Like many a male of the species that was brought up to grind opponents' noses into the ground on the rugby field, and thrilled to the muscular clamour of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, then in their bone-rattling pomp, I had one or two problems when it came to going to the ballet. Well-intentioned parents and girlfriends did their best, but early adolescent exposure to the Sugar Plum Fairy was deeply traumatising. This was not a world for teenage boys. (Yes, I have seen Billy Elliot. I was one of the thundering oafs jeering on the sidelines.) It spoke only of sugary, fluffy things, and then expected you to be moved when a swan died with a few unseemly jerks of the arm. Ballet was filed away, in my fledgling cultural canon, next to preposterous sentimental novels such as Wuthering Heights, the vapid paintings of Gainsborough, the unbearably pleasant string quartets of Haydn, as Not Relevant. It was an outdated form of expression, at the same time overwrought and underpowered. How could any vibrant art form announce itself on tiptoe?

My views adapted slightly when I saw the Martha Graham Dance Company at Covent Garden, or it may have been Sadler's Wells, in 1976. This was different: not so much tiptoeing, and much meaningful writhing about. The dances seemed to speak of complex matters. No avian themes, no fairies. It was all about relationships. I still thought it was daft. I was beginning to understand that human beings spent much of their time pushing and pulling each other to bits, but felt that I didn't need to see it literally enacted. I was by then enraptured by the glacial movies of Ingmar Bergman, with their barbed wire scripts and near- unwatchable naturalism. Beckett, Pinter, Antonioni, profound analysts of the human condition, were my daily diet; Woody Allen was the salad on the side, wittily dressed but still crunchy with insight. Ballet dancers? A bunch of groin strains waiting to happen.