Iain Mackay, the new boss of the Royal Ballet School, says that audiences “want dancers they can relate to”. He doesn’t adduce any evidence for this, and I’m not sure it’s true. I rather think audiences want dancers whose elegance and athleticism enable them to create a breathtaking spectacle and a thrilling physical aesthetic way beyond the capabilities of almost everyone on the planet. Moreover, I think audiences understand that this elegance and athleticism is only achieved by rigorous training, conditioning and diet, in order to maintain a lean physique and build phenomenal stamina. As an absolute entry level precondition for excellence in ballet, a dancer cannot be overweight.
Even so, in his enthusiasm for relatability, Mackay wants to encourage more “plus-sized” ballerinas on stage. This surely stretches the notion of inclusivity to breaking point. You can be a top ballerina and be strong and muscular. You can be a top ballerina and be tough and sinewy. Indeed, the top ones have all of those qualities, for all their ethereal grace. But you can’t be a top ballerina and carry excess fat. It doesn’t stack up. Dawn French nailed this in her sketch with Darcey Bussell in the Vicar of Dibley.
You can be heavy — you can even be obese — and still be a surprisingly great mover on the dancefloor on a Friday night. We all know such unlikely rug-cutters, and we rightly celebrate them. But you can’t be sporting a spare tyre and shine on stage in Covent Garden. I’m not arguing for fat-shaming, or attempting to excuse some of the bullying that has been exposed at the Royal Ballet School, I’m pointing out, at the risk of stating the obvious, what excellence in this field requires. Strap on a weighted exercise vest and try going en pointe. It just ain’t happening.
• Royal Ballet School chief: plus-sized dancers are the future
Mackay, the Glasgow-born, former Birmingham Royal Ballet principal, muddies the waters by playing the Billy Elliot card. Yet any sensible person has long accepted that boys from unlikely places or backgrounds can make it in ballet. From my own city of Hull, Xander Parish and Liam Mower have both excelled. But they’re both in fantastic shape. Indeed, after 35 years interviewing sports stars, the guy I’ve met with the absolute No 1 best bod wasn’t Ryan Giggs, Andy Murray or Jonny Wilkinson, it was Jonathan Cope, formerly of the Royal Ballet, who didn’t have a spare ounce on him.
Of course, we all love stars and celebrities to be relatable. Football fans loved Gazza for his outrageous talent and wacky personality, but also because he was a bit chubby, like he’d just fallen out of the pub. You could, back then anyway, be lugging a bit of timber and still be a world-class player, although Gazza would have been even better if he’d been in decent nick. So would those other chunky maestros of that era, Paul Merson and Jan Molby. Not forgetting Hull City’s own human tank, the mighty Dean Windass.
Nowadays, elite players can’t carry any spare poundage. But elite ballet dancers never could. Not only would the extra weight make their job impossible, it would undermine the essence of their art form. I don’t agree with the celebration of obesity inherent in the trend for “plus-size” models, but I don’t think bigger women on catwalks obviates the whole business of modelling. You could argue it’s useful for buyers to see how clothes look on women who aren’t emaciated.
But an overweight ballet dancer is a contradiction in terms, like a barrister who says, “I hadn’t thought of that mate, you make a good point,” to his opponent in court. Or a pacifist soldier. Or like me being cast as the lead in Tristan and Isolde at the Sydney Opera House, on the basis that, because I can’t sing to save my life, the audience will find me relatable.
Hull is the new Bordeaux
By 2100, says a report into the future of viticulture, Bordeaux will be too hot and dry to grow cabernet sauvignon grapes. Given the predicted degree rise in temperature by the end of the century, the ideal climate to produce claret will instead be … Hull. Naturally this notion was widely mocked in yesterday’s papers. If you follow the national media closely, you can read or hear a casually disparaging snobbish reference to Hull, usually by an unfunny so-called comedian on Radio 4, about once a week. Nearby Grimsby also gets a regular kicking, as does Scunthorpe, but not at the moment, presumably out of deference to the threatened 3,000 steel jobs.
• Hull to become new Bordeaux as climate change redraws wine map
Yet if temperatures do heat up as projected, there’s nothing preposterous about Château Lafite Rothschild uprooting its vines to the East Yorkshire Wolds. England’s most northerly commercial vineyard is already up and running near Malton, just north of the Wolds. The Bordeaux winemakers will have to head for the hills because, given rising sea levels, lower lying areas of East Yorkshire, including the entire city of Hull, will be underwater.
So, Hull as the new Bordeaux doesn’t quite work (although a fair chunk of Bordeaux will be submerged too, so the cities will have that in common), but Beverley, which just escapes the flooding, as the new Bordeaux? Yeah, why not. Times change, some places shrink, some grow at an astonishing rate. In 1900 the population of Los Angeles was 100,000. A century later the LA Metro area was home to 12 million people. In the Middle Ages Beverley (population today 30,000) was the tenth largest settlement in England. Back then its size and wealth was based on wool. Next time around it could easily be toasting its comeback with a cheeky little red.
