Our Darwin-inspired dance piece The Comedy of Change is on tour. At each venue we gather something local. This time it’s been scientists who drop by to explain evolution in about five minutes. I drag them up on stage and, because most of them are professors and lecturers, they just take to it. It’s been fabulous.

I’ve been working with Nicola Clayton, the Professor of Comparative Cognition at Clare College, Cambridge. Unlike most professors, she drives a sports car, wears amazing clothes, and teaches tango and salsa. As soon as you meet her, you can’t help but look to see what shoes she’s perched on. Her speciality is birds, which she calls “the feathered apes”.

To help me with my piece, she taught the dancers to tango. The thing with tango is that, while you are dancing with one person, you can actually be flirting with another. Animals are good at that. She showed me film footage of birds of paradise and mannequin birds. They have really elaborate dances that have taken them years to develop. If the male bird’s moves aren’t absolutely right, if he’s not fluffing his feathers in the right way, if his head isn’t moving in sync, the female birds will just go, leaving him deflated.

We’ve also been inspired by camouflage. The dancers are dressed completely in black and white at the front, and — I don’t want to give away too much — when they turn around and face up the stage they sort of disappear. So, that worked well in our favour.

Two rehearsal directors have been off sick this week. Luckily, one of our main dancers, Angela Towler, who is injured, stepped up to the mark — and she’s absolutely amazing at the job. Directing is a big thing if there are 22 dancers, but they’re a fantastic group, they’re mature, they’re experienced and they look after the younger ones. If I had a group of divas it would be a different story.

We’ve been in Poole — where we haven’t performed for 28 years — and I have been travelling backwards and forwards from London to make sure that Angela’s OK.

I had a screen test at the BBC last week. They were looking for some one-off guest judges for So You Think You Can Dance and asked me if I would choreograph something for it. It was the day there was the kerfuffle over Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. We got in easily, but when we went to leave there was a mob of angry people outside — it was quite intimidating. The night before, I went to a friend’s house for dinner and Stephen Fry was there. He’s so wonderful and charming and erudite, you mention something and he has four angles on it.

On Monday, choreographer Siobhan Davies turned up to begin rehearsals on a new work, The Art of Touch, which is set to György Legeti and Matteo Fargion — yummy harpsichord music. It was so interesting to see the dancers take on the choreography with its multi-directional impulses, measured plucks and flying trills. We’ll start rehearsing at the beginning of next year.

I think about the future every day. The Comedy of Change opens at Sadler’s Wells next week, and I’ve slaved over the programme order — it’s going to be different from Poole. In London, audiences are much harder to please, they want things sharper, they want the ideas to be right at the front.

Rambert Dance Company has been given the space occupied by the car park behind the National Theatre. We’ve had a competition, we’ve chosen an architect and we’ve got the go-ahead, so this week I’ve been convincing people why they should give us money for this building. The charm button has come out. Sometimes I have to force it on, sometimes it’s jammed, sometimes it’s the wrong kind of charm. It’s like parking a car: you have to know where the lights and bumpers are so you don’t scrape it against too many wing mirrors.

The Comedy of Change tour comes to Sadler’s Wells, London EC1R, on Tuesday. For details, see rambert.org.uk

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