Dance: The view from the cheap seats

Louise Levene on the ballet supporters who never miss a fixture

Ballet is for toffs. We all know this. It's in the papers. Journalists (even house-trained ones) are forever bewailing the elitist nature of ballet, blaming either high ticket prices or management snobbery. There aren't enough ordinary people, they cry.

But the thing we must remember is that journalists always sit in the stalls. There they crouch, clutching complimentary tickets costing pounds 55 surrounded by Chanel and Savile Row and imagining the whole house to be as rich and famous as the people around them.

Meanwhile, in another part of the theatre, ladies in print frocks and donnish men in beige are lavishing their entire disposable income on the art form they love.

London's balletomanes have been starved of full-length classical ballet for six months and they were all out in force at the Colisseum for the Royal Ballet's four-week summer season which ended last Saturday.

You can't even see the balcony audience from the stalls but you know they're there from the different applause patterns. Sometimes it's intelligent (when they applaud a good step), sometimes it's fanatical (when they cheer a favourite) but it's often out of phase with the response downstairs. As a rule it's the larger personalities that get the biggest cheers - when you're that far from the stage you appreciate a performer who can really project to the back of the gallery.

It's a few years since I saw ballet from the gods so last Saturday afternoon I went undercover through the cultural apartheid of the tradesman's entrance and up the hard concrete stairway to the top of the London Coliseum. I take all the usual precautions: loose clothing, bottled water, large Spanish fan, oxygen tank. The last time I sat in the amphitheatre at Covent Garden I passed out from the heat.

I ask an usher if they've had many casualties this season but apparently the appaling weather has kept the temperatures down. In any case, the real threat to health is not up in the balcony but down in the thickly carpeted dress and upper circles where the low ceiling of the overhang and the overpowering smell of Coco keep the stretcher bearers of St John's Ambulance Brigade in business.

The balcony's high ceiling and the fresh air wafting in from the back may give it the edge healthwise but the stage is 60 metres away. Rent opera glasses in Paris and they'll give you a decent pair in return for a deposit.

London theatregoers put up with useless plastic toys that probably cost less than 20p to make and which render the action fractionally closer and decidedly fuzzier. Seasoned punters have learned that investment in some high-powered German lenses can give you a ringside view from the cheap seats.

Binocular ownership is an early symptom of balletomania and makes it easy for me to identify fellow sufferers. "Do you come here often?" You bet they do. All the people I spoke to seemed to have seen all the different casts in each ballet this season - some admitted to catching every single performance.

These may be the cheap seats (pounds 12.50 for the back of the balcony) but it all adds up. What they save on couture (and dentistry in some cases) they spend on ballet. They applaud in all the right places and cheer enthusiastically but probe more closely and they are not as uncritical as they seem. Like Newcastle United supporters, they know their team isn't really world class at the moment but they go on rooting for them anyway. And woe betide anyone who says a bad word about the Royal Ballet in print. Critics are clearly the scum of the earth and this is no place to sport a shorthand notebook unless you want to be lynched. Try to act natural.

Far below us Darcey Bussell is dancing Manon. She's dancing well - particularly considering that Igor Zelensky doesn't look confident with the steps and almost drops her in the courtyard pas de deux.

In the interval I sidle up to a punter. He is unconvinced by Bussell's Manon. Did he see Guillem last night? Yes and the Saturday before that and the Thursday before that. We enthuse together about her reckless magnificence: "She doesn't play Manon. She is Manon." "Are you coming tonight?" "You bet. Viv and Irek."

Viviana Durante who has often danced extra performances when Bussell has been injured is very much admired both for her dancing and her hard work. Mukhamedov is also adored. Every flash of those Byzantine eyes beams right up to the back row and the fans value his intensity and commitment.

The Bussell-Zelensky performance warms up considerably in the big set pieces and the tragic finale works well - particularly up here where the acoustic is at its best. They cheer long and loud. As we file off I buttonhole a man sporting top-of-the-range laser-sighted field glasses. He looks like a slightly camp racing tipster. Did he enjoy Bussell?

"She's a lovely dancer, very expressive dancer but it's not her role". Perhaps he prefers Guillem? "Ooh no. Leaves me cold. There's nothing there."

And what about Bussell's Russian partner? "I remember Anthony Dowell in the role of course. Zelensky's only got two expressions: confused and very confused."

And they say critics are cruel.