Why is Russian ballet in Wales bizarre?  I can't get the link to work. Would Russian ballet in, say, Brighton, be less bizarre?  Mind you, ballet performed in whales, now that would be pretty bizarre

The first link works fine for me, maybe not for you Mort if you don't have the necessary plug-ins.  Try this one instead http://www.balletrusse.com/index.htm

A very good and very respected Ballet Company who do venture outside of Swansea and tour extensively.  Nothing bizarre about it at all.

This may, perhaps, seem "odd" in Britain - but that's only because Britain has such bloody awful regional provision of the live arts    

In Russia it's a mark of civic pride that any city with more than 500,000 people will have a "musical theatre" capable of performing the mainstays of the ballet, opera and operetta repertoire.  In addition to that there'll usually be a symphony orchestra, or at least a chamber-sized orchestra.  Larger cities (of 1m+ population) will have fully-fledged opera & ballet troupes, and the "musical theatre" troupe (performing operetta, musicals, and other shows) will be separate... and there'll be a symphony orchestra too.  In English terms, this would mean that Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Southampton, Bristol, Exeter, etc would each have their own, full-time ensembles based in the city (and not a "share" of a nearby outfit).

Of course, there are a few exceptions... Irkutksk (Siberia) is poorly provided (and doesn't have a proper venue either).. it relies on tours from Ulan-Ude, a full day's journey away.  Vladivostok shares an opera/ballet with Khabarovsk.   But even small places like Veliky Novgorod (pop 220k) has a full-time chamber orchestra and chorus, which even gets around to staging smaller operas like DIDO & AENEAS now and again (ehem!).   And small towns like Vladimir (pop 350k) have amazing orchestras which play all the big symphonic repertoire (Brahms, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Prokofiev etc).