dance the magical Grand Pas de Deux in the Royal Ballet's production of the “Nutcracker”, choreographed by Pepita.
I would forgo plum pudding, Christmas trees, Melton Mowbray pie, breakfasts with scrambled egg embroidered with smoked salmon and chaperoned by champagne, even the presents, rather than miss those few fleeting moments. They do not dance the roles, they inhabit them. There is nothing in literature, poetry, painting, even music, which moves me more.
It is an odd thing. Most of my friends think of ballet as Pouffs' Football which is very odd. A bevy of under-dressed beauties dance their hearts out accompanied by one male dancer. Yet it is the male they remember.
I have had nasty moments. I shared a birthday with the writer and TV presenter, the deeply missed Shelley Rohde. I would take her and her pride of children to a slap up lunch in the Cheshire countryside and in return she would take me to the ballet, alas on the same day. I fear I usually dropped off early in the performance,sleeping the sleep of repletion. On one dreadful occasion she took me to “Coppelia”. I awoke with a jerk in the scene where all the toys are dancing. Convinced I had got DTs, I leapt up with a scream and fled from the theatre. Nor am I happy that the sprites in “Giselle” are called “Wilis”.
Ballet, the exquisite art of “aristocratic etiquette”, this “science of behaviour toward others”, as a 17th-century ballet master put it, in which lovely young women perch upon their 10 little toe tips (actually, it is ­really just the two big toes that alternately support the entire body’s weight: think about it) and waft about where the air is thinner - but heaven is closer. As someone wrote recently, “Their pale tulle and satin pointes peek out from the crevices of war, of revolutions, of political machinations, and on the ­stages of the monarchies and empires of the kings and czars who gave birth to this improbable art.”
A new book “ANGELS: A History of Ballet”. By Jennifer Homans, the definitive history is high on my Christmas list.
“Ballets,” Théophile Gau­tier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.”
The tale of the tutu is the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy, who formulated shape and perfected the highest form of the human physique.The manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!
The first ballet, “Ballet Comique de la Reine”, which had its premiere in 1581 in the French Court, was an extravagant six-hour affair, performed among the guests in a large gallery at the Petit-Bourbon. The purpose of the ballet was “to raise man up a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God”. In1636 the Abbé Mersenne referred to “the author of the Universe” as “the great Ballet-master”.
Louis XIII designed costumes, wrote librettos and danced leading roles. Louis XIV made his debut in 1651 at 13 and studied daily for more than 20 years, his dancing master, Beauchamps, who first codified the five positions of the body, providing “the crucial leap from etiquette to art” and they remain to this day the base of classical ballet. The new art spread across Europe from its birth in France, with stopovers in Italy, Denmark, Germany and Austria, landing in Russia in the mid-19th century and then returning to Western Europe in the early years of the 20th century.
The ballerina Marie Sallé in the mid-18th century introduced the novel idea that women, including ones of humble origins, might dance, not just men and kings.
“The history of ballet is also a story of class; ballet is a language of vertical ascent, physicalized nobility. Ballerinas,” Homans writes, “acted like aristocrats even when in real life they most emphatically were not.” But mix they did, and more than one young dancer rose - or descended - to positions other than an arabesque in the famous corridors of the Paris Opera, “the nation’s harem”, as one police official termed it, where wealthy men trolled for pretty girls with limber limbs. “



A family friend, Arnold Haskell, invented the term “Balletomane”. I would rather have done that than invented powered flight. The best I have done is to invent a motto for the animal mad Daily Mirror when I worked there: “Every Day Has Its Dog” - but it nearly got me the sack.

A THING OF A CHIT
Six hundred MP's managed to grab three million pounds of expenses in as many months. One should not be surprised that on Question Time three Mps said the BBC should have kept back the disclosure that the FIPA is bent until we had won the World Cup battle. Unmoved by the fact that if it had it would have been guilty of aiding and abetting fraud for unlawful gain.
We had the same tale of missing millions of pounds in revenue as a result of losing the games. I tried without success to think of a city which held the Games and did not lose a fortune.


BIT BIT OF TAIL PIECE

Disney, no stranger to criticism that it perpetuates troubling gender dynamics, has decided that one of its most iconic characters needs a makeover. After decades as a beloved children's character, Minnie Mouse will get "leggy, modern and glamorous" thanks to a partnership with Forever 21.

Disney did not come right out and say anything was wrong with the "old" Minnie Mouse per se, but the makeover implies plenty. The "new" Minnie is stretched and has become a well-travelled fashionista who knows her way around the fashion capitals of London, Paris and Tokyo.

AND ALL THAT BULL_______

Is it something in the Westminster water? . Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester who is one of the arch critics of the new expenses system, has claimed more than £82 for toilet roll. He says it was a bulk buy. Bristol Labour MP Dawn Primarolo, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has claimed not only for toilet roll but for the holders as well.In an open letter, Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said that MPs and been “thoughtful and proper” in making their claims, and when they had been queried it had been due to “misunderstanding” of the new system.
And finally ...
It's not true that only the winners of the X Factor go on to fame and fortune
. Look at JLS, for instance. It's with this in mind that we turn to the first public appearance of one
of the show's two latest rejects, Wagner, who turned up in Dudley in the west midlands signing
autographs in a chip shop.o. THE SUN, P7
































