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Irek Mukhamedov is very intense, very focused. He had been in a studio at the Royal Opera House all morning, rehearsing for his gala at the Coliseum on the 30th September in aid of the charity KIDS.

He is still high on adrenalin as he leads us briskly through the vast scene dock behind the Opera House stage and along the corridor to his old dressing room. Once there he relaxes. This after all is “his space”, even if it is strange to find him there at all. He is no longer with the Royal Ballet, and was open about his pain at leaving it. But if he has any rancour, it doesn’t show. In any event, dancers from the Royal Ballet are performing in his gala, and the Opera House has given him a studio to rehearse.

While at the age of 41 he is coming to the end of his performing career, he still feels it too early to stop. “While I can dance, I will dance. I can still do so many things that younger dancers cannot do. But more and more I enjoy creating - and I would like to create and to dance as long as possible”.

“...more and more I enjoy creating - and I would like to create and to dance as long as possible”.

Mukhamedov is excited by his first forays into choreography. Already this year he has created a new Swan Lake for Warsaw National Ballet and critics who have seen it, like it. He found it absorbing not merely to create movement, but also to rework the story line. “At the first full rehearsal with dancers, set, orchestra, lighting, it really came together. And it was mine - all mine. I thought to myself, “very good - this is really something”. This is something I can understand, and that audiences can too”.

London audiences will have an opportunity to see the ballroom scene (in Mukhamedov’s production, the second act) when the Warsaw Ballet performs it at Sadler’s Wells during the Volochkova season in the week before the Gala. He also hopes to interest an impresario in bringing the full version here later.

On teaching and coaching: “We should not kill ourselves - just enjoy!”

At first Mukhamedov was unsure of himself as a choreographer and admits he was scared. Conquering this initial lack of confidence has involved an inner journey. As a dancer, he was content to be clay in a choreographer's hands. Since he has changed places in the rehearsal studio, and stands in front of dancers, moulding their steps, his musicality has been heightened. Where once he merely listened to music, he now feels driven to explore individual phrases more and more deeply, as he attempts to quarry from them even richer material.

He hopes to stretch himself as a choreographer and mentioned several times his ambition to attempt a new production of The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. It is the classics that engage Mukhamedov, and not modern work. For him the attraction is telling stories with deeper clarity. “I don’t want to be just modern and put steps on. It’s not me. I want to be a classical dramatic storyteller. I want to have conversation in each step, be it dialogue or monologue”. It

“I want to have conversation in each step, be it dialogue or monologue”

is clear that his late mentor, Kenneth MacMillan, has been an enduring influence. “I wished that Kenneth were still alive, and was still with me, and had created on me more and more. Then I would have an even greater vocabulary to become a choreographer”.

He says he would like to produce The Fountain of Bakhchisarai for a Russian company. Asked if he ever hopes to return there permanently, the answer is a firm no. He has settled here, his children are growing up here, and he would not, he says, wish his own itinerant fate on them. In any event he has a relationship with audiences in Britain - and it is for them that he wants to create new work. One Bolshoi role still tempts him, he admits, Ivan the Terrible. “At my age it is the right time - and it is a technical and dramatic challenge”.

“If I had the chance to dance it, I would go back.” on Ivan the Terrible at the Bolshoi

In the KIDS gala Mukhamedov will recreate some of his outstanding partnerships, notably with Altynai Asylmuratova and Viviana Durante. Also taking part will be Adam Cooper, Daria Klimentova, Tamara Rojo, Miyako Yoshida and Mara Galeazzi. There will be an excerpt from his choreography for a new piece based on the life of Rudolph Valentino, the silent-screen star.

Mukhamedov’s own daughter Sasha will be on stage together with her fellow students from Arts Educational at Tring. His wife Masha, herself a former soloist with the Bolshoi, has been the guiding spirit behind the gala. She has co-ordinated the show, liaised with the dancers and the charities, and freed her husband to concentrate on the actual performance. “I want to remind people of what I’ve done”, Mukhemadov says, “also to show people what I was best at, and at the same time to thank the audience”.