Good dancing - never mind great dancing - calls for an investment of imagination in every point of the foot, every raise of the arm. Why otherwise do the constant drill of turning out the leg, stretching the instep, taking fifth position, if the performer does not find something to stimulate them to make it personal, to dream it, to claim it for their own nuance? Does the violinist play Schubert thinking that it is enough just to get the notes right?

Critics did not cover themselves with glory after the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty in St Petersburg on a snowy January night in 1890: “We cannot help regretting the means chosen by the theatre directorate in lowering the standard of artistry of our ballet,” wrote one. Another: “Such spectacles attract neither a constant public nor a circle of educated adherents.”