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It has been quite a month for questioning the validity of ballet. On Saturday 8th September the Guardian published a piece by Mark Lawson called "What's the point of ballet?" - a confessional in which the ubiquitous broadcaster on cultural matters recounted his long held prejudices and recent partial conversion, throwing down the gauntlet to readers to contribute their own answers to this question.

Up in Scotland the recently appointed board of Scottish Ballet under the chairmanship of Duncan McGhie obviously couldn't see the point of ballet, or at any rate ballet as it has been known and loved north of the border. The board and chief executive Chris Barron are weathering a storm of criticism for taking a unilateral decision to recast the company as a smaller modern ensemble. Ironically, among the infuriated coalition of dancers, public, ballet teachers, students, and dance academics who have pressed for a parliamentary enquiry into the high handed actions of the board supported by Scottish Arts Council, are two of the founding figures of contemporary dance in the UK, the Roberts Cohan and North, who in spite of their impeccably modern credentials plainly do see the point of ballet.

I sat in a West London primary school watching a lecture demonstration given by education staff and dancers of the Royal Ballet to excited Year 3 pupils. I wondered what assumptions these children would draw about ballet from the sleek display of barre work, the selection of sequinned tutus draped on the gym wall bars, the varicoloured pointe shoes handed round, the gently tuneful piano accompaniment, the chicken dance and sweetly flirtatious ribbon pas de deux from Ashton's La Fille mal gardée. That ballet dancers are like athletes - with straight backs, arched feet, extreme flexibility and strength. That ballerinas wear tutus with spangles and dance on their toes. That ballet requires learning a lot and remembering a lot. That ballet dancers often imitate animals and make geometric shapes with their bodies.

Mark Lawson until recently had assumed that ballet was what girls do while their brothers are at football practice. That ballet could not be appreciated without technical knowledge. That all ballets had stories, even if he could not

...given rise to another assumption - that ballet is primarily about sex

understand them. That all ballet enthusiasts were champagne quaffing snobs. Recent revelatory visits to the Royal Opera House have given rise to another assumption - that ballet is primarily about sex.

Both of these sets of assumptions represent reasonable deductions based on observation and experience; yet they are partial and incomplete, possibly contradictory, like the opinions of the blind men trying to describe an elephant. Ballet presents itself in many manifestations; and after the Fille extracts the RB demonstration dancers donned street gear to perform a funk lite number set to a Charlie Parker mix choreographed by Tom Sapsford, to prove this point. Historically one of its characteristics as a form has been its ability to absorb ideas, material and influences into the classical mainstream to transform and renew itself. In the current no-man's land of experiment and cross-fertilisation it becomes ever harder to draw a line where ballet ends and other recognisable types of dance or athletic activity begin.

Many assumptions made about ballet are inevitably superficial, because of the speed with which they have to be made given the ephemeral nature of all dance, or the partial nature of the evidence on display at any particular occasion.

It is hard to get beyond the superficial when the physical surface of the dance can be dazzling and seductive

It is hard to get beyond the superficial when the physical surface of the dance can be dazzling and seductive, clad in the spangles of virtuosity, and when normal rules of physical behaviour are bewilderingly replaced by rigidly stylised convention or seeming license of gesture, display and contact. In our fast-moving image-conscious culture it is perhaps inevitable that it is dangerously tempting for ballet dancers and companies to follow the line of least resistance, giving the public a superficially appetising junk food combo of thrills and saccharine, either old fashioned or new fangled, rather than nourishment of more substance.

I have come to understand ballet as a compendium of European folk and courtly dance steps which has evolved and been refined into a theatre dance form imbued with classical Greek ideas and ideals; movement and shape, laws of geometry and physics, principles of verticality, symmetry, proportion, harmony and truth, the exaltation of the supreme beauty of humanity. In the classical dance inner truth is reflected and revealed in physical form. Ballet is an expressive art of rich diversity, and not a training regime. What the spectator needs to apprehend and what the artist should never forget is that ballet is a way of dancing that involves the mind and soul as well as the body. If the doubters are not convinced perhaps it is that we the artists have not looked hard enough within our selves and our art to bring out what the point of ballet is.

On Wednesday 12th September I joined colleagues in ballet class. The dancer who taught the class was American and beforehand was distraught at what had happened the previous day. As the class took its measured course it struck me that in the wake of such an event ballet as a reminder of the potential of humanity for aspiration, balance, clarity of thought, openness and generosity is very much to the point.