© Henrik Stenberg Schandorff in reviews RDB reviews Jane Simpson reviews

For fifteen years, starting in 1975, a Danish television company filmed the progress of two years' intake to the Danish Royal Ballet school. They chose a good time to start: the very first programme showed rows of tiny children auditioning for a panel including both Flemming Flindt and Henning Kronstam, and leading one file across the floor was a serious little girl with long blonde curls, in a blue leotard - unmistakeably, from the very first glimpse, Silja Schandorff. She was accepted into the organisation, aged 6, and she's there still, the company's senior ballerina: but the norm in Copenhagen is that dancers retire at the age of 40, and the season which has just started will be her last. Still feeling a little 'air-headed' from dancing Giselle the night before, she talked to me about her life in the company and how she feels about the prospect of retirement.

By the time the television film was shown, in 1991, Schandorff was already a soloist, and she was promoted to Solodanser (principal) while she was still only 22. "We were very fortunate, when we were young, that there was a gap of women at the top of the company. Sorella Englund - the first ballerina I completely fell in love with, as a child - Mette Hønningen, Anna Lærkesen, of course Linda Hindberg, and Mette-Ida Kirk and Heidi Ryom and Anne-Marie Dybdal and that whole generation - they started dropping out, and the younger generation started having children; so they threw us into a lot of things at an early age. You always had to cover all the corps, but you were also sometimes lucky enough to cover a soloist or even a principal, even if it's what we call 'in brackets', which just means that you study it. So we were working non-stop. It gave us an awful lot of experience, and although we were carrying a lot of responsiblity at an early age, that was good because it made us grow up. It's good for young people to have responsibility! It was fantastic."

By this time she'd grown to a little over 5'7", not all that tall in today's context but worryingly so then, in a company founded on the works of Bournonville, whose dancers mostly need to be compact and speedy. Was that difficult? "Oh absolutely. I never thought I would make it like I did. It was very difficult for me to be tall - I always felt too tall and big and never that I'd fit in. But in the end I've done all I wanted, more than I ever thought I would - though maybe I've got some roles later than otherwise I would have." It's obvious that she's seen her size as a problem through much of her career, and she came back to it later on: "Because I felt I was so wrong for so many things here, at one point I had to say, 'I can't think I'm too tall, I can't think I'm too big, I just have to imagine that I'm not', so sometimes I try to change my image. Of course I can see it in the mirror but I'm trying to forget about it. I think 'I can't do that' and then 'Well, I have to try', and then I start working on it". In fact, although Teresina (in Napoli) for instance really is outside Schandorff's range, she's been very successful in a number of other leading Bournonville roles - Hilda in A Folk Tale while she was still very young, the melancholy Louise in The Lifeguards on Amager) and of course her lovely Sylph, which she danced for the last time at Nikolaj Hübbe's farewell performance last season. She's done the Petipa classics as well, including - rather unexpectedly but successfully - Kitri, plenty of Balanchine, and Manon. But not Juliet - or at least not in Copenhagen. "I've actually done Juliet in Boston [as a guest]. But we do John Neumeier's version here, and his Juliet is different. He sees her as this girl who trips over her own feet and falls down the stairs... so maybe I should just take it as a big compliment that I didn't get it! Though I do fall over my own feet... but it's not for me, it’s for a different type." She won't be pinned down, though, about what type she is actually is. "I've tried lately at least not to put a label, because I think so many put labels on other dancers, and I don't like that because I think there's so much more... people have so many hidden sides, and sometimes you can get things out of them that people never thought they could do."

Schandorff's generation, of course, lived through the difficult years in the 1990s when one company director followed another at a frightening rate. I wondered if she had ever come close to deciding to leave. "Yes - but on the other hand I felt like I was starting in a new company almost every year, so I didn't really have to leave. It was like going back to scratch every time, having to see see whether he or she likes you or not. It happened every year at one point - it was very very hard and very very difficult - at one point it was almost unbearable; you thought 'I can't start all over again'. How many dancers go and start in a new company every year, every second year, not knowing whether they're going to make it or not - again?" It wasn't all bad news though: amongst the directors passing through the revolving door were some who actually liked tall dancers, and gave Schandorff opportunities she might otherwise have missed. Now, she believes the bad times are over, and can even see some advantage in having lived through such turmoil: "What happens with the younger dancers is that when someone comes along and asks for something different, they're a little bit taken aback - because they haven't tried it before, of course".

