Giselle has floored many a ballerina — it did so again last week

English has all sorts of emotive metaphors for how we feel about the ground. We’re floored. Or well grounded. Or earthbound. Life’s a minefield, so watch where you step. Stay on your toes. One moment we’re walking on air, next brought down to earth. Which is not at all the same as being down-to-earth.

We have a fractious, if necessary, relationship, then, with the floor. Dancers even more so. If you were watching the Bolshoi’s live cinema relay of Giselle on Sunday, you will have seen its hyper-exquisite prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova come clattering down in a most unghostly fashion in Act 2. Giselle has floored many a ballerina — Sylvie Guillem also fell over in her London debut, while an effusiveness of dry ice unforgettably brought the Royal Ballet’s Nicola Tranah down three times in a single scene.

In Giselle, the floor is a resonant representation of peasant earth in Act 1, but has to vanish magically from our perception in the haunted wood of Act 2. If she falls over, bang, the floor has killed it. Even the brooding eyes and stupendous entrechats of the Royal Ballet’s lost boy Sergei Polunin, whose soul is seemingly now at rest in Russia, could not make the ground vanish again.

I found myself thinking a lot about the floor’s significance in choreography during Birmingham Royal Ballet’s celebratory triple bill at the Birmingham Hippodrome last week. BRB is this month marking 25 years since it upped sticks to the Midlands from London, where as Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet it had been stuck with number two status to the Royal Ballet for too long. It performed a fitting demonstration of its range, old and new, Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, Ashton’s Enigma Variations and young Alexander Whitley’s Kin.