One little girl arrived at her swimming lesson last week, jumped into the water and when she had surfaced said with a huge smile

‘I love swimming because in the water you can MOVE.’

She then executed a series of balletic turns and dives under the water. She is quite a new swimmer and her stamina for long swims is still developing but she is learning the kind of freedom of movement in the water that I want for all my swimmers whatever their age.

I believe that swimming is the closest a non dancer can get to the  freedom, grace and elegance of  a professional dancer. In the water you can forget about gravity so you can move in way that would take years and years of training to be able to achieve on land.

I never want to give my pupils too much instruction, especially children, because if you let them they will find a natural, fluid way of moving in the water. This can so easily be interrupted if you give them instructions like ‘kick your legs.’ Just as (I imagine) with dance, swimming is often about stillness in the water. You don’t have to move all the time. A good swimmer knows how to glide and flow with the water.

Just as with dancer a swimmer can exist in the moment.

I will never ever be able to feel the magic of dancing like Sergei Polunin in this video but swimming gives me a tiny glimpse into what it must feel like to be him.