How I Manifested my Dream...of Drag Ballet

What's on the touring talk circuit with me just now?  There are readings of MR James ghost stories, a biopic of Mata Hari to a surgeon giving a lecture on STDs. With slides. In the coffee break at his talks, nobody much fancies the garibaldis. 

Let alone the Jammie Dodgers.

Also a talk positing that, from His behaviour in the Old Testament, God is gay, bi-polar and a hoarder of bric-a-brac. There are one-man Beowulf's, Tom Jones's and Under Milk Woods. Monologues on Lully's conducting accident, Beethoven's chamber pot spillage and I was Benjamin Britten's First Mr Squirrel. 

The imagined spoken record of a Stonehenge mason, of Michelangelo winch-hanging under the Sistine Chapel ceiling and of Tracey Emin unmaking her bed.

Audiences are being encouraged to play Twenty Questions, Clumps and Analogies to guess the identities of Bathsheba, Moll Flanders and Miss Marple. Mark Anthony, Van Gogh and Liberace. The Mad Hatter, Shivah and Hitler.

And how did I come up with my little touring Eisteddfod, as I call it? 

There are, give or take, two ways I might have.  

Evolving or planned.  

Let me clarify with my Parable of the Ugly Cheese.

On a recent podcast, a Maître Fromager said of an English cheese, 'Today, it does not have a story, but given time in the future it will.  Yes, its look is definitely not pleasing to the eye.  But the taste! The English must not be afraid to make this type of modern, ugly cheese.  It really is one of the best cheeses here this year.'

The ‘here’ referred to being a cheese festival in the Dordogne.  Next to be interviewed were two festival exhibitors; the first being he who had produced the plug-ugly bugger of a cheese.

'I come from a line of bankers and accountants,' he said in a gentle Lancashire accent. 'I went into accountancy myself. But making cheese was all I ever dreamed of.' 

When one day there came on the market the only dairy he would ever be able to afford, he talked his wife into selling up in Bolton and moving down to Somerset. 

‘And for a while, I have to say, things didn't turn out well. I had a recipe that I followed, but it failed to make a cheese we could sell, let alone that was going to excite anyone. Everything we'd put into the business, and all!  I could see it going down the pan.  Then one very late night in the middle of this getting worse and worse time I was so tired, I made a mistake with the amounts in the mix; and against all the odds, the result was outstanding. I remember the look on my wife's face when she tried it; and friends were all telling me how they loved it. Then it proved really popular at market.  So that decided me to give it a try over here, where they really know.'  

Next up, a woman from (she insisted) the more upcoming part of Pimlico.

'My portfolio already included a number of UK catering outlets anyway.  And my business partner and I had a look around Neale's Yard to see what gaps there were potentially in the cheese marketplace - and we decided that there was a need for a tangy Brie-like soft cheese, with a strong cabbage aftertaste.  We went into production and here we are in the Dordogne with it. So pleased.'

Said the Maître Fromager, 'Frankly, there is just too much of this trite, prettified, imitation French cheese around today.'

So, there's the answer. Being school of the Ugly Cheeseist, I dreamt my way into drag ballet. 

I was eighteen and had just started work front of house at Covent Garden when I saw my first ballet. It was Swan Lake and I was hooked. In a BBC4 programme about P. G. Wodehouse Stephen Fry said that on first reading him he felt that here was something he had once known very well but had temporarily forgotten. It was like that for me and Swan Lake. My life was immediately swamped by a yearning to dance Odette, the Swan Queen.  

I learned the role from one of the house managers, ex-ballerina Stella Beddard; starting with the mimed narrative section, adding the entrance with the feather-ruffling and panic when Odette is surprised at the lakeside by the prince, finally mastering actual steps.  The pirouettes came slowly, the thirty-two fouettes for the time being eluding me. Meanwhile I was asked to leave Guildhall because I was meant to be there studying classical singing, but was spending my days preening imaginary chest feathers in the library, crying lakes of tears down the Student Union windows, or practising fouettes in the German Song Laboratory. 

I set out to get paid enough to live on for dancing the Swan Queen, Giselle and Nikya; and have achieved this goal. 

How did I do it?

I kept my mind on the goal at all times. I spent a certain amount of time each day in the mindset of a leading ballerina from the Mariinsky. When I did ballet barre each morning, I was in a studio being coached by Gabriella Komleva. When I sat sewing my ballet shoes I gave imaginary interviews about my splendid career. I plaintively recalled my terror as each new leading role as given to me. I imagined receiving letters of praise and of abuse. I outlined the pros and cons of working with different partners in the company. Perhaps most importantly, I saw myself exalted taking curtain calls in front of a roaringly adoring full house.  

And in time I achieved my goal of earning enough to live on dancing the Prima Ballerina roles as part of the vaudeville turn Madame Galina Ballet Star Galactica. 

Next goal, obviously, put out into the universe here, is to earn enough to buy myself great swathes of Chelsea real estate. 

Except how ungrateful that reads. 

Might delete later...

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