Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo Peacock Theatre, London

Ballet dancers whose training programme is too tough face a higher risk of developing the crippling bone disorder osteoporosis, a study has shown. Dancers whose menstrual cycle was disrupted by weight loss and hard training were those most at risk.

Name that tune. The music was unrecognisable at first but gradually it crystallised into "Happy Birthday" and the audience burst, almost gratefully, into a rousing chorus of the song as the Queen Mother sat down next to the Queen in the centre of the Coliseum's Royal Box to enjoy her 97th birthday treat.

Mikhail Fokine, the daring and innovative choreographer of the Ballets Russes, believed that there could only be evolution and not revolution in art. From this pragmatic premise, he went on to create pieces that were to alter the whole face of Russian ballet, considered by many at the turn of the century to be stale and outmoded. Fokine believed that ballet had lost expression, soul and relevance to the changing world around it (still a dilemma for ballet today), in its rigid pursuit of virtuosic technique. His aim was to reinvest dance with meaning, thus enabling a ballet to mirror its subject-matter more closely, and to reflect visually on the time and place in which it was meant to be set.

DANCE

A young Highlander is dozing in an armchair on the eve of his own wedding when a forest sylph flits in and lands him a kiss. Entranced, the bounder elopes to a woodland glade hoping to join his lot with this flimsy vision of loveliness. Some hope. He ends with empty arms and an emptier heart, as the sylph withers in his grasp and his earth-bound fiancee weds his best friend. Scotch mist has always played cruel tricks.

As the Royal Ballet's `Cinderella' and the Kirov's `Nutcracker' bow out today, Louise Levene reflects on two productions that, despite their star turns, never quite believe in their own magic

DANCE

SECRET MUSES: The Life of Frederick Ashton by Julie Kavanagh, Faber pounds 25

At 57, Lynn Seymour can still hold her own with the boys in `Swan Lake'. By Louise Levene

TEN YEARS IN THE ARTS

Deborah Bull, one of the principal dancers at the Royal Ballet, has confessed to an unhealthy lifestyle of intermittently starving herself, making excessive demands on her body and ignoring warning signs of early injury.

the Critics: DANCE

Darcey Bussell and Sylvie Guillem get through 20 pairs of shoes a month