Cindy, companion in Angel

About Cindy

Blonde and wavy and worn long, her hair is the thing people describe afterwards, though it is usually her blue eyes that settle an introduction. Cindy is 168 cm and slim, and she moves like somebody who has spent real hours in a studio: upright, unhurried, aware of exactly how much space she is taking up. She dresses cleanly, in colours you could name in one word, and she carries flat shoes in her bag because Angel is a hill pretending not to be one. At twenty six she has stopped dressing to be looked at and started dressing to be comfortable for four hours, which turns out to look better anyway.

She is calm company, the sort that takes a degree or two out of a room simply by entering it. She has English alone and spends it sparingly, preferring one accurate sentence to three approximate ones. Dance is the subject she will talk about at length if you let her, from why a particular company tours so rarely to why the cheap seats at the side are often the honest ones. She laughs more easily than her stillness suggests she will.

An Angel evening of hers is built around Sadler's Wells on Rosebery Avenue, twelve minutes downhill from the station, where the programme changes often enough that she has never once seen the same week twice. She comes over from Chelsea, which is a slow crawl by road through the middle of town and a much better idea on the Northern line, so she arrives by train and by daylight when she can. Afterwards she likes the small tables at the foot of Upper Street, or Camden Passage when the antique dealers have gone home and the lane belongs to whoever is still out.

Her ground between the canal and Clerkenwell Road is written up on the Angel page, hotels and late tables included. Send a date and a finishing hour to the evening desk, and Cindy will tell you what fits comfortably inside them rather than what nearly does.

Asking for her

Cindy asks for the curtain time first and builds backwards from it, allowing twenty minutes for the walk down Rosebery Avenue. An evening of dance and a table after it sits comfortably in three hours at £700.

Every figure she works to is already public on the board, and the order of the evening is set out on the booking page.

An evening with Cindy

Half six on a Friday, and Cindy is already standing outside rather than waiting in a lobby, because she says the street tells you more about a night than a foyer does. One drink before the show, nothing complicated, and she will explain what to watch for in the first ten minutes so the opening does not go past you.

Afterwards she is talkative in a way she was not beforehand. She will replay a lift or a phrase with her hands on the table, decide which dancer was carrying the piece, and want to know which bit stayed with you. Somewhere near eleven the conversation slows of its own accord, and the walk back up to Angel takes long enough to finish it properly.