Why do our broacasters step away from ballet?
Sir: Zoe Anderson’s excellent article on the resurgence of an interest in ballet (8 June) is timely. But this rise in the public’s interest has coincided with an almost total lack of interest from the broadcast media. Anderson begins by saying Darcey Bussell’s final performance was to be televised, as indeed it was. But it took her departure for them to do anything. A pity they couldn’t have televised more while she was still dancing full-time. We get almost continuous dance competitions of the Strictly Ballroom variety but there has been almost no ballet. Newsnight Review ignores dance even when there is an important new choreography or a visit from the Kirov or the Bolshoi. Many years ago, when the Kirov made a visit here just at the beginning of glasnost, Natalia Makarova, then at the height of her powers, was allowed, at an extraordinary performance in London, to dance again with the company from which she had defected 20 years earlier. I was privileged to handle the press for the
