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Our guest this morning is ballerina Darcey Bussell. Good Morning. When you listen to the music do you think of the steps?

Yes you can’t help it. I go through all of it constantly correcting myself.

It must be imprinted on your brain?

Swan Lake I’ll never forget because it was one of my first classics that I did when I was 20. It is very dear to me because it was the first thing I ever did that kind of made whatever or me. I had Margot Fonteyn coach me and that is a memory I will never forget either.

Indeed and it must have been towards the end of her life?

Exactly. She was quite ill when she coached me and I only got her for about a week.

Can you remember what she said to you about Swan Lake?

The one thing that will always stick in my mind is that she said, "Don’t try and be a swan. You are a woman first". And that really stuck with me because you were constantly going ‘oh -the arms, the arms. I must be like a bird, like a bird, like this’. And she said, "No, you’re a woman and that is what he’s attracted to. He’s not attracted to the bird of you. He is attracted to the woman." And she said you have got to be incredibly feminine and sensual and you only have the bird instincts afterwards and they come in.

And that changes the way you think about it?

Yes because the choreography, she said, also tells the story. Where obviously sometimes you separate the steps, the whole meaning is in there, she said, the whole story is in the pas-de-deux and in your solo. She made me understand it really well.

That’s lovely - what good advice from one of the great ballerinas of the 20th century. I’d like to ask about standing on pointe. It looks beautiful but it is amazingly tough?

It’s not comfortable. You get used to it obviously. It’s a pain that goes with the job, you don’t think of anything. When I first went on pointe I felt: "this was silly. How do they expect you to dance on your toes", even though I loved it. But it was incredibly painful. But you just get used to it and you also know how to look after your feet better. So, if you’re working all day, and you have pointe shoes on all day, you know what to do.

So what do you do? Do you feel more comfortable wearing high-heeled shoes when you’re out of pointe shoes?

No. When you’re out of pointe shoes, you want to get into flat sneakers. Initially your toes are all tight together to make that very petite looking foot. They are sort of squashed. Also I would wrap each toe up so that I wouldn’t get any callouses.

You wrap each individual toe? In what?

In plasters. Band-aid. They also have a new thing now like a blancmange, like a jelly, that you can put on the top of your toes as a cushion. We do a lot of our jumps on pointe and lots of bourrées. So the pressure through the joints just to cushion it with a little bit of jelly which helps as well.

What is a fouetté?

It’s a very famous turn on pointe. In Swan Lake we do 32. It’s very famous. You’re meant to do the fouettés on the spot; you are not allowed to move. The supporting leg is straight and you relevé on pointe. The fouetté is the whip of the leg, when you’re turning you go to second and it whips in, whips in. You do that 32 times.

And you count?

No. It’s in the music. But it is 32 times.

I’ve been so interested to read about the history of pointe shoes. The Ballets Russes ‘baby ballerinas’, I read, used in the 1930s to do 64 fouettés on pointe, 6 unsupported pirouettes and extended balances. That means something to you does it?

Yes - that’s basically what we do.

And the audiences cheered for more. It’s like a blood sport isn’t it?

It is in theory. It is a way of making something very exciting, puts you on the edge of your seat when you watch. It’s not the lyrical romantic side of dance, more the showy side.

Why don’t you get dizzy?

We learn this from school. You learn to spot on something. You leave your head until the last minute to whip it around. Then, in theory, you shouldn’t get dizzy.

And do you ever?

You do sometimes. You can’t help it. When we’re on stage we have all these lights on us. Then, when we look into the auditorium, it’s black. So there’s not a lot to look at and you can get very disoriented. For me for the show on Friday, I’ll try and get on stage and practice my turns.

It’s a wonder that they don’t put a light at the back for you?

We have a red spotting light and that’s the only thing to help. But often you get on some stage and find that it’s not there!

What are the shoes like? Are they high tech?

They have improved immensely. But I have to say that the older designs are better. You don’t want too much support, because then they are too noisy and they don’t move with your foot.

So they clump a bit?

They clump a bit and also you want your feet to be as expressive as your hands. And if they are too stiff and they don’t move, then you are losing half of the movement out of what you are trying to do.

Have you injured yourself at all?

Yes quite a few times!

What sort of injuries have you sustained?

The most common in dancers are in the girls, stress fractures in the feet, metatarsals, the toe joints, in the instep, we get stress fractures a lot there.

