Glowing performance at the ballet

Sixty English National Ballet dancers have been banned from sunbathing after returning from holiday with glowing pink faces.

Derek Deane, the ballet's artistic director, was dismayed when members of the corps de ballet returned from their summer break with faces glowing with "every shade of red and pink". He has ordered them to become a natural white, and to stay out of the sun, for the company's new production of Swan Lake. The dancers have six weeks to lose their summer colour before the classic ballet opens at the Apollo theatre in Oxford on 30 September. "We simply can't give roasted swans to the public," Deane said.