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We start tonight with one of the two high profile foreigners running English institutions. At about the same time that the Swedish Coach Sven Goran Erikson was given charge of the England Football team it was announced that Ross Stretton, an Australian who had been to the Royal Opera House in London only twice as a spectator, was taking over as Director there of the Royal Ballet. Stretton has now been in place for six months and is about to open a season of modern dance pieces by choreographers including William Forsythe, Nacho Duato, and featuring Royal Ballet stars such as Sylvie Guillem and Darcey Bussell.

Nacho Duato's Remanso.
Photograph by Guillermo Mendo

Whereas the progress of football's Mr Erikson is measured simply in results and qualification, it's harder for Stretton to know how he's doing. He started with a critical defeat - bad reviews for his opening production, a revival of Nureyev's Don Quixote. This was quickly followed by a victory - a warm response to John Cranko's ballet Onegin. But when I met Ross Stretton in his office at the Royal Opera House...

ML: ...I started by asking if he'd been unsettled by the hostile notices for Don Quixote?

RS: No I didn't find it hostile - I thought it was right: I mean the reaction was as I would have expected.

ML: Right in what way?

RS: Well the things they wrote, I mean I'm not going to be able to please everybody and the things they wrote about with the designs and the sets and the costumes that was perhaps right. I don't have a problem with that. I did DonQ, I wanted to see Onegin first and if I could have opened my Directorship with Onegin I would have. But the availability of the Cranko estate wasn't to be. But on the other side Don Q gave me an opportunity to see the dancers at the maximum - you know at all levels and really enjoy and assess the company. So nobody criticised the dancing, nobody criticised the corps de ballet for the first time in the history of the Royal Ballet and nobody criticised the Principals and it was more about the exterior things and I agree with that criticism and it was the same with the last triple bill. Um, yes there were some good works and not so good works but I expected all of that and the criticism I thought was quite justified.

ML: But we now get into what is coming up in the next few productions, that's very much your core repertoire - this is the new radical dance

RS: It's got two works by Nacho Duarto and two works by Billy Forsythe and I think they are both key choreographers and they will be involved with the direction of the Royal Ballet and the future of these dancers. Following that we've got Mats Ek coming in. Mats is already rehearsing now, and again that will take the company in another direction and all of these works are the latest and best works of these choreographers. And that is for them to become familiar with the dancers, and the organisation, the way it works on the stage, and how it looks, and in the hope that they come back and create new works in years to come on these young dancers.

ML: Now audiences is another question. There was some research last week released by Tony Hall which surprised a lot of people, which um.. Basically the truth is no one really believes it but it appeared to suggest that it's low income people that really come to the Royal Opera House. Now that's exactly opposite to most people visual experience of the place. But that research can be justified can it?

RS: It can be justified - yes. Also they are consistent people, they are ballet lovers or opera lovers and they go to see different casts of people and different works all the time. So that's a consistent group of people that are coming.

ML: But they must have done it by only asking people in the cheaper seats, because, I mean, the kind of seat prices there are in this place if you were earning £15,000 a year you'd be sending most of your disposable income on just coming here!

RS: I know, I know. It's an expensive place, Tony Hall is aware of that. Even myself I've sat in a particular seat and I've gone back to Tony the next day and said "Go and sit in that seat and tell me how much you would pay to sit in that seat!". {sound of a chuckle?} And we've gone all around the different areas and it's really to give people an indication of how much they can and can't see of the main stage.

ML: And my great discovery when I started going is that, this is my theory anyway, that you have treat it as, look at it like sport really, that you're looking at the use people are making of their bodies. I mean people have an extraordinary ability with their bodies.

RS: Well some of the new contemporary works definitely. Again Carmen is the most demanding role and someone like Sylvie is an extraordinary dancer and is approaching it in a very physical way, but also a very feminine way. So yes we are athletes, there's no competition, we don't win or lose, there's no clock, er... and our ultimate goal is to look the right form on stage, the classicism, whether its contemporary works or classical works, there's still a look of a dancer and we spend 24 hours a day refining the body, tuning it out so the lines are beautiful to look at.

ML: The other discovery I made and some people got quite upset when I wrote it in a newspaper, but I stand by it, is that ballet is really, it's raw sex - that was the thing that amazed me. And it is astonishingly physical and sexual!

RS: From the audience point of view, if they can relate to what's happening in that body, whether it's soft, whether it's hard, whether it's sensual whether it's the music that's driving the force - the body is amazing in what it can say. Probably more so than the voice and someone like these great artists, Darcey and Sylvie, er performing these roles they come from the guts and the inside and its really powerful the way it explodes and comes out. {brief pause} I'm avoiding the word sexual! {sounds of mirth and giggling}

ML: Rather more sensual we can agree on?!

RS: Sensual we can agree on, yes.

ML: Do you think of doing it in terms of bringing in quite separate audiences - that some will come to watch the modern stuff, some will come to watch the classical, or are you, do you hope to make them cross-over?

RS: I'm sure that there will be a cross-over when the audiences start to see these different works. And there is a group of people that will come consistently to the Royal Ballet and see, you know, the diversity of it. I think that also there is a group of people that are interested in the work simply of Mats Ek, and Kylian, and so on coming into the house, and that will bring in a new generation of audience as well. I can't please everybody, I don't intend to please everybody, I intend to say there is something here for you and you will enjoy it, but I'm not pretending that I can make everybody satisfied. {another laugh}

ML: Sven Goran Erikson, he'll know, because if he gets to the quarter finals or semi-finals he can be judged. It's not as clear cut for you. Do you have, is there something you're aiming for, that you will see in the repertoire or the building or the audience, that you will think you've achieved what you want to achieve?

RS: I think it's just an ongoing thing. Yes we will see the audiences rise, and yes we will see repertoire change, and yes I can sense when the dancers are being fed and going in the right direction. It's all of those different levels that I will feel. Critical acclaim is one of them, audience acclaim. I'm not here to teach dancers how to dance, I'm here to guide them through a long and healthy career.

ML: I hate to keep using football managers, but another one occurs to me which is that you, what everyone says about you is that you are what they call a "track suit manager" - you're in there with the dancers, you're in the rehearsal rooms, that's the way you do it.

RS: Yes. I like to get involved and that's a way of me understanding where they are at, where their head is at. Its a hard career, it's stressful and you're in competition with yourself. And if you fail, you've only got yourself to blame, and then you need the support around you to bring you out of that and bring you back onto the main line of what we are trying to do, and give a career to somebody - so that's important.

ML: Ross Stretton. The Royal Ballet season of contemporary dance opens next monday with Enduring images which features pieces by William Forsythe and Nacho Duarto. Carmen with choreography by Mats Ek opens in April. END