Poncy Ballet Costume Shock!

Here's a lovely way to spend a December evening: meet some friends in Covent Garden, have a glass of port, go see a bona fide Star in a very pretty ballet.

Here's a good way to screw it up: develop a cold. Spend most of the ballet fiddling for tissues, desperately trying to choke down a cough, and avoiding the cross glances of your neighbours.

But never mind that. I was okay most of the time. (But did you know that coughs are catching? Just like yawns. There was a terrible breakout in the third act.) Darcy Bussell was amazing; fluid, almost boneless at times, yet precise. Nice to know there really is a reason for all the fuss. Though I was, again, annoyed at the shoddy timing of the corps de ballet. I'm really not an expert, but I think it's a basic rule that synchronised movements should, in fact, be synchronised. In unison, that is. And on the beat would be nice. They do it right in Cape Town, you know. And the costumes! The nymphs in the first act were quite prettily decked out, but after that it all went rather wrong. The men got the worst of it; utterly daft they looked. Probably this sounds a bit self-evident - aren't men in ballets supposed to look daft? - but trust me, this was excessive. I mean, almost all of them were in skirts. Little flappy things around their hips, like Roman tunics but girlier. The peasants - peasants, mark you - were in skirts and little satin capes. Really. One character, who I later discovered from the programme was 'Orion, Evil Hunter', I had mentally named 'Mad Drag Queen Sorceror' - because he was wearing purple MC Hammer pants, with more purple satin on his head, and some kind of spangly yoke thing. And a lot of make-up. What would you think? But apparently he's a hunter. I can't imagine what he'd be hunting in that get-up.

Still, Ms Bussell was gorgeous, and that made it all worthwhile.