It was 1971 when Geraldine Stephenson was retained as dance and movement consultant on the BBC’s TV series of Dennis Potter’s Casanova. As the director, I was setting up a studio reconstruction of a Vivaldi concert with an audience of some 50 extras magnificently clothed and coiffed for the period.
But something was wrong. I consulted Geraldine. “It’s the men,” she said. “They are all sitting with legs crossed or akimbo when the style of the time was to present the stockinged male calf as their most attractive asset.”
She demonstrated, the men complied and in a moment the scene was transported back to the elegance of 18th-century Venice.
