Anyone who has strolled through London’s Covent Garden will have noticed the bronze cast located just off Bow Street in Broad Court, opposite the Opera House. The life-size statue of a dancer sitting on a high stool, wearing a leotard and toe shoes, has inspired the name of the Italian restaurant just steps away: La Ballerina.

The tranquility, grace and introspection of this woman as she adjusts one of her shoes contrast with her manifest strength; latent energy and the movement of the dance course through her even though the act she is performing is a low-key one. She has great presence, her stillness and concentration the more noticeable because of the buzz of the crowded pedestrian zone that surrounds her.

Sculptor Enzo Plazzotta

The artist who created the figure is Enzo Mario Plazzotta, who moved to London in his twenties, where he made a career for himself and where he died, aged 60, in 1981.