Ballet, Bites, Brazil
The year was 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in Brazil had already worked its magic and captivated the eyes and ears of the world. As had been the case for years, the choreography across the familiar stretch of green had begun its swift course, this time in the home of soccer and samba: the bodies twisting and turning in pirouettes, legs swinging in fouettes and men jostling against each other; each move a segment of one beautiful dance that flits about the length and breadth of the football pitch.
So it went for a while, until a harebrained Uruguayan came along and, in the middle of the ongoing ballet, bared his teeth and unleashed the fury of his incisors upon an Italian shoulder.
If, at that very moment, you had told the French that this was indeed the “ballet of the masses” as some Russian composer put it more than half a century ago, they would have struggled to find a name for the act despite their extensive terminology around the dance form, while the Renaissance folks in Italy would have turned in their graves. But FIFA, the governing body of football, called it “unacceptable” and slapped a four-month-long ban from all football-related activities on the perpetrator, who happened to be one of the best centre-forwards of the time.