A Love Story presents the twenty-year history of Meekers, makers of dance performances for children and young people in Rotterdam. It has a number of qualities to which, by degrees, we have already become accustomed: it lies open nicely thanks to its Swiss binding, the paper is matt and off-white, and in the centre spreads there is a cheery red binding thread. The preliminaries and end matter are printed in orange-red, while the main matter takes a full-colour look at the various Meekers productions.

This is where the book’s greatest strength becomes apparent, in the insubordinate way images and headlines run over the edge to the right to the next spread and in so doing inject into the book an element of movement that is so sorely missed in many books about the theatre. The texts are just as polyglottal as the everyday conversation in almost any dance group.

The cover picture elects to cosy up to the title rather than put us on the track of the subject – ‘an opportunity missed’. Some panel members thought the names floating in the air on the opening pages had been ‘put on a bit too thick’. But these were incidental observations that failed to make the panel waver on the matter of whether this lovingly made book deserved selection.