Ballet. (extracted from the Words of Tristram Tangent) Ballet! - the word alone has an erotic shudder - robust bal crashes against swaggering let and the concussion sends up spurts of white froth, the same froth we see when a wave smashes its brains out against the seashore, mad with longing to be out in the open sea again - uncompromising wave! Ballet is as uncompromising as the sea - a gay and resolute sport, I think, as I watch those spiralling dancers stamp their feet upon the floor - ah, effigy of grace, the foot planted so firmly, yet with such a melting movement, the knee bending, thrusting, the muscles of the leg gathering like cats before a leap. See each cat settle its paws upon the cat beneath it, imagine them tensed against the pale, moist bones, prepared to extend elastically, up, up, up until the cats become birds, and fly. Ballet is the sport of the deaf, the voice of the mute. Music - the music is a sideshow - it is the action that tells the story - when the hired ringer stands at the doorway, shaking a bell to tell us that we are entering the house of passion, their hungry smiles and sighing eyes mean more than the teasing ring of the instrument. No wonder ballet has been taken up with fervour in our town, Jail, the least cerebral of cities, resistant to the stage-plays of Ex and Gum Gooloo, their poems, their music-less theatres, their subtle plots - no! give us our stories bold and barbaric, with all the coloured scarves of history wrapped around their shoulders - give us the sweating fisherman of The Sea ballet with his arms curved above his head, give us the muscular mystic of The dance of the forest who twirls 'til she drops, give us Duke Tendon of the thirty pirouettes, the Founder who dies with her hands curled gracefully against her ankles, her corpse's ribs heaving though we know she is dead - see there, her lover is weeping over the loss. The simplest, stupidest tark-tottie couldn't fail to understand. No wonder they call this a low form of art at the University - them, simpering in their garrets in the clouds, waiting for wind to disconnect them from the earth - what do they know of energy, of life, of the child-dancers shivering in the alleyway outside the theatre as they wait for their entrances, waiting for the wings of ballet to elevate them from cold urchins to heroes stronger than any weather, searching in dark woods, skirting mountains, fording rivers to find their parents, their lovers, their mortal enemies, their victims, their lost talismens? Lost orphans themselves in most cases, taken in by the Ballet Masters, apprenticed and trained, or perhaps stolen from their parents - that same tark-tottie who watches the weeping lover from his seat on the floor may have stolen her himself, sold her to the Master years ago and be watching unawares as the tears run down his cheeks, in awe of the wretch he stole, now the star of the piece, while he crouches in the audience, cowed by the harsh glow of the firelights and the muscles of the young men, longing for that kind of immortality. Some Ballet Masters prefer stolen children, believing that they make more convincing actors. "They cry well," says one, "They're in the habit of it." Ordinary orphans - are dull, she says, "Too resigned is how I find them," but she might consider it if the child were unable to hear or speak - these are distinct advantages. "Dance is their outlet and think, if there's only outlet, how much stronger is the flow going to be? Much! Put three holes in a bowl and the water runs out of each one slowly, but stop up two of those holes and see how fast it goes then!"