Bourne set the ball rolling with his 1992 Nutcracker - a lurid comic-strip rewrite that cut the saccharin of the plot by peopling the Land of Sweets with Doris Day marshmallows and mean gobstoppers on motorbikes. That could mean brand-new adaptations (David Bintley's Far from the Madding Crowd, Christopher Gable's Dracula) or old favourites in new guises. On a gentler note, Mark Morris produced a Nutcracker in which the climactic "Dance of the Snowflakes" was a mix of men and women, some dancing on pointe, some not, according to choice, not gender. And famously, 100 years after its first appearance, Matthew Bourne dismantled the ultimate feminine ballet icon - the Odette/ Odile role in Swan Lake - and recreated it as a man. Bourne's creations for his company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, point up another of the decade's trends: a renewed faith in the full-evening story-ballet. Kenneth MacMillan made a startling piece for the Royal Ballet about gang rape on a Docklands building site David Bintley explored the gruesome fate of Edward II. In the early 1990s the American Stephen Petronio made a high-profile work in which men in pink corsets pulled ribbons from each other's bottoms. The most discernible shift of the past decade has been in subject matter.

While much new dance continues to conform to traditional notions of gender, the range of what men and women may do or represent on stage has expanded more than the Martha Graham pioneers could have dreamt. Do you actually know yourself who you were? Did you ever think of yourself? In Love, your Dave." 2. The sad open letter that Klingeberg released after Gildo's death shows that he, too, is still searching for answers: "Rex, you could never accept what you really were And I did not succeed in removing your eternal playboy mask You simply could not part with it No one really knew you. His companion for the last seven years of his life thinks not. But one wonders if whether it will ever be understood who the real Rex Gildo was. Neither does the news that a woman in her early twenties has come forward, claiming to be Rex Gildo's love-child.Eventually, some sort of truth may be sifted from the lies. "He had money, some success, good looks, but the thing that really mattered to him - his private life - was not the way he wanted it," Baur says.

"I think he saw other normal relationships and asked himself, `Why can't I have that?' Perhaps he was not strong enough to change his circumstances."The latest revelations - that there exists a handwritten testament by the star, bequeathing half of his wealth to Klingeberg, and that Gildo's ex-wife, Marion, is speaking to her lawyers - do not shed much light on Gildo's life. Five hours later, he would be lying crumpled on the ground below his window.As to the rumours of drunkenness, Gildo had slipped a disc several years earlier, and, in the months leading up to his death, he was having to take more and more medication as the pain worsened. His slurred speech and puffy complexion were less likely to have been the result of alcohol than of the pills and cortisone injections he was receiving. He must have suspected that he would not be able to keep up the act much longer. In a letter to Kanthak, he implored: "Find me just one more great single."He seems to have been very aware that his life was unfulfilled; that by denying his true self he had also denied himself the possibility of complete happiness. This was a great audience.'" Then he was driven back to his Munich apartment for the last time. He seemed at ease, no starry behaviour - a very nice and sympathetic man.

As he left he squeezed my hand and said, `I hope to play here again. But he was definitely not drunk."Sagermuller recalls: "He was more upbeat after the performance He went to meet the customers in the restaurant He didn't have to do that But he stayed for another hour, chatting to the fans. The backing system providing canned accompaniment was not working properly. "There were a few technical problems, mostly feedback," admits Kanthak "For a professional like Rex Gildo, that was very difficult.