Mary Kenny: Ballet has proved impervious to political upheaval: even Stalin sustained, and championed, Russian ballets

My fascination with ballet started when I was about 10 and was prompted by a child's book about the fabled Russian dancer Anna Pavlova.

Dancers should start at six or seven, so I was already too late to hope to be a ballerina, and anyway I had no talent – a lumpen, podgy kid notably lacking grace of movement. But my brother James, on his modest wages, paid for me to attend ballet lessons.

Everyone else in the family thought it inappropriate to indulge such a childish whim. And yet, I am so grateful I had that experience because even if ballet lessons don't make you a ballet dancer, they may introduce you to a lifetime's enchantment with the ballet.

And however galumping you are at the barre, ballet lessons impart other lessons which go beyond the poetry of movement that is dance. For you come to understand that the finished performance of a professional dancer is based on relentless discipline.

In her autobiography, 'The Everyday Dancer', the ballerina Deborah Bull reckons that between the ages of seven and 40, a ballet girl attends some 10,000 classes, practising for six to eight hours a day.

Ballet dancers suffer from constant injury, sometimes from chronic injury and eventual arthritis. They are pushing their bodies to the limits of human potential and endurance.

Watch a prima ballerina perform the famous 32 fouettes in Act II of 'Swan Lake' – pirouetting on one leg so that her body performs 32 consecutive turns, without pausing. It is one of the most awesome and thrilling experiences to behold.

Watch a male dancer enter the stage for the breathtaking 'Le Corsaire' and you'll believe a man can fly.

Ballet's metaphor is that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished without constant discipline and eternal application. The great ballet teachers are notorious for their insistence on absolute standards: Dame Ninette de Valois (born Edris Stannus, and herself inspired to dance by watching Irish jigs), the Wicklow woman who founded London's Royal Ballet, was a ruthless disciplinarian.

Beryl Grey, the veteran dancer, told me that even the star dancers were terrified of Dame Ninette: "She would punish you for the slightest laxity, not arriving in time to take the company bus, for instance.

"She'd deprive you of your solo the next night. And she was right. You cannot reach excellence without discipline – and penalties," she said.

Ballet is a globalised art and most ballet companies now have an international cast. I can foresee the day when many western ballet companies are dominated by Japanese, Chinese and Korean dancers, already numerous in European companies: they are exquisitely delicate, and yet strong and sinuous performers.

In a world that increasingly uses English as the international language, ballet, like cooking, is still rooted in French: the plies, the entrechats, the arabesques, pirouettes, grands jetes, and tours en l'air, are still called out by the repetiteur (rehearsal master) in French.

Ballet was invented at the court of Louis XIV, around 1661, and though it has Italian, Danish and Russian influences, its language remains French.

Perhaps in a fast-changing world, the traditionalism and continuity of the classical ballet is reassuring. Ballet has proved impervious to political upheaval: it could have died at the time of the French revolution, since it was an aristocratic and courtly art, but it was reinvigorated by the events of 1789.

It certainly might have been expected to perish at the time of the Russian revolution in 1917 – some of the greatest dancers, such as Nijinsky and his lover, the famed impresario Sergei Diaghilev, fled Russia. But what had been patronised by the Czars had a smooth transition to the Soviet Communism. However wicked Stalin was, he nevertheless sustained, and even championed, the Russian ballets.

The best-loved ballets are reactionary in their politics – queens, princes, princesses and noblefolk abound – and carry a whiff of the spiritual as well, as we see lovers reunited in an ethereal afterlife.

But even as the old monster was murdering aristocrats and tearing down churches, Stalin still paid tribute to the ballet. A ballet-dancer in the USSR was a very privileged person. High honours were reserved for a ballerina like Galina Ulanova, the People's Artist.

To the dancer, the history of the ballet is a living organism: the dancer reveres all who have come before, from Marie Taglioni, the first modern ballerina, in the 1830s, and the great choreographers who have mapped out the steps they will dance today, in works such as 'Giselle'.

The continuity of ballet is maintained through the tradition of teacher and pupil. Tamara Karsavina created the role in 'The Firebird' in 1910; she later coached Margot Fonteyn, who later coached Monica Mason, who later coached Darcey Bussell, who is coaching young dancers now.

The ballet thrilled me in childhood, and the pleasure is repeated now when I take my small granddaughters to ballet. And thinking about its traditions, its disciplines, its dedication and its beauty, I feel I am still benefiting from ballet lessons.

email: mary@mary-kenny.com