That's it - I think specifics on the conference should be on fresh threads. And do please put your thoughts and feedback down - its important to extract all we can from such a precious weekend

The first day of the Revealing MacMillan conference, held at the Royal Academy of Dance, covered a lot of ground and illuminated some unfamiliar aspects of his career: most of all it engendered a great curiosity to see the work again, particularly some of the less well known works which haven’t been in the repertory for a while.

Jann Parry’s opening paper, on the man and the works was particularly interesting, in setting the context for much of what followed and very fluently delivered.. In a brief biographical account she touched on significant events in his life and how these may have surfaced later in many of the typical themes of his ballets – the outsider, sibling rivalry, guilt and secrecy. He was the youngest child in a family of four where the others were much older. His mother died when he was only 12 the day before he came home from school: his father (who had been gassed in the First World war and still bore the scars) was very much against MacMillan’s taking up a career in dance, and MacMillan tried to keep his dancing a secret from his schoolmates. His father died when he was 17, but not before MacMillan had famously forged a letter from him to Ninette de Valois to try to get an audition. I’m sure conference papers which are to follow and Jan Parry’s authorised biography (which is still in preparation) will express the link between the life and the works much more elegantly and in greater detail than I can recall here.

There were six papers, two panel discussions and two masterclasses, far too much to describe in detail here. I particularly enjoyed Carol Martin’s detailed look at three bedroom pas de deux in Manon, Mayerling and Romeo an Juliet and the differences in structure in each. Jennifer Jackson’s presentation on Sea of Troubles, made for an independent dance company in 1988 was particularly interesting and well illustrated with video clips of both the original cast in 1989 and a recent revival at the Exeter Festival earlier this year. This was a very unfamiliar work and one that doesn’t look at all like a conventional view of Macmillan – barefoot and very pared down, with no high lifts or outrageous physicality, but still possessing the authentic MacMillan atmosphere of unease, repulsion and fear. A production that one would like a chance to view again, preferably in a fairly intimate setting (just the sort of thing the Linbury was made for).

That was only one of many short works which were discussed in varying levels of detail which aroused curiosity because they can’t have been seen much if at all in the last ten years or more, some of them very early – House of Birds, Solitaire, Cain and Abel, Playground, Valley of Shadows, Different Drummer., Poltroon.

The two masterclasses were both fascinating to watch. Dowell and Sibley coached Ivan Putrov and Alina Cojocaru though the bedroom pas de deux from Manon. (This was shortly after we had see a video clip of Dowell in precisely this, which was a very piquant moment). Deborah MacMillan remarked as part of the panel session that followed that ballet is the only art form where the protagonists exhibit such generosity of sprit in masterclasses – in other art forms it can be just a form of grandstanding. It’s certainly a privilege to watch Dowell and Sibley at work together and their passion to get the details right, endless patience, and a deft mixture of encouragement and ability to adjust and correct while remaining totally supportive. There’s a remarkable amount of physical commitment from the coaches as well as the participants – not that they are doing any jumping or lifting, but stretching and flexing and demonstrating movements. Sibley looks in fabulous shape.

Being the characters they are, there is also plenty of time for anecdote and comment. Sibley recounted the story of how just before going on to dance the Rose Adagio she found a book of stories in her dressing room including both Carmen and Manon Lescaut left by MacMillan, annotated to the effect that this would be useful reading for the next season, and how she didn’t find out for a long time who she was supposed to be. She is a very animated, engaging speaker: elegant in black high heels which didn’t seem to impede her progress in sketching out the steps. Dowell is full of little jokes and asides, insisting there was no need at this point for Putrov and Cojocaru to rehearse what he described as ‘the longest kiss in ballet – some couples have to come up for air half way through’. There’s also lots of nicknames for sections of steps – “we call this bit Torville and Dean”.

Later, Monica Mason and Donald MacLeary coached Tamara Rojo and Jonathan Cope through a pas de deux from Song of the Earth. This class had a slightly different emphasis – Cope and Rojo had danced the roles before about 18 months ago, whereas Cojocaru and Putrov were learning the roles. Again both of them worked patintly through some tricky moments, correcting, repeating, refining. Cope was particularly thorough in his preparation wanting to check details, apologising for getting things wrong. Monica Mason sings her way through the phrases under her breath. Mason and MacLeary stressed later that they were working through rather faster then they would do in rehearsal because they wanted to show us as much detail as possible.

