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This is Night Club with me Michael Gurr and I'm joined now by Ross Stretton. It's my great pleasure to welcome him. Ross trained at the Australian Ballet School, he very quickly moved on from soloist to principal with the company and then headed to America, where he danced with the American Ballet Theater for 17 years. In 1997 Ross returned to Australia - this is like 'This is your Life' - taking on the top job of Artistic Director at the Australian Ballet. Of course late last year, the big news, he swapped the secure life of the artistic directorship of the AB for the perils of running England's Royal Ballet. Now he's bringing that company here, back to Australia, for their first Australian tour in 14 years.

Ross Stretton, welcome to Radio National's 'Night Club'. It's a gypsy life, isn't it?

It is. It is an enjoyable life though.

What was it that lured you to the Royal Ballet?

They lured me. They just said would I like to come and work in an interesting environment, the Opera House, and take the RB to another place.

They've just done some huge renovation and it has been shut for a while?

It has been closed for two and a half years.

What does it look like now?

Oh it's beautiful. It's really beautiful and the facilities backstage and for the audience are really wonderful.

It's backstage that matters. What have they done? Is life better for the dancers?

It is now the residence of the dancers and the opera and they have their own dressing rooms and workshops there, theatres for them to work in, small theatres, large theatres…

They used to send the dancers to rehearse on the other side of town?

They did yes. Absolute nightmare.

When you arrived at the Royal, when you arrived at Covent Garden, what kind of greeting did you get? What kind of world was there to greet you?

I was very nervous of course but there was, I thought, a very clear atmosphere of acceptance. I knew a lot of the dancers in the first place. I had worked with them through America. I was in contact with them before I was actually in the studios. It was a warm reception, it was 'let's get down to work'. I said when I was appointed that there would be an easy transition between Anthony Dowell, the previous director, who was retiring, and myself. It was important to me that the company didn't stop and go backwards, that it continued to move forwards and that's exactly what the dancers have done.

All the press pretty much made a feature of the fact that the first colonial was arriving to take over the Royal Ballet. Was there much of that kind of treatment of a colonial?

Not from the dancers, not from the company point of view. From the Opera House there was a little bit of scepticism, I think, but at this stage, I believe, everything is on track. The productions are working well. So the Opera House has obviously accepted the fact that they have a new director who is not an Englishman. I think for the audiences it is a matter of watching the performances, and enjoying the performances and not really worrying what nationality I am.

I suppose from the press and watching the television show The House, we have this sense of a funny cloistered world. Even some of the press talked about the job as a poisoned chalice with all the factions and so on. Have you found it anything like that at all?

Deliberately I have stayed away from that. There is so much you can read into it. There is a new director of the ballet, there's a new director of the opera, Tony Pappano, and there is a new director of the Opera House. Clean sweep. Three new positions. We care about the heritage. We have to be very careful about the past, but we don't care where the bodies are buried. We're just getting on with life.

Where are the bodies buried?

I will make sure when the Royal Ballet comes to Australia that there are no dead bodies (laughter)

You opened with Nureyev's Don Quixote. Is that a personal favourite?

I would have preferred to open with Onegin, which was the next production. The Cranko estate was just not available to put the work on at that stage. So I opened with Don Q, and I was very happy with the level of dancing in Don Q. It gave everyone an opportunity to get out there and be seen and I thought it was really good.

Well received?

From the audience yes, not necessarily from the critics. But the very next production, Onegin, the critics really adored. So it's a mix. I take it as it comes. There are good and bad.

I always find audiences easier to read than critics…

I enjoy the audiences, I must admit. I sit in there and that's my Geiger counter.

They tend not to come with so many agendas. You feel like you have to get to know the personality and quirks of the critics, whereas you don't have to get to know everyone in the audience. They just become one and behave as one and give a very clear indication.

That's exactly how I work and that's what I enjoy.

The Australian tour. It's pretty ambitious and classical. Two full-length classical works, Swan Lake and Giselle. Shouldn't classical works be taking more of a back seat to contemporary stuff?