Do you get bunions?

Yes, only if you don’t really look after your feet well. If you haven’t been given very good pointe shoes. In theory you shouldn’t really but your feet age a hundred times faster than the normal person’s.

How long do you take to go through a set of pointe shoes?

It’s different for everybody. I can use two pairs of pointe shoes in a show and not be able to wear them again. You want them to be so perfect that you soften them down so in theory they will only last for that act.

How much do they cost?

I think about £20. The price is worth it - so come and see us!

What about your next piece of music? You’ve chosen music from Romeo and Juliet. When did you last dance it?

We danced it just before I left London. It’s one of my favourite classics. You get to play a role; you’re a person and not just a fairy tale. You don’t have to worry about the technique as much and it’s an incredibly beautiful story.

I’m interested to get into your mind when you’re on stage doing this, how much of the technique has to be unconscious, as it were.

Juliet, because it isn’t so technical, you can forget about it. You can forget about the steps. With Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty I wouldn’t forget about my steps. I’d constantly have my coach’s voice in the background saying: "do this - do this".

Do you ever come to a full stop and think what am I doing here?

No - it is ingrained.

You have fallen?

I’ve fallen quite badly in La Bayadere, when I was quite young. I was doing one of the principal roles and fell and slipped onto my hip. I couldn’t get up. That was a shock. I was thinking: "I’ve got to get up! I’ve got to get up!" And my partner got me up and I realised I was slightly unconscious and so he took me straight off stage. Usually then they put the curtain down, but they didn’t and there were a couple of dancers still left on stage on the side just doing very simple steps, while we were meant to be doing this big pas de deux in the middle and they felt very stupid.

I had yesterday, our guest was the great Sir Derek Jacoby, and he was talking about being overwhelmed by stage fright for three years….

I’ve had one of those. You can’t help but have stage fright. It would be unnatural if you didn’t. You wouldn’t be as good as you are if you didn’t have stage fright. Once we were doing the opening night in Washington of a brand new production of Sleeping Beauty and I had this major entrance to make from a flight of stairs and I was at the top. And you can see what it might be like from the wings. We had this drop down the side where I had to climb up to the top, and then come down this flight of stairs, which is about 20 steps. I was very high up and thinking ‘I don’t want to go on, I don’t want to go on.’ All I could think of was ‘If I fell backwards I wouldn’t have to go on!" Then I thought "What am I doing, what am I doing? Come on Darcey - you can go on!"

There’s a very fine line between that and actually losing it?

I’d be worried if I weren’t getting hyped up about a show. If I was too relaxed I’d be worried. I hate that feeling. Admittedly when you perform something a lot, with more experience you get more relaxed. But you want some adrenalin rushing through you. Also it makes the show more exciting.

How has having a baby changed your physique? Has it changed your body significantly?

Not really. I’ve been quite lucky. As soon as I started back at work and getting in shape, I made sure I took about 3 months before I performed.

In three months from the birth?

I left three months before - I started back three months after the birth and then gave myself two months.

So it was almost six months from the time of the birth to the time you actually came back on stage, which isn’t very long?

It was long enough - I couldn’t leave it any longer, I don’t know whether I could have come back.

Did you notice changes in your body?

I actually noticed I was more supple because I think when you go through pregnancy, your ligaments and everything stretch and I actually felt more supple; which was weird because people say "Oh your back is going to be really stiff." It affects everyone in different ways but I was actually quite lucky there. I’m pleased that I did take the time although it doesn’t sound very long. Also I was not going into a corps de ballet but into a main role, so that was hard because I realised I hadn’t performed for a year and that was actually very weird. I was incredibly nervous for that show.

The birth itself took its toll didn’t it? There was a bit of a drama surrounding it?

Yes she arrived 7 weeks early, which was a bit of a surprise.

What happened? Was it just a premature birth?

I had pre-eclampsia. I never knew what it was. It is high blood pressure, but they don’t know why you get it. It’s like a chemical reaction between you and the baby, or something triggers off. You can go into a coma. It can be very dangerous, either for the baby or for you. I was the one that was suffering. Obviously you want to keep the baby in as along as possible, because that’s where they are happiest. But she had to come out….

That is dramatic..

I know because I had such a lovely pregnancy. I was so content and I wasn’t sick and I was having a lovely time, so there you go….

Have you ever found that you’re simply physically not capable of doing something a choreographer asks you to do?