In both cases we got a run through of the few minutes which had been prepared, and the details that had been worked on-the speed of a particular movement, the position of the hands, how close or far apart they needed to be, exactly where to look at particular moment – all came together and showed the effectiveness of the process. It’s certainly a privilege to see dancers as close up as this – Rojo nearly ended up in the front row at one point.

It was a fascinating day and a very full one, and I’m sure everyone will carry away something new and fresh from it. My particular memory will be some film of Monica Mason dancing the Chosen One in Rite of Spring, shot at a dress rehearsal in 1982 – amazing stuff.

Susie Crowe, who had masterminded the conference, deserves enormous credit for assembling such a distinguished collection of panellists for both days. Sunday train cancellations meant that I missed most of the first session, MacMillan and the Royal Ballet , and had to listen to the concluding ten minutes or so outside the closed door of the conference room. I knew from hearing what both Sir Peter Wright and Alistair Macaulay had to say that I had missed a gem. Damn you, Network Southeast.

The panel for the MacMillan and Dancers session - chaired admirably by Edward Thorpe - consisted of David Wall, Irek Mukhamedov, Darcey Bussell, Wayne Eagling and Birgit Keil of Stuttgart Ballet, of which MacMillan had at one time been AD. This starry lineup all spoke admiringly and with gratitude of MacMillan, but two contributions in particular stood out for me; first, Birgit Keil who spoke very touchingly of her debt to the choreographer. She had been, she said 'a little nobody' in the company when he unexpectedly cast her as the youngest sister in Las Hermanas, a fact which she still seemed to find incredible. She spoke of her six-month exchange with the Royal Ballet , where one of her teachers had been Pamela May, who happened to be sitting in the front row. 'You were one of my teachers' she said, pointing to the now aged Miss May 'You won't remember me, but I remember you with your high heels, red nails and always your cigarette!'. Well, gone are the high heels and the cigarette, but I can report that Miss May still sports enviable scarlet nails.

Keil was perhaps the most eloquent speaker on the panel, and certainly the most rewarding to watch, her elegant hands describing emotions as vividly as if they were dance steps themselves. The other contribution which struck me was Darcey Bussell's. Bussell is not a natural speaker, and does not come over as a particularly vivid personality, but her words were revealing. Like Birgit Keil, she had been unexpectedly picked from obscurity by MacMillan, in her case for Prince of the Pagodas. She had cried after her sessions in the studio with MacMillan, she said, but never let him see her tears. She didn't explain why she cried and no-one pressed her on the point, so one had to guess that it was her youth - she was only 19 at the time, and I'd guess a rather young 19 at that. She was also in awe of her Pagodas partner Jonathan Cope, and had convinced herself, she said, that MacMillan and Cope were 'ganging up' on her.

After lunch came the Preservation session. Liz Cunliffe of the Benesh institute opened with her talk of the role of the notator in ballet, speaking of the importance of Monica Parker as notator for MacMillan. I may have dropped off here, but where was Monica Parker herself? Ms Cunliffe was followed by the briskly commanding Sarah Woodcock of the Theatre Museum speaking of the role of the designer in MacMillan's work. I found this session one of the most fascinating possibly because Sarah Woodcock was so utterly passionate about her subject. She spoke knowlegeably and informatively about most of the designers MacMillan worked with, and frankly it was the first time I had understood fully what an inclusive artist MacMillan was - that is, that he saw his choreographic input as only one part of an overall artistic endeavour. Ms Woodcock operated the projector herself with a simple hand-held remote control, and I couldn't help wondering why it hadn't been possible for the other speakers to do this too (projection of images had been a problem since day 1).

It's not often a man asks a woman of a certain age who is a complete stranger to him what the word 'brothel' means. While talking about the design element in MacMillan's works, Ms.Woodcock had commented that critics often said that his ballets looked as if they were 'set in a brothel'. At this, the chap sitting next to me whom I knew was Frank Frey, an ex-dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet, turned to me and asked 'what does 'brothel' mean?' I looked around cautiously and then whispered a brief explanation in his ear. 'Ha ha ha' he chortled 'I understand completely now!'

