So parking politics right over in the corner, let's concentrate on the art: I've just come out of the State Ballet of Georgia's Giselle, with Nina Ananiashvili in the title role, and it was completely transporting.
This business of Ananiashvili's being 45 is pretty incredible. How she appears so miraculously to be 18, in the part, is astonishing. It's a wonderful interpretation - her Giselle of the first act is skittish, elegant, occasionally cheeky. There was absolutely no sense that she had been dancing this role for over 20 years. It seemed entirely fresh. Second, the transformation in the mad scene is wonderful: a complete picture of mental disintegration. When that sword (no clues needed about the imagery there) plunged into her, I almost leapt out of my seat.
Then, in act two, transformed into a spirit, she's all air. It's the arms that amaze me, not so much made of flesh and bone as of ether.
Fascinating to see the difference between this Giselle and my historic favourite dancer in the part, the Royal Ballet's Alina Cojocaru - who dances the character as a creature little more than a child, almost as ethereal alive as dead.
Finally, the company was terrific. How this lot managed to pull it together as Russian tanks rolled in to their country, is beyond me.
