Bruce Sansom in reviews

Royal Ballet audiences have been dismayed at the news that Bruce Sansom, the company's senior dancer, has decided to retire from dancing. He gave his last performance on July 25th, sent on his way by the sort of farewell - balloons, flowers, endless cheers - which the audience reserves for its special favourites, and is to spend the next year with the San Francisco Ballet, learning the practicalities of management.

Sansom was trained at the Royal Ballet School and joined the company in 1982, rising to principal rank in five years. Although his name is probabaly less well known to the general public than, for instance, his contemporary Jonathan Cope, he was the sort of dancer without which no company can exist - serious, hardworking, reliable - all of which may sound dull but didn't come over like that on stage. He danced much the same repertoire as other principals - an ardent Romeo, the heroes of Swan Lake, Giselle and the other classics - but what made him special was his style: he has to perfection the elegant 'English' line, which made him fit particularly well into Frederick Ashton's ballets. In The Dream, Symphonic Variations, La Fille mal Gardée, he had that uniquely 'right' look that older dance-goers remember too in Anthony Dowell.

Most of the choreographers who have worked with the Royal Ballet during Sansom's time there have chosen him to create roles for them, and in particular he was one of the favourite dancers of David Bintley. Bintley gave him one of the leading roles in his full-evening ballet Cyrano, but in two shorter pieces that he had some of his most memorable creations: as the Texan Kangaroo Rat in Still Life at the Penguin Cafe - a long, exhausting solo, in a quite different style from usual, and one which gave him a chance to demonstrate his sense of humour - and as the leading man, partnering Viviana Durante, in Tombeaux, where his final exit, circling the stage in wider and wider arcs, was unforgettable.

In the last few years, whilst the Royal Ballet has been under considerable pressure from the problems arising out of the mismanagement of the rebuilding of the Royal Opera House, Sansom has really stepped up to his responsibility as senior dancer. No-one who was there will forget the speech he made from the stage of Sadler's Wells at the height of the dancers' fight against possible redundancies, and nor could anyone doubt how completely the audience were on his side. In the last couple of seasons, too, he has worked with different choreographers to create roles in very different idioms, most notably with contemporary choreographer Siobhan Davies in the first programme in the new Opera House. He is going out on a high and will be much missed - let's hope he brings his new expertise back to this country at the end of his year in San Francisco.