Oh yea. Many times. The things they ask you are unbelievable. And the worst thing is sometimes in a studio, you realise you can do it there, but you say ‘No I’m not going to be able to do that on stage because of the lights, the lights’. Especially in this new ballet that we are performing here in Sydney called Tryst by Christopher Wheeldon. I have worked with him several times and he’s a wonderful choreographer, and I love him dearly, but he’ll always test you to see if he can push it a little bit further. He’ll say, "Darcey, you can do it, you can do it." My partner will say, "Oh Darce, that was lucky wasn’t it?". And I’ll look at my partner and I say, "That was lucky."

But you have to be the judge of that - whether you will injure yourself?

There’s so much of that. That’s just experience. But when you get on stage, and this ballet we’re doing, the lighting is the most impressive part and it is beautifully designed. I come on and we’re virtually in pitch-blackness just with one spot on us from the side. If you knew that when you were in the studio and had just started to work on the ballet, you would never have done half your steps. It’s so difficult. You can’t see. When you have a light shining at you from the side right into your eyes, everything around you goes black. You can’t see the floor, the front, where the side is, anything. It’s so difficult to focus and to balance. Of course one of the first steps he makes me do is particularly these balances. I had to do it three times and it was quite funny: "That was really amazing that I even did it. You’ve got to understand that Chris, it’s really lucky that …." And he said "ok ok.."

I’ve heard it’s a really sexy work: someone has described it as like a mating ritual between you and the male partner with an ensemble around you.

It’s very malleable.

Does it make great demands on you?

It hurts the body but it’s a good pain because you know you are doing something different. It’s very difficult because there are some amazing ballets out there choreographed in the past.

Do you like works being made on you, as the expression goes?

I think any dancer’s ambition is to have as many pieces made on them, because that makes them their own and that is the most special thing. Also when a choreographer wants to work with you, because they get such enjoyment and can do something different, you do feel very honoured when you have a ballet made on you.

Your partner is Jonathan Cope. For a ballerina is it a sort of safety net to work with one dancer, and therefore to become utterly accustomed to that dancer, or is it better to work with a variety of people?

For me I think it is better to work with different people. It’s great - Jonathan has danced with me since I first joined the company 14 years ago. He knows me incredibly well, so to work on a new piece is brilliant, because you can test the limit, you can really push each other because we know each other so well. We know what we can do. But really you want to keep changing partners because it makes it more exciting for yourself

But you have to get used to the different heights?

That’s the fun about it. Also different partners have different things to give. They have different talents and qualities. And it’s lovely to feed of those.

Is it important to like them?

Yes! Very much. Sometimes if you don’t get on, it gives another excitement to the performance!

Who "discovered" you? Who pulled you out from the mass of little starry-eyed girls on pointe?

I was very fortunate to have the late Sir Kenneth MacMillan. He is one the most famous choreographers in the ballet world and has produced some of the most beautiful pieces and he made a ballet on me when I was 19. I was very very fortunate to have that.

When did you first meet him?

When I was at school, I did Concerto, one of his pieces, for the school performance. It was very exciting. I loved it.

How did he come to see it?

When we’re at school, they come and watch us at the Royal Ballet School in class.

How young were you when you decided you wanted to dance?

I wanted to dance from the age of 11. I’d done ballet since I was 5, every Saturday with my friends and had always enjoyed it. I didn’t have really a dream of being a ballerina at all.

What did you dream of being?

I wanted to be a swimmer. A swimmer was the main thing, and I wanted to be a gymnast. I did a lot of gymnastics and competitions and the ballet was very good for the gymnastics.

And the gymnastics was probably very good for the ballet?

No it wasn’t actually. It was all very back-arched and not the right extensions. The ballet complemented the gymnastics, but not the other way around sadly. But I found that out later. Then I auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. I auditioned but didn’t go in until I was 13. I’d missed two years and was really far behind. I thought: "Oh no! I’m never going to catch up and I had a really hard time. In my first year I thought I had made a big mistake choosing ballet. In the next two years I caught up and that’s when it hit me; at 14 or 15 I was smitten. I wanted to be a prima ballerina.

You obviously had the right figure, the right build, the right attitude, the right everything?

Oh I don’t know. I think you find that out. When you go into the Royal Ballet School, they vet you on your physique. That’s the basis. Then hopefully the rest of it grows…

How do they know how tall you are going to grow?

