‘This may be the first ballet I’ve been to in years, but it’s not quite my first experience within the belly of the brutalist leviathan that is the Barbican Centre. It’s not even the first of this month. But it’s rare that the place is turned out quite so stupendously: the Theatre – the Centre’s finest of innumerable spaces – looks resplendent as ever, whilst its audience bears some semblance to a raked amphitheatre with Vivienne Westwood’s creative juices allowed to drizzle down from its vertiginous heights. It looks unspeakably, well, as Ana Matronic may say, marvellous.

However to return to the to my mind uncharted creative realm that is le ballet, it’s something that I’ve yet to learn to L.O.V.E or indeed loathe. Tonight may thereby be deemed something of a subjective acid test and, despite being dipped in at the remarkably avant-garde end, the litmus emerges a mad red. For this is unadulterated, and utterly great escapism, and the reasons for this are multifarious.’

Dots & Dashes review ballet. Michael Clark Company’s New Work 2012 to be precise…