Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

The cruel irony is that a visit to any British ballet company today is simply a joy. Never in a lifetime associated with dance have I seen such universal excellence. The best dancers in the world nightly thrill and enthral thousands of delighted paying customers across the land. But to our shame very few indeed are British. In the Royal Ballet companies Robert Parker is the sole home trained principal dancer in Birmingham, while only locally trained Lauren Cuthbertson, Rupert Pennefather, Laura Morera and Edward Watson feature in the 20-strong principals list at the Royal Opera House, and while the ratio of indigenous and international artists hovers around half and half in Northern Ballet Theatre and Scottish Ballet, the foreign contingent rises to two thirds of English National Ballet’s muster of 67. At Covent Garden the likes of Spanish born Tamara Rojo, Argentinean Marianela Nunez, American/Italian Federico Bonelli and Dane Johan Kobborg bathe in the limelight once claimed by Anthony Dowell, Antoinette Sibley, Lesley Collier and David Wall, true home-bred successors to the legendary Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes.

But the real disgrace is the betrayal of the huge pool of natural talent to be seen in today’s ballet schools, a shameful situation about which so much of the classical dance industry is in denial. Today’s litigious society strikes at the very core of the classical ballet tradition, the intimate handing down of the art form from teacher to pupil. Since the beginning, in ballet studios across the world this relationship has been intensely personal and literally hands on. This whole delicate but vital ethos was shattered by the Children Act 2004, as it moved child protection into education. At a stroke distrust between teacher and pupil was institutionalised. Psychological and emotional harm was identified as an offence as was verbal abuse; emotional bonds were outlawed in what was traditionally an inspirational relationship and now every teacher in all areas of education keeps a check list on their pupils, instantly poisoning whatever link is left. Negative feedback is abusive, litigation always looms. But most damaging of all is the ban on “unnecessary” touching. The basis of this ill-thought-out rule is the unnatural obsession sections of our society have with paedophilia. Whitehall apparatchiks issued the knee-jerk ban on touching, heedless that they were adding childhood to the growing list of victim groups. Some pupils may make it thanks to natural talent but what about the less gifted student? Today they are repeatedly told how proud they should be of themselves, but when they are rejected as second rate, how worthless must they feel?

Opportunists have latched onto this sloppy thinking and have revealed its shallowness by exploiting it to their own advantage. The classical ballet technique is among the most sophisticated and demanding physical regimes ever devised by man. The first rule of ballet is a straight back, but how do you convey the mechanics, let alone the concept, by correcting with words alone the S shaped curvature we are all born with? You have to touch. A couple of years ago BBC Breakfast filmed me demonstrating the simple logic of this proposition with an adult female ballet student. The then champion of child protection, broadcaster Esther Rantzen, was live on air defending the PC diktat with Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas. As my recording with the student was shown Rantzen turned to Fox and said, “I wouldn’t let that man near any child of mine.” Turning her coat with practised ease Rantzen recently appeared in a Tonight programme condemning the lengths to which legislation, lobbied for vehemently by herself, now distorts society. “We erected barriers,” she said, including touching, “to protect ourselves” but actually damaged the children. An apology for helping to bring about such mischief and misery in the first place would have been welcome.

But the PC cancer has tentacles reaching way beyond the roots of British classical ballet. Marathon runner Paula Radcliffe has blamed “a lost generation” of Track and Field British athletes on the dumbing down of training methods. Dalton Grant, 1998 World Championships High Jump silver medallist and world record holder, agrees, saying our poor Track and Field showing at the Beijing Olympics is down to bad basic coaching, plus lack of facilities. “Political correctness has drained competitiveness from our youngsters. The new money is going only to the top.” Grant runs a kid’s coaching scheme in his home borough of Hackney.

For former England manager, Graham Taylor, the current lack of grass root development in British football is even more alarming than in ballet. “Our lads would never train all day and play 8 games a week like professional dancers do. It’s inconceivable. Our fans are in denial about their local teams being mostly international players,” he adds “but no-one seems to have the guts to do anything about it. We gave the game of football to the world,” says a genuinely worried Taylor, “but what are we doing for the future? What is happening to our national pride?” What indeed.

In March this year, following a piece I wrote criticising the insular nature of Arts Council England, Janet Archer, recently appointed ACE’s National Dance Director, said to me “I want to learn.” We met at her behest and, acknowledging her exclusive background in modern dance and worried about the apparent lack of British talent, she asked me to join her in a national investigation of classical ballet training. Seven months have passed in silence. It appears that Archer is following ACE’s own tradition, that of crossing the moat and pulling up the drawbridge. A further Email from me to Archer inviting her to commence her suggested ballet-training investigation has remained unanswered at the time of going to press.

Far from demonising teaching methods evolved over centuries, governments should learn from the life-affirming nature of ballet training. I was unfortunate enough to experience violent beatings from a disturbed parent from the age of 9. When I took my first ballet class aged 11, I was a bag of nerves. As the teacher first approached me to take my arm, or indeed correct my posture, I involuntarily cringed and ducked. The wise woman made no comment but quietly carried on as normal. In time I learned that a raised hand was not automatically a bad thing, and that human beings could, in fact, be trusted. That something was seriously amiss was never discussed, I just knew she was on my side. My threatened equilibrium was salvaged and my future laid out for me by a silent relationship built on trust, physical contact and the freedom to share a passion. Today that patient, level-headed woman would be ruthlessly pilloried for her exemplary demonstration of simple, old-fashioned common sense. Something must be very wrong somewhere.