The joy of stepping up to the barre once again
sir – Though my pas de chat is a pas d’elephant and my pliés a dangerous triumph of hope over reality, I am glad to have resumed ballet after decades of abstinence.
Although very much at the back of the class, I practise happily at home, puzzling the dog and the neighbours as I thump about the kitchen in the small hours, using the back of a chair as a barre and strengthening my core muscles to Youtube lessons.
It’s a happy renewal of my first flirtation with ballet in Paris, aged three, when my outfit was a royal blue chiffon tunic with matching knickers. Now in Lycra, I could never look as fetching, but I don’t care. Ballet’s much prettier than sweaty aerobics, and graceful too.
So well done to Angela Rippon, for extolling the virtues of dance for the over-55s (Features, September 1). Let’s have mandatory classes for all on the NHS. What a gorgeous nation we’d be as a result.
Jacqueline King
Castle Cary, Somerset