simply the best

‘World’s best restaurant serves up stomach bug to 60 diners’ (Guardian Saturday 9 March).  Not a good start to a weekend if Noma is your baby.  Even so, I don't imagine the story significantly cut the three-month wait for a reservation, and the Copenhagen team still look pretty pleased with the way things are.  I’m unlikely to see for myself in the foreseeable future: at around £300 a head with wine, it’s well beyond my reach.  I love eating out (as long as the food and company are good) and love being cooked for – but can any meal, however wonderful, really be worth that much? 

Of course it’s all a matter of personal choice.  The other evening, around Anna’s table, we gave up trying to decide whether we preferred our gnocchi with courgette and pesto or blue cheese and mascarpone (both delicious) and drifted onto our reading.  ‘What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?’ was my question.  I’ve felt wrong-footed repeatedly by critical opinion where the superlatives jostle for supremacy and have just been disappointed yet again by the latest ‘absolute must-read’.  I don’t think this is sour grapes.  Anyway, we agreed that McEwan’s Saturday was high on our list, and we batted other big names about in an unsurprisingly disparate field: Ishiguro and Boyd, Joseph Conrad and Ann Tyler.  How subjective the whole thing is was emphasised when Anna objected to a book I’d recommended on the grounds that it made her cringe!  Well, then.

On a couple of occasions recently I’ve found myself caught up in a conversation about the best dancer.  Unlike book-based arguments, this is not a topic I enjoy.  In fact it leaves me feeling upset, almost.  This is probably not surprising: however hard I work, however well I keep my particular physical constraints at bay, I will never be up there.  Of course social tango isn’t a competition, or so we say; but if there’s a notion of best, then that must imply there’s a worst, and a whole hierarchy in between.  

So I’m drawn into wondering how we measure, what criteria we use.  It can’t be years of experience (I’m 11 years in) though perhaps experience counts for something.  A repertoire of steps?  I guess on a skills mastered basis this might be a way of quantifying what you’ve learnt, and then perhaps a basic understanding of the ‘move’ (immediately I’m back nearly twenty years with my son and his friends practising the kicks and flicks of a Power Ranger) could be further graded according to performance: Level One competent, Level Two fluent...)

I’m sure fluency must come into it somewhere.   Certainly if I’m sitting on the edge of the dance floor there’s a real pleasure in watching a dancer whose movements flow like water or ripple like silk.  Some dancers I could watch for ever and not get bored, but not always for the same aspect.  One favourite displays an enviable poise and thoughtfulness, another you could characterise as playful; grace is a big pull for me – ah, now my favourite graceful dancer knows who I mean!

Pablo Rodriguez & Noelia Hurtado

I don’t honestly know how high the appearance stakes are – there’s little to beat witnessing a wonderful performance – apart from experiencing for yourself a wonderful dance, that is.  So some of our judgement (if judge we must, and it seems we do) must rely on the experience; on how it feels.  ‘Buttery,’ John suggested once. No doubt if you’re a dancer you will have your own descriptors for that magical feeling.  For sure I know that the experience doesn’t always match the impression you might have formed from observing your partner before you take to the floor.  One of my favourite partners is someone whose first invitation I accepted with trepidation.  And of course it works the other way too. 

The biggest disappointment is usually myself, of course.  I can dance beautifully in my head.  I have a keen sense of rhythm, know a bit about the music.  Often, though, a small mistake or a minor wobble on my part will intrude on the moment, and confidence and control evaporate simultaneously; if I were a skier (god forbid) I’d be careering down an icy incline, legs flailing, heading for the nearest tree.  

So I wonder what qualities you need to make skiing an amazing experience, aside from the basics, and whether these qualities are transferable?  Something about focus, perhaps, or control, or readiness for risk?  Perhaps it's more to do with giving yourself wholly to the moment; being as well prepared as you can be, certainly, having learnt and practised, but being able now to put all that behind you, the rules, the worries about what you can or can't or how good or bad you might be, and just go for it.

If skiing is your passion, imagine that moment at the top of a slope, and double it: the anticipation! the terror! the possibility that this descent might be the most fantastic ever!  As I step onto the dance floor and into your arms, I mean to leave behind my insecurities and my judgments and trust that you will do the same.  I may not be the best dancer you have ever met but the next three minutes might, just might, be the best.