Nicola fielded the questions like a pro and Alex was affable and sarcastic. None of the questions were intrusive or pushed Alex's buttons. He deflected a few with jokes and others with brashness.
Then came the carefully worded enquiry over his recent hospital stay. Alex sipped water and went for humour. "My fault entirely. I had cooked a batch of stew. It might have been a couple of days too ripe, Maria called leftovers character building. Scrape of the mould and heat it up. It must be a war thing. I swear it wasn't mouldy, but it did give me food poisoning. My friend Dima was my saviour, he got me to hospital after I collapsed. I was really sick. On a drip and very miserable. So, not dramatic or tragic, just a bit stupid."
The next question was fielded from the Telegraph Arts Correspondent, Marc De Winter, who had followed Sasha's career since 2006. "In your planned masterclasses, will you be discussing the influence of Manfred Schnagel on your reimagining of Veshin's lost works and secondly, are you planning a retrospective of Schangel's work at some point?"
Alex had wanted a proper question about dancing, but talking about Manfred always brought all his more recent life choices into sharp relief, when they seemed more like colossal mistakes if you were kind or him actually losing the plot if you weren't. "I'll answer your second question first. As you know in 2009, after I returned from New York I tried to get his dance company off the ground and performing again. Bethany had retired, but the rest of us were game. I wrote to Bernd Schnagel, Manfred's brother and executor of his estate and my request for continued use of our dance company name or any of his choreography was denied. I wrote again six months and then again a year later to get the same response that I was trying to cash in on his legacy and that I could not do justice to his art. Three strikes you're out, I have moved on and I am waiting with baited breath for any of his later works to be performed. There is a whole contemporary ballet which has never been staged, we were still in rehearsals when he passed. It is beautiful, complex and daring; drawing on classical influences in honour of Maria Makarova, my adopted mother and his mentor and friend. So please, start a campaign for its staging. It deserves a premiere. Just don't use my name because you will get a very terse rejection." Alex had the strong suspicion that Bernd blamed him personally for driving Manfred into an early grave. With no mask in place and suddenly facing the adrenaline crash after his flight from Russia, Sasha Makarov looked every inch the tragic figure described in Moscow News. With a wan, smile, Alex continued "So, the planned masterclasses are to be on Russian technique and its evolution in the late 20th and 21st centuries, the differences in styles between different companies and academies and their unique repertoire. As for the influences on my staging of Veshin's Variations, my influences are Graham, Tetley, Tharp, Makarova, Schnagel and Stravenkov. All ballet dancers today are influenced by the first three and I have been lucky enough to dance for Manfred and Vladimir. The very fact these works survived to be staged was due to Maria, she personally tutored me on all Veshin had entrusted her with. I cannot thank the Bolshoi enough. Without the full support of Grennady Titov and Oksana Galinova who took a leap of faith and incorporated these beautiful pieces into their repertoire, Marek Veshin would have remained a mere footnote in the Maransky Theatre's illustrious history." Alex then looked up at Vladimir's friend, "I can recommend the biography of Veshin published in 2008, its very comprehensive. Sadly it's out of print and only available in Russian. If you want, I can lend you my copy, but I want it back. No chance of Vladimir lending you his, he said it was among the best biographies he'd read and it's still on his bedside table. With a young wife and ever growing family, he does not get much time to read, so he probably hasn't finished it yet."
Alex enjoyed talking to the lovely lady from Ballet Magazine, he spoke about missing out on a place at the Royal Ballet School at 11, which Graeme was very interested in hearing all about.