Probably with my background here in Australia with some of the new works that I brought in. But when I arrived in London and saw the absolute level of dancing and the way they approached the classics, it is the bloodline of the company and it should be seen. There are all those great partnerships like Nureyev and Fonteyn and Sibley and Dowell in the past. But they all still exist at the Royal Ballet. And all the younger dancers have the qualities of those superstars. And you put them altogether and it's a really really strong company.

So you have to decide to give it that kind of bias. Was that something you had in mind for Australian audiences?

Well I think it is important that the Australians see the top level of classicism, which is what I am seeing at the Royal Ballet. With Swan Lake and Giselle, they are pure classics. They will always be successful. But it takes great dancers to make them better and that is what the Royal Ballet has. There is a contemporary work, a new work by Christopher Wheeldon yet to be choreographed. He starts in another two weeks. But that's a brand new commission for the Royal Ballet and that will be seen in Australia as well. So it's not all on the classical side.

But you do say that the foundation of every great dance company is classical. That's all down to the training, yea?

I believe so. But the Royal Ballet has at the moment 50% non-English dancers. But they are handpicked dancers who have a classicism, a purity in their classical form, that they are then able to move in any direction, contemporary, classical, in any different direction that a choreographer wants to move.

Half the dancers are not from England and this is called the Royal Ballet? Is this 'Cool Britannia' in action?

I think it is a balance that needs be changed a little bit. But, you know, when good dancers audition you don't say no. Top dancers you grab.

Well indeed. So how do you keep an identity going?

That's where it goes back to the classicism. These dancers are very very classically trained and very pure in their approach to classical dance and that is what the Royal Ballet is all about. It's the classicism, it's the purity, it's the musicality, it's the form. And that is all there. And when you join the Royal Ballet, whether it is from any other country, even Australia, and there are Australian dancers in the Royal from the corps de ballets right through to the principals, you become the Royal Ballet.

You are also here for the Australian Ballet's 40th birthday gala gig. I saw the picture of you in the Melbourne Age.

The four directors, the only ones who are alive. I didn't actually see the performance. I only made the curtain calls at the end, which was important. I wanted to be here. I wanted to be part of the celebrations and then after the curtain calls, there was a function at the Ballet Centre with all the dancers that had been involved, all the people that had worked with the Australian Ballet in the past. It was great fun. I enjoyed every second of it.

Tell me about the logistics of a tour of this size. How many ballets are you putting together?

We have two major classical works and three one-act ballets.

You are out here very early. It doesn't kick off until May?

The logistics, I'm here with Michael Leslie and Andrew Guild and it is just the logistics, the process of the company coming here, the rehearsal space, casting, hotels, all of those issues need to be addressed.

You're going to check it all out beforehand?

There's a lot to look at. The safety of the dancers is important. It's a large company; it is not necessarily a touring company. The Australian Ballet tours all the time and the Royal Ballet is a large company so it doesn't tour as much. The logistics of coming to Australia or travelling to America or anywhere, it's a big move.

The calibre of the dancers. After Fonteyn, Darcey Bussell is regarded as, sort of, you know….

She's the top English ballerina. She deserves that title.

Some of the others?

Sylvie Guillem, French ballerina, again one of the greatest dancers in the world. And there's some younger talent coming up, that you will see if you get a chance to see the performances. But the range of dancers: they're great artists. They are the top of the field.

Are dancers different these days? I guess I ask because 20 years ago I spent time with dancers going through training. And the world they were inhabiting seemed to be an almost feudal world, which seemed very old fashioned. I guess that was to do with the sheer physical discipline of the work they were doing. I wonder if that world has changed much?

I think it has changed. The eating habits of dancers have changed. The muscle tone of dancers has got longer. The rehabilitation is less, because they have Pilates and physiotherapy, whereas 20 years ago they didn't. All of those things play a big part in the changing of dancers. The ability to make a dancer understand that they need to work on other things while they're dancing, for any other career and study while they have down time, or study while they have injury time or have the confidence in themselves to do other things.

How do you describe your role as Artistic Director? Do you see it as about challenging audiences, challenging the dancers?

Both I think. My position is to give a long and healthy career to a dancer and show them the way through this career and how to complete it at the other end successfully and have a long career. At the same time to bring repertoire to the dancers that feeds them and challenges them. In return it goes across the orchestra pit to the audiences and challenges the audience.