Some RB archive footage of MacMillan works followed The very charming Anya Linden (Lady Sainsbury) who was presenting the session, explained that the material we were about to see had been filmed by an amateur sitting in the stalls at various rehearsals and performances. We saw clips from several early MacMillan ballets, including (I didn't take notes so I'm quoting from memory) The Invitation, House of Birds, Danses Concertantes and The Playground amongst others. RB soloist Bennet Gartside had made a brilliant whole of these snippets from the RB archives.

I took away from this session a realisation that really, as ardent an admirer as I am of MacMillan's work, I didn't know the half of it. Some of the clips we saw showed choreography of dazzling inventiveness, the sort that any young choreographer today would die to produce. All of the examples we saw yesterday deserve to be revived, and soon. They may need redesigning, but as someone said yesterday (I think it was Sarah Woodcock) designs should never be set in stone.

The final session Looking Ahead opened with Lynn Seymour giving a masterclass on the Romeo & Juliet balcony scene to Mara Galazzi and Edward Watson of the Royal Ballet. I found this a strangely unsettling experience. Seymour does not appear to ber a natural teacher and she seemed to be giving bafflingly vague directions to the dancers, who however were polite and patient. I suppose it's possible that they were actually getting something from her tutorial - I'm not a dancer after all and my neighbour, Frank the brothel-innocent, seemed to think that it was all perfectly clear. (I questioned him about it; he owed me after all).. There was an edgy, I hope unintentional brusqueness, to Seymour's treatment of the two dancers: 'They're nice, this is perfectly decent dancing and all' she said dismissively of Galazzi and Watson. She did, though, make the valid point that this particular pas-de-deux shouldn't look too much like a 'tragedy' (she put the back of her hand to her forhead and swooned backwards to illustrate her point); these were two hormonal teenagers, after all. Earlier, she had said that when she watched familiar ballets these days, she invariably found something missing. 'The dancing's fine' she said, 'but something's not the same. They've been blanded'. Not a real word, maybe, but everyone knew exactly what she meant.

Something that struck me throughout the two days of the conference was the eager interest shown by the young RAD students who were acting as helpers. It was touching to see their rapt concentration as they sat cross-legged on the floor at the masterclasses, close enough to stars like Tamara Rojo and Jonathan Cope to touch them.

The conference closed with a panel session on the future of MacMillan's works, which concluded with Deborah MacMillan's quiet statement that all her late husband would have wished for was that his works would live on to entertain audiences into the future. Amen to that, we would all say.

I have said many admiring things about this remarkable conference; so allow me to say one critical thing here. The conference wasn't cheap - £70 a day - and for that amount of money we should at the very least have been provided with individual name badges and a list of delegates. We were given neither. Enough said.

A highlight for me was the workshop on Saturday when Monica Mason and Donald MacLeary coached two young RB dancers in a pas de deux from Song of the Earth. The young people were beautiful - strong and supple and eager to learn. But Mason and MacLeary were equally beautiful in the authority of their movements, their focus and their commitment to passing on what they know.

On Saturday night the National Film Theatre screened a triple bill of MacMillan films made for television, which was sparsely attended but was fabulous. Many of the people featured in the films were there at the conference (Birgit Keil and Vladimir Klos from "A Lot of Happiness" and MacLeary, Mason, David Wall and Wayne Eagling from "Elite Syncopations").

One of my favorite moments was during the dancers' panel when Eagling referred to David Wall as Ginger, then added "not so ginger any more" - and Wall (whose hair is now silver) laughed exactly the laugh of that gorgeous devil Lescaut in the "Manon" video.

I agree with Ann that name tags would have been helpful. I didn't know a soul and might have had the courage to introduce myself to some ballet.co posters if I had known who they were. But I had a fine time anyway.

At one point Bruce and ballet.co were thanked for helping support the conference. Certainly I would never have thought to go if it wasn't for ballet.co. So, thanks from me too!

Yes. The RAD expects to publish them at the end of the year, or shortly after that. There will also be more in the November balletco magazine.