March Love Letter

An endless source of fascination in this country, the weather has recently surprised us all with the most snow we’ve seen in years, decades for some. While a mere six inches of the stuff present no end of problems for our roads and railways, the wheels of the capital’s social scene take a lot more than mother nature to grind it to a halt. In fact, it’s this time of year when the city starts offering plenty of opportunities to thaw out our winter ennui.

March madness includes donning silly hats and quaffing vast quantities of Guinness and whiskey for St. Patrick’s Day (london.gov.uk/stpatricksday) and staking out a bridge across the Thames for a glimpse of the strapping Oxford and Cambridge University oarsmen slogging it out in the age-old tradition of the Boat Race (theboatrace.org) on the 29th.

If you share my general aversion to crowds, you’re more likely to enjoy one of the more recent arrivals on the arts scene: the Spring Dance Festival (sadlerswells.com). Its second outing looks set to be a promising, trans-Atlantic collaboration of ballet, contemporary, and ballroom. The event kicks off with the American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake at the end of the month, with April offering British talent from Russell Maliphant, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the foxtrotting, waltzing stars of the BBC’s unfathomably popular phenomenon, Strictly Come Dancing.

Colin Mitchell