How important is it to push audiences on?

I think it is very important. When I was here in Australia, I tried, especially with the triple bills, to move it on and make people think. Ballet dancers are human and have the same emotions as you and I have. It's important that people think about the works, not just to work out what a piece says. Everybody will read something different into a piece. But always there is a message, always something in that ballet that will touch you; whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, or whether it's your heart or your head. That's all I can hope.

You were with the Australian Ballet for 4 years. Do you think that was long enough to achieve what you set out to do?

No it wasn't. When I look at the young choreographers and some of the young dancers, even yesterday when I came back for the 40th anniversary, seeing some of the unfinished talent there that I hope rises to the top of the ranks of the dancers in Australia, it was a short time. But I made the move at the right time of my life, and - who knows? I might come back and see this talent grow!

Really! I think we got a hint dropped there. You spent 17 years in the States. That's a long time.

I loved every second of it.

What was the most important stuff about the time you spent there?

I was a dancer for ten of those years. I kept coming back and coming back to Australia, but greater things fell in front of me when I was in New York and I stayed there. Then I was given the opportunity to be the assistant director of American Ballet Theater and the greatest choreographers and the greatest composers and designers were coming through New York and I was working with them. I loved every second of it.

You worked with Baryshnikov there. What was it like? Tell me something about that time?

He was one of the greatest dancers of our time and he was dancing and directing. He was a very different director and I've been through Dame Peggy Van Praagh, Ann Williams, Sir Robert Helpmann, then I went to America and worked with Robert Joffrey and then ABT, Mikhail Baryshnikov. Everybody was different, but Misha had a quality about him that he was a perfectionist, never happy with what was going on in his life, and never happy with what was going on on stage. I learnt a lot of lessons from that. I push hard, but you can't always be perfect.

Is that the lesson, that you can't always be perfect?

Yea, I think so. Be happy with your own achievements.

He thought he could achieve perfection and couldn't?

And he was unhappy about that.

What about Helpmann? He actually got you to the States with scholarships?

He actually sent me to America and he knew I could dance. He said "Ross, just concentrate on the theatre. Have a look at the theatre". New York had it all and I loved every second of it.

What about Ann Williams then? What did you take from her?

She was a different guiding light. She had an eye for detail; she had an eye to pull on the heartstrings. She was a very emotional woman. She was able to get that emotional character out of dancers and the dramatic side. She, if anyone, worked with me for hours and hours to be a prince in Swan Lake, or Albrecht in Giselle. Because that was a pure classicism and she had a pure feeling of that classicism that really drove her.

So you felt the strong thing coming from her was about acting almost?

Almost, yes. The emotion of dance. And again, this is the human side, she brought Romeo and Juliet, she brought Onegin to the company. And they were very emotional works.

For some people it has been one of the distancing things about classical ballet, is to watch embodiments of physical perfection, but not to feel or see a heart break or a mind take fire?

But dance is very powerful and if you can tell the story with the physical body, it becomes even more powerful and she knew that.

You're experimenting with something at the moment in London, the idea of outdoor broadcasts of live ballet performances. Where did that idea come from?

It started with the Opera and now it has gone into the ballet. They have an open area in the Piazza at Covent Garden that fills up with people sitting on cushions and chairs. They bring the screens down around the Opera House. They film the performance live. At the end, all the dancers and all the singers go out into the Piazza and take their curtain calls.

Oh that's lovely. That's about affordability yes? What does a ticket cost to the Royal Ballet?

This coming year, the lowest cost is £50. Half the House is £50, which is actually bringing it down from £75. So it's a big change and Tony Hall, this new head of the Opera House, he is instigating all of this. And, it's quite funny, I keep saying 'Tony, if you sat in B24", and then he goes up there and I say, "would you pay £50 for this seat when you only have half the visibility to see?". So we move around the Opera House.

Damn fine thing to do….

---And I'm not going to be able to afford to take my children, or he his children to the Opera and the Ballet if it is going to be so expensive.

I think you would find me watching the screen…. Ross Stretton thank you very much for coming in. All the best for the tour.

Pleasure.