"I'm surprised Grennady didn't tell you about that." Alex smiled wistfully, "So, the housekeeper encouraged me to dance, she sneakily put my lessons through on the housekeeping budget. The weekly ballet class and occasional shows escaped my uncles notice until you guys offered me a place in 1998, when I was eleven. He threw an absolute wobbler when he read that letter. I begged and pleaded to go, but he ignored me and then wrote you guys a snotty rejection letter and told me to stop poncing about as I was going to Brookland Comprehensive. No arguments. Dance lessons then stopped, but I didn't stop dancing. I just got up early and did a bastardised version of class in my bedroom. He never caught on because he was never at home, being such a big shot international banker." With a long drink of water Alex mused "I started to compartmentalise at that point, hiding that part of myself from everyone. It appeared that I was a kid who loved karate, skiing and football, you know proper sports. I kept up with my uncle's grand plan for me growing up to be an exact copy of my father. I never thought I'd ever take lessons again. Tells you how sad my life was, when it was my fucking pimp who encouraged me to take dancing seriously again at 15 and started teaching me what he knew as a washed up dancer. He had trained in Smolensk, but members of Misha's extended family were dissidents and were in internal exile, so he was politically suspect. He told me a talentless fathead got a place at the Kirov School, when his audition had been miles better. So, he slid into crime and by 20 had done his first stretch in prison."
Alex was really tired when the last interview of the day came around. He had been outside to stretch his legs and to smoke a cigarette, as the nicotene gum was next to useless. He re-entered the room to see Graeme chatting to Edward Pleasure. There was tea and sandwiches on the table, and Natalie looked nervously between the dancer and his former foster father.
Over the polite laughter, Alex coughed to impose himself into the conversation. "Just to start the ball rolling, I have no regrets; if I started playing the game of ifs, buts and maybes, I would be a complete basket case. I'm not going to apologise for leaving, but it was already a mess. I was backed into a corner by the inevitability that the Bank would come knocking on the door and then used you guys to blackmail me to do as they asked for continued protection or threaten me with them taking over as full time guardians. Being a whore for Misha was being used, but on my terms; no threats, no blackmail and frankly I stopped giving a shit about my welfare after I crossed paths with Julius again. I fully understand why you did not want me back after Miami. Being nuts and a cokehead was too much for you and Liz. You guys are nice normal people. The decision to send me to military school was really low. After I told you about Julius and Point Blanc. That would have pushed me over the edge, possibly to full psychopath or just into complete paranoia. Did nobody ever think to ask me what I wanted? I learned never to speak up because lets face it, all the adults in my life were just users, abusers and facilitators."
Edward sat down. Putting his digital recorder on the table but not switching it on. "I'm not here about recriminations or going over both our past mistakes. I don't think you read the pieces I wrote after you left. I did an in depth expose of the Russian mafia in America and child prostitution. I would like to do a piece on how you met Misha, because you were very cagey to the DEA Agents and the cops in Florida. You got out. You have kept yourself clean. Worked so hard and driven yourself to achieve goals. I have no idea how you started dancing, but this is a happy ending. You are following your dream. It would be nice to give others in your situation hope, because over the years I have crossed paths with a lot of children being exploited. You can say no, but I have enough to sketch out a story, but you have achieved the near impossible by not just surviving but finding family, friends and your place."
Alex sat down and the tension he'd been holding dissipated. He poured a cup of tea and placed two egg sandwiches on a plate. It was all very civilised. Alex then pressed the record button on the digital recorder. "On the surface I had a perfectly normal upper middle class upbringing, but appearances can be deceptive. When I met Sabina, I was already being abused, blackmailed and I felt I was fading from view. I started drinking three days before I went on holiday with you to Scotland. The self medicating started after I broke my ankle and got burned. They gave me decent painkillers for once. I kept that prescription filled, because you mix codeine with vodka and you don't give a fuck about anything. I was stoned and drunk most of the final term I was at Brookland. By June I was off the painkillers and trying to stop drinking. Then Jack died….."
After he had talked for over an hour, Alex had arranged to meet the next day for a lunch, to continue with the edited highlights of life with Misha.
It had been a long day, He had booked into the Dorchester for the luxury of room service, a bath and the guarantee of twelve hours undisturbed sleep. Laid in a sinfully hot bath, his dinner due to arrive in an hour, Sasha Makarov phoned home.
"Good try at avoiding talking, my little Siberian. I take it Boris was telling me the truth. I know we'll be seeing you in two weeks time, but tell me everything, so I can give Luci a PG version."