Gerald Dowler News Today

'My prejudices are against pretension, messages, the week’s good cause, flat feet, unstretched bodies, and dancers with no necks'

To the international world of ballet, Clement Crisp was the British critic to fear for half a century. Crisp's dance reviews for the Financial Times - "the pink 'un" - from 1970 until 2020 were legendary for their passionate fastidiousness about ballerinas and high style, their acuity about rising talents and the difficulties of creativity, and - often - their ferocity, when he saw something he thought a blight.