A global guide to male ballet styles
From The Daily Telegraph

France

Charles Jude, Manuel Legris, Laurent Hilaire and Nicolas Le Riche, the generation raised by Rudolf Nureyev when director of Paris Opera Ballet in the 1980s and '90s, ideally combine the aristocracy of refined classical style with the supreme stage confidence of the French. Their supremacy descends from France's centuries-long dominance of world ballet and such formative stars as Auguste Vestris, the 18th century's Baryshnikov.

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First a question; is this article unatributed or meant to be a reference work with no author? Either way I must say hmmm...I would just like to point out some issues I have with the article (hopefully gently). First of all 90% of the men mentioned have danced (for long periods) and enjoyed success in countries other than that of their birth. I do not believe there is a dancer today who has not been influenced by style other than that of their schooling. Go back as far as Nijinsky and one must remember his distinguished career dancing in Paris; where (if I am being bold) I would say his true artistic flavor emerged. I wont bore you with taking pretty much every other dancer listed and walk you through the same transplanting ritual. Suffice to say that my opinion is that purebreds do not exist in ballet. Therefor pigeonholing styles or dancers is a waste of time. My second problem is that Cuba has been religated to two sentences in the Spain and Argentina category. (To say nothing of the fact one has to wonder how Spain and Argentina were lumped together in the first place). "Cuba is the new Russia" PLEASE. The Cubans have done what should be done everywhere with ballet training: taken the best of each school and combined it to make a better dancer. They have taken French port de bras, English refinement, Russian strength, American phrasing, and Danish batterie work, combined it with their own cultural flavor to make a melting pot of ballet that as far as male dancers go I believe has yet to be matched anywhere. And speaking of melting pots that brings me to my third and final point: where is the paragraph about the United States? Call me biased as an American male dancer, but is this article really saying that there have been no American born and bred male dancers of note, or that America has made no signifiganct contributions to the art of teaching ballet? Again I have to say PLEASE!

Although without byline, I assumed that it was Ismene Brown, who writes regularly for The Telegraph....