Later in the week when I crept, late, in to company class as an observer, I expected to be ignored or at best shoved towards a seat with a restricted view at the back. Instead, there was a row of chairs at the front in prime position and Kent Stowell beamed a smile at me. I think I even heard him mutter, "Welcome." Now THAT doesn’t happen very often. Permeating the inner sanctum of the ballet dancer's world – company class – is rarely permitted and when it is, you are rarely watching a real “warts and all” class, but more like a sanitised, staged version. It’s good to see dancers getting things wrong and trying again. This demonstrates just how difficult ballet is, and by understanding the workings behind the finished machine, you appreciate more even the simplest, and seemingly insignificant, of steps. At the end of class, I stayed behind to wait for my interviewee and was treated to the boys practising amongst themselves Ali’s jumps for Le Corsiare pas de trois which was programmed as part of the mixed bill. The boys were helping and tutoring each other and then showing off a little. The camaraderie again came as a surprise to me. The extra practising seemed to be necessary because the cast for the mixed bill pieces was to be different on each of the three nights. That seems like an awful lot of work for the dancers, directors and ballet masters. Yet it is a democratic approach and guarantees that all dancers are properly exposed to the London audience.

And exposed is what they must have felt when the reviews came through for their opening night. As if stuck up on the top of a mountain at night with nothing but a pair of tights and some old leg-warmers. Silver Lining had been chosen, I was told, to appeal to a broad London audience – not just those that like the ballet, but also the musicals crowd. A series of high-stepping and high-kicking numbers, choreographed by Stowell and set to Jerome Kern songs, might not show the company off to its full artistic potential and might even be a bit of a bore for the dancers if repeated too often, but it was bound to get those London feet tapping. Up to a point it did. Opening night saw an extremely warm and gracious response from the audience and in one corner there were some standing ovations (and I checked – they were not company plants). However, the newspaper critics were not impressed and said so. They had clearly expected a great deal more from PNB, rated as it is in the top five ballet companies in the United States. The piece is pleasant and didn’t deserve the slamming it received. I cringed when I read some of the acid drops on certain of the printed pages. The first night of the mixed bill received another positive response from the audience and we waited with bated breath for the critics’ responses. My interviewee, Bulgarian principal, Stanko Milov, gave a good account of himself as Ali. At six-foot-five, he crosses the small Sadler’s Wells stage with merely two strides and Margo’s prophetic words about him probably needing to go round this stage a couple of times to get all the jumps in, rang true. He looked good doing it in any event. I saw him leaving the theatre with his wife as the theatre lights were being switched off for the night. As the long slim silhouettes disappeared into the night , I felt rather sad that these very good dancers have not had quite the break they deserved in London. I hope that doesn’t mean that they won’t be back.

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