The Big Ballet is based in Oxford’s twin town of Perm in Russia’s Ural Mountains, the area that produced two of ballet’s greatest names — Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev. But, despite their great achievements, they would never in their wildest imaginings have conceived the idea of a ballet company that consists entirely of ballerinas who weigh 15 stone or more — twice the weight of a conventional female dancer.

I asked Alexeij Ignatow who had made this bizarre concept a reality.

“It was founded by the dancer and choreographer Evgenii Panfilov in 1994. He had other troupes too, but he was a man who always came up with extraordinary ideas, and he wanted to show people that you don’t have to be thin to be able to dance.

“Panfilov created this company not to shock, but to show that you can move gracefully even if you’re much bigger than a classical dancer.

“He wanted to challenge the belief that big people can’t dance, and so he put together a company of very large dancers who could move beautifully on the stage.”

How do they find very large dancers like these?

“He tested the waters by putting in a radio advert, and asked for large lady dancers, and there was a huge response from frustrated girls.

“We still have quite a few of the original dancers, but we hold auditions all the time, and new dancers come through.

“They’ve all done dance before. All small girls dream of being ballerinas, but, when some of them get to be seven or eight, their teacher may have to tell their parents that it’s unfair to encourage them to carry on, because of the size of their bodies, so their dreams are stopped right there, “But they have all done dance training. Then suddenly, when they’re maybe 20, they hear about this company, and it gives them a second chance.”

It was only last month that the company had to reduce the minimum weight level from 17st to 15st, because of the difficulty of finding women who could perform at such weights.

Did they find themselves auditioning girls who might have been 12st or 13st, but who had stuffed themselves with food for weeks in order to make the weight?

“No, we’ve never had this kind of situation. People are always asking how much they eat, but we deal with classical dancers in other companies, and I have to say that they seem to eat more than the big girls in this company.

“They’re the size they are because of their body structure, not because they eat a lot. It’s just the result of a malfunction of their metabolism, but their actual diet is very very healthy.”

All the same one might think it can’t be very healthy to be exerting yourself on stage in a 15st body, but, like all athletic performances, their ability to keep going is the result of hard work.

“They train two or three times a week, depending on the season, but what they do doesn’t come quickly, it’s the result of years of training, and they are very supple and flexible. One of our ballerinas even does the splits in stage — but then that’s not so hard when you have 120kg pushing you down.”

The first part of the show is a comedy based on Swan Lake, and then five normal-sized male dancers join the girls for some more contemporary work.

lThe Big Ballet is at Aylesbury Waterside on Wednesday, Wycombe Swan on March 22, and the New Theatre, Oxford, on April 8.