Christmas for me has few essential ingredients and they are mostly DVDs. “A Christmas Carol”, “Pickwick Papers”, “Fledermaus”, “The Merry Widow”. On radio I listen to the Messiah and the carol service from King's College Chapel in Cambridge. The pinnacle of Christmas is reached for me when I watch, as I do every year, Miyako Oshida, the ultimate Sugar Plum Fairy, and her Prince, Jonathan Cope, dance the magical Grand Pas de Deux in the Royal Ballet's production of the “Nutcracker”, choreographed by Pepita.
I would forgo plum pudding, Christmas trees, Melton Mowbray pie, breakfasts with scrambled egg embroidered with smoked salmon and chaperoned by champagne, even the presents, rather than miss those few fleeting moments. They do not dance the roles, they inhabit them. There is nothing in literature, poetry, painting, even music, which moves me more.
It is an odd thing. Most of my friends think of ballet as Pouffs' Football which is very odd. A bevy of under-dressed beauties dance their hearts out accompanied by one male dancer. Yet it is the male they remember.
I have had nasty moments. I shared a birthday with the writer and TV presenter, the deeply missed Shelley Rohde. I would take her and her pride of children to a slap up lunch in the Cheshire countryside and in return she would take me to the ballet, alas on the same day. I fear I usually dropped off early in the performance,sleeping the sleep of repletion. On one dreadful occasion she took me to “Coppelia”. I awoke with a jerk in the scene where all the toys are dancing. Convinced I had got DTs, I leapt up with a scream and fled from the theatre. Nor am I happy that the sprites in “Giselle” are called “Wilis”.
Ballet, the exquisite art of “aristocratic etiquette”, this “science of behaviour toward others”, as a 17th-century ballet master put it, in which lovely young women perch upon their 10 little toe tips (actually, it is ­really just the two big toes that alternately support the entire body’s weight: think about it) and waft about where the air is thinner - but heaven is closer. As someone wrote recently, “Their pale tulle and satin pointes peek out from the crevices of war, of revolutions, of political machinations, and on the ­stages of the monarchies and empires of the kings and czars who gave birth to this improbable art.”
A new book “ANGELS: A History of Ballet”. By Jennifer Homans, the definitive history is high on my Christmas list.
“Ballets,” Théophile Gau­tier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.”
The tale of the tutu is the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy, who formulated shape and perfected the highest form of the human physique.The manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!
The first ballet, “Ballet Comique de la Reine”, which had its premiere in 1581 in the French Court, was an extravagant six-hour affair, performed among the guests in a large gallery at the Petit-Bourbon. The purpose of the ballet was “to raise man up a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God”. In1636 the Abbé Mersenne referred to “the author of the Universe” as “the great Ballet-master”.
Louis XIII designed costumes, wrote librettos and danced leading roles. Louis XIV made his debut in 1651 at 13 and studied daily for more than 20 years, his dancing master, Beauchamps, who first codified the five positions of the body, providing “the crucial leap from etiquette to art” and they remain to this day the base of classical ballet. The new art spread across Europe from its birth in France, with stopovers in Italy, Denmark, Germany and Austria, landing in Russia in the mid-19th century and then returning to Western Europe in the early years of the 20th century.
The ballerina Marie Sallé in the mid-18th century introduced the novel idea that women, including ones of humble origins, might dance, not just men and kings.
“The history of ballet is also a story of class; ballet is a language of vertical ascent, physicalized nobility. Ballerinas,” Homans writes, “acted like aristocrats even when in real life they most emphatically were not.” But mix they did, and more than one young dancer rose - or descended - to positions other than an arabesque in the famous corridors of the Paris Opera, “the nation’s harem”, as one police official termed it, where wealthy men trolled for pretty girls with limber limbs. “



A family friend, Arnold Haskell, invented the term “Balletomane”. I would rather have done that than invented powered flight. The best I have done is to invent a motto for the animal mad Daily Mirror when I worked there: “Every Day Has Its Dog” - but it nearly got me the sack.

A THING OF A CHIT
Six hundred MP's managed to grab three million pounds of expenses in as many months. One should not be surprised that on Question Time three Mps said the BBC should have kept back the disclosure that the FIPA is bent until we had won the World Cup battle, unmoved by the fact that if it had it would have been quilty of aiding and abetting fraud for unlawful gain.
We had the same tale of missing millions of pounds in revenue as a result. I teied without success to think of a city which held the Games and did not lose a fortune.


BIT BIT OF TAIL PIECE

Disney, no stranger to criticism that it perpetuates troubling gender dynamics, has decided that one of its most iconic characters needs a makeover. After decades as a beloved children's character, Minnie Mouse will get "leggy, modern and glamorous" thanks to a partnership with Forever 21.

Disney did not come right out and say anything was wrong with the "old" Minnie Mouse per se, but the makeover implies plenty. The "new" Minnie is stretched and has become a well-travelled fashionista who knows her way around the fashion capitals of London, Paris and Tokyo.
AND ALL THAT BULL_______
Is it something in the Westminster water? . Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester who is one of the arch critics of the new expenses system, has claimed more than £82 for toilet roll. He says it was a bulk buy. Bristol Labour MP Dawn Primarolo, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has claimed not only for toilet roll but for the holders as well.In an open letter, Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said that MPs and been “thoughtful and proper” in making their claims, and when they had been queried it had been due to “misunderstanding” of the new system.
And finally ...
It's not true that only the winners of the X Factor go on to fame and fortune
. Look at JLS, for instance. It's with this in mind that we turn to the first public appearance of one
of the show's two latest rejects, Wagner, who turned up in Dudley in the west midlands signing
autographs in a chip shop.o. THE SUN, P7