They do these x-rays on your wrists, hands, and bones. They got mine wrong. I’m 5’7". As a principal I’m tall. I’m not tall around the world. I’ve guested at the Paris Opera and at New York City Ballet and other places and I’m not tall there. But in England I am tall.

The petite ballerina is still the style in England?

No I think it is changing. Obviously people are becoming taller anyway. Ross Stretton is inclined to go for taller dancers as well.

What dictates it, is it the height of male dancers?

When you’re on pointe, you’re a few inches taller anyway. It works better in contemporary work. In classical ballets they’re much fussier about height of the man and woman.

How old were you when you saw your first ballet in a theatre?

When I was at the Royal Ballet School, so it was probably when I was 13. I remember seeing Romeo and Juliet, but I don’t remember which was my first one.

Do your remember the effects those visits had on you?

Just going to a theatre was amazing. It didn’t really matter what I was actually watching. I just thought the magic of actually being in a theatre, the orchestra, the lights - I just thought: "This is magic. Gosh - How do they produce it?"

Do you still feel that way?

Very much so. I’m not very good at watching ballet any more. All I’m doing is technically going through what they’re doing wrong. And this is very sad.

I’m fascinated to find about how the life behind the glamour and what the audience sees. What does a day’s work involve for you, when you’re on tour and not on tour?

Six days a week we’ll probably rehearse and take class. Taking class is our basis. It’s like brushing our teeth. You have to keep the body going, to warm it up for the day’s rehearsal, and also keep technique up to scratch. It’s what you do at school. If anybody is doing their first ballet class, it’s basically working on how to do a pirouette, how to get on your legs, your footwork -making it sharp…

Is it the same format every day?

Very. It’s nice to have different teachers because they make it more interesting. We stand at the barre for about half an hour, then the centre for just under an hour. When you’re at school it can be two hours long. But when you’re a professional dancer and getting ready for a show, you just use it as a warm-up really; warming up all the joints, all the muscles, to get you ready for that rehearsal or performance.

If you do that in the morning, does the warming last through the day?

It depends how your rehearsals go. If I had an hour’s break I would definitely do a little warm-up before my next rehearsal, because you don’t want to jeopardise or pull any muscles or ligaments.

What about when you come off stage at night after the performance? What about cooling down?

They recommend you warm down. But I have to say you usually just want to get in the shower or a bath. Soaking in a bath is the best thing! I’d always stretch my hamstrings and things like that just to loosen off. Your muscles on stage can get very taut trying to hold and sustain things. Loosening off is very wise. Next day is more painful if you don’t.

You do this six days a week. The seventh day you rest, presumably. Do you do anything?

No.

You don’t run?

Running is very bad for dancers; it’s very bad for the joints. It’s not very good for anyone actually, but especially dancers, because we put enough pressure on our joints. So running is a total no-no.

How long is this going to go on for?

Dancing? For me I’m just turned 33. I actually feel like I’ve been given another lease of life after I’ve had my baby. It is a bit strange now. I hadn’t imagined that. I thought, in theory, another three years would be plenty. The only thing that does wear is the exhaustion. Having a baby I’m constantly tired. I don’t see her very often. When I come home, instead of putting my feet up, because you have been on your legs all day dancing, I want to play with my daughter.

Where do you notice age affecting you? Is it in strength? In flexibility?

It’s in flexibility. If anything, a dancer’s back would go first. Their ankle joints: you can get very arthritic ankle joints from dancing a lot. The toes especially. Usually the back will go. Because I have had a year off, it has made everything relax in my body. Maybe being pregnant did help! I’ve always been very lucky because I have always been very supple.

What will you do when the time comes and how will you know when the time comes?

I don’t know. I’ve always said that I’ve wanted to retire at my peak. I don’t want to decide to retire at the point that everything is beginning to fizzle out. I thought that would be a horrible way to go.

What will you do?

I don’t know. I’d like to be just normal, a Mum. You never know. That would be quite nice!

Does it feel very abnormal?

I have a lot of outside friends and you do realise that the discipline of your work does affect your whole life. You can’t not escape it. That can be a strain after a while. You start to think: "Oh I’d really like to not watch and be healthy. I want to be naughty. I want to drink a bottle of wine tonight." And you can’t!

Welcome to Australia. It’s a bit belated, the welcome. But I know half your family comes from Australia, so it’s really nice to say hello to you, and thanks for joining us today.