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BIG's (Ballet Independents' Group) 'Ballet as Cultural Cancer' discussion forum at the RFH last night proved a lively and stimulating experience.

BIG's co-ordinators, Susie Crow and Jennifer Jackson, had done well in organising a distinguished panel of speakers - Andrée Grau, a senior ballet educationalist at the University of Surrey Roehampton, Alastair Macaulay, well-know journalist and dance critic, and Roger Tully, a dancer and teacher for over 50 years. There were a few distinguished dance professionals in the audience as well, many of whom seemed to know each other to judge by the amount of air-kissing going on.

The three panelists were requested to make brief opening statements. Alastair Macaulay was the first to speak. Interestingly, his take on Greer's notorious statement was that it was a 'gender' issue (though how he worked this out from her brief and thoughtless words he never made clear, even at my later pressing). He had seen Greer on last Sunday's 'Art Zone' where she had narrowed down her criticism to the final shot in 'Billy Elliott' showing a male dancer in a movement from 'Swan Lake', She had found it, amongst other things, to be 'camp'; Macaulay said he didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with camp in small doses.

Andrée Grau's input was more wide-ranging. She discussed the perceived problems in ballet; 'violence' (bullying) in teaching, eating disorders, cliched images in posters and publicity material; all these negative images of ballet needed to be changed.

Roger Tully made a fascinating point in his contribution: Nijinsky, Karsavina, Pavlova etc had all come from the same school, yet in their careers they had emerged as utterly individual artists. Today, however, we see RB, RAD and NYCB-trained dancers emerging 'like peas in a pod' with nothing whatsoever to differentiate them.

The floor was then thrown open for discussion and I opened the batting by saying that Greer's original statement was doubly negative; the reference to cancer was offensive to cancer sufferers too. Picking up on this, someone suggested that the cancer reference could easily equate to the way ballet 'gobbled up' a lot of scarce arts funding.

The discussion then widened out fascinatingly; who were the choreographers to follow Petipa, Balanchine, Ashton and Macmillan? Of course, there was no answer to that worrying problem. Branching out into dancers, Macaulay said that Sylvie Guillem was no answer to anything. As good as she was, she could only do steps, and could not 'breathe' into the space around her as, for instance, Fonteyn could. Hard to explain, but as much as I adore Sylvie, I knew exactly what he meant, despite only ever having seen brief glimpses of Fonteyn on film.

The foregoing by no means covers everything that was said, but it gives a flavour of the event. I found it slightly frustrating that the meeting never got to grips with the issue it headlined, and as much as I pressed I could not get Susie Crow or Jennifer Jackson to explain how they were going to deal with Greer's silly, unthinking, utterance (if indeed they felt it needed 'dealing with'). A gentleman present suggested that if Ninette de Valois was a mere 40 years younger she could deal very briskly indeed with Ms Greer in any face-to-face confrontation on the subject!

The evening ended informally over drinks and I found myself chatting to Amanda Eyles (ex-ENB dancer and former RB notater) and Lynne Wate (ex SWRB) now working for Photoplay Productions, a film company. Both looked as if they could still do a decent Sugar Plum Fairy if you asked them nicely.

BIG is supported by London Arts. For further information, telephone or fax Jennifer Jackson on 020 8741 2842 or Susie Crow on 020 8767 2284 (susiecrow@easynet.co.uk).