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At the start of the new millennium in 2000, the little known Tamara Rojo joined the Royal Ballet, stepping in to replace an injured and now retired Darcey Bussell. Next Saturday Rojo opens the company’s new season dancing Nikiya in the spectacular production of La Bayadere, one of the most popular and extravagant balletic products of nineteenth century Imperial Russia. It is a singular honour from director Monica Mason acknowledging the huge contribution made by Rojo to the company’s success over the succeeding years. But Rojo at 33 is nearing the ceiling of the average dancer’s frighteningly short professional life. Coincidentally Mason’s tenure as the company’s head is drawing to a close. Change soon is inevitable for both artist and director and Rojo for RB chief is a lobby growing strongly in the country. But the pint sized ballerina smartly slaps me down when I put the proposition to her during a rehearsal lunch break. “Absolutely not,” she says emphatically. “It is far too early, I have another 10 year’s dancing ahead of me.” Then, in an about face as dizzying as her legendary pirouettes, she tells me of her involvement in a project in her home town of Madrid to set up a national ballet company.

“Some time ago,” she explains, “the Spanish government asked me to draw up plans for a national company. I asked the Royal Family’s permission to call it the Royal Ballet of Spain and they agreed. I took most of my information from how things are run in England, what it will mean, how much it will cost, how I would run it. Basically all the methods you have developed here to make a company permanent like creating a charitable Trust to handle the money, some from government, some from private individuals.

“In Spain at the moment all culture is in the hands of the Minister who changes every 4 years so we never have something stable.” She adds, “there’s so much talent in Spain coming out of ballet schools every year and so many of them give up dancing because they do not want to leave their country to find work. I must make the basic structure of a national company as secure as possible.” This was precisely the vision of Ninette de Valois, who founded our own Royal Ballet in the 1930s on a realistic business footing, resulting in one of the world’s finest classical ballet institutions. I wonder if the Royal Ballet executives are aware of their favourite ballerina’s brain power and business nous. The days when dancer’s brains were located strictly in their pointe shoes are truly gone forever.

But even though Rojo sees another decade on the stage, she is not afraid to contemplate life off it. “I think about it every day,” she admits. “At the moment I feel I am in my prime as a dancer and able to do what I do at my very best. Yet at the same time I so wish to be at the next stage of my life. I feel guilty that I am wishing my life away but at the same time I can’t wait to get on with next bit.

“Ever since the idea of being a director entered my head I look at things differently, I watch how they behave, how they react to dancers and choreographers. All the time I ask myself, can I recognise the potential of raw talent; am I good enough to see beyond the present?”
 

When Rojo, a passionate young woman, off and on the stage, first arrived in this country in 1996, she was involved with a Spanish pop star; when she appeared with English National Ballet she moved in with dancer Daniel Jones. She is currently seen around town on the arm of company colleague Jose Martin, one of the Royal Ballet’s brightest male assets. Rojo refuses to discuss her private life but admits her attitude to marriage has mellowed with the years. “Time and experience,” she reflects, “makes you aware that perhaps calling a closure on doubt and committing yourself to one person for the rest of your life is the right thing to do.” Don’t get too alarmed, Jose, because Rojo immediately adds “But it’s absolutely not for me yet and anyway it’s supposed to be a joint decision.”

Next weekend Tamara Rojo will usher in another twelve months of brilliant, moving and memorable performances by the Royal Ballet. She will dance, among many other roles, Nikiya, in Bayadere and the Chosen Maiden in The Rite of Spring as well as being filmed as Juliet. But after years of repetition, how does an artist recreate the magic of dance with fresh power and passion time after time? “When you do a character it becomes part of you and you miss them when they go away,” she explains. “Last year we did a lot of dramatic tragedy with ballets like Swan Lake and Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling. Now I’m longing to fall in love again as Juliet. It doesn’t matter how much chocolate you eat you always want more.”