Steps and the Steppe

Sukhbataar Square, Ulaanbaatar

Surprising-but-not-really-surprising is a piece on the BBC World Service's Business Matters programme, about a ballet class in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia.

Presenter Roger Hearing seems rather surprised that there is such a thing as ballet in Mongolia. However, having visited the country myself nearly 20 years ago, nothing would surprise me about modern Mongolia. (My first meal in what was supposed to be the middle of nowhere was ... pasta and fresh spinach sauce and cappuccino, in a cafe that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Manchester's Northern Quarter!)

My delicious dinner aside, should it really be unexpected to find ballet in a country that was for decades a satellite state of the USSR/Russia? As is pointed out more than once in the piece and subsequent chat, ballet - along with other classical art forms such as opera - is a legacy of that time.

In addition, the country has already produced at least one dancer known beyond Mongolia: Altan Dugaraa, who became a leading dancer with Boston Ballet (more here).

The piece informs us that ballet is one of the fastest-growing ways of spending their leisure time for Mongolians, but there are precious few other revelations, unless hearing a (presumed un-athletic) (male) presenter grunt through a couple of exercises at the barre counts as a revelation. But if you want to hear genuine Mongolian people talking (a little) about why they do ballet, their bit of the programme starts around the 36.30 minute mark: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172w0prlm4lbxd.

Goodness Me! Another Stabbing

When I wrote in Cuthbertson's Giselle that

"love - or least infatuated - and infatuation makes fools of us all. I have seen what it has done to my friends and it is actually one of the stories on my favourite radio soaps right now as Helen ignores the danger signs that are so obvious to her friend, Kirsty - just as Giselle ignores the tampering with the petals and the other indicators that were so clear to her mum and, of course, Hilarion"

I never imagined another stabbing just a few hours later. This time it was not the woman who did herself in. In the radio soap it was she who nearly killed her tormentor.

For those readers who live outside the UK who don't have a clue that I am talking about not to mention  the hordes in this country who know exactly what I am talking about and really wish I wouldn't, here's the story line.

I am not sure which ending I prefer.  Both very tragic but on the whole I think I prefer the ballet. Would the vicious, minor public school educated toff have been capable of remorse and redemption had Helen taken the knife that he gave her and killed herself? Somehow I doubt it.

And we don't believe in wilis do we unless Kirsty is one in which case Tom had better not wander late over Lakey Hill.

PS.  The BBC are running this story on its news page The Archers: What effect has Rob and Helen story had?