These days Schandorff is dancing rather different roles - Lady Capulet instead of Rosalind, the King's wicked stepmother in Caroline Mathilde instead of the title role. "The old lady! It was a little bit hard for me in the beginning because I'd done the other role, but then I really started enjoying it - the second run I really had fun doing it. And I read a book in which she was described so interestingly - she was a very special lady." ('The old lady' is in fact extremely glamorous and dances on pointe.) Surprisingly she was over 30 when she first danced Giselle - up till then she'd done Myrtha, and by the way her face lights up when she talks about that, it was a role she much enjoyed. She's changed her Giselle for this season's new production, "because I'm older, because I've had such fantastic people to work with - Nikolaj [Hübbe] and Sorella have really given us total freedom ... no, that's wrong... they've looked at us individually: if you see one of the other casts it will be something very different. Both Nikolaj and Sorella are very forward-seeing, very direct-seeing, and they will say 'That works' or 'No, we don't like that', so I trust them. Also, I have a different partner. I've done it before with Mads [Blangstrup], and with Kenneth [Greve], and now Nehemiah [Kish]. Even with Kenneth and Mads, it was quite different - I feel it's very important to alter your role for the person who's standing in front of you - otherwise it doesn't make sense, if you have made up your ideas of what it should be and then the response is different. But Nehemiah is very nice to work with, very very open, and we've had no need for a lot of discussion." Though her height must to some extent influence her characterisation, it also gives her dancing a breadth and expansiveness which once or twice even reminded me of another tall Giselle, Svetlana Beriosova - a pleasure I don't often get these days. Like her Sylph, her Giselle looked to me a distillation of all her experience, with everything unnecessary taken out. I asked if this was something she'd done consciously: "I think it's something that just happens. When you're younger you have a tendency to build up layer cakes; now I can cut down things that are not important".

In the last couple of seasons two visiting choreographers have made roles for Schandorff which have used the serene, autumnal feel of her dancing to great emotional effect. In one section of Ghosts, Kim Brandstrup made a trio for her and two very obviously much younger men: some saw a maternal air in her interaction with them, others felt a wider resonance. Then a few months ago Christopher Wheeldon made The Wanderers for her: afterwards, she described him as 'one of the most wonderful choreographers I've ever worked with'. "I saw Darcey [Bussell] in the pas de deux from Tryst in London, with Jonathan Cope, and I thought 'that's amazing, I would really love to work with Chris before I retire', so I was so happy that it worked out." Wheeldon knew that Kenneth Greve was leaving the company and that this would be the last piece that he and Schandorff would ever dance together, after a long and celebrated partnership, "so I think we all knew from the beginning that there was going to be emotion in it somehow". As it turned out the ballet was an affectionate portrait of Schandorff herself as well as a moving commentary on the end of an era.

The idea of a 'normal' retirement age seems odd to London Royal Ballet watchers, who have recently seen Darcey Bussell decide she's had enough at 38, whilst Leanne Benjamin at 44 looks as if she could go on for years yet. But at least the Danish dancers don't have to agonise about choosing the right moment - unless they have a really strong desire to stay on, the decision is made for them. Schandorff feels it's about the right time for her anyway, "but it's also something I've always known - that 40 was the retirement age - and I haven't ever thought I would go further than that". Although she feels completely fulfilled as a dancer, there are obviously some unknowns lying ahead. How would she feel about not having to do class, ever again? "That's hard. Actually I think that's going to be the hardest thing for me, to not be able to keep in shape, because I like to work physically. I can't just stop, I'll have to find something else... now I can try out all these things I haven't been able to try!" The other thing she may miss is the emotional safety valve of performance. She describes herself as 'a little shy and very private' and as a young dancer she found it hard to expose her inmost feelings while she was working in the studio; it's only more recently, and helped by the confidence she’s gained by working with trusted mentors, that she's been able to 'let go' in rehearsal. "But on stage, I don't think about the audience. It's very weird, it's as if when I come on stage I can go out and do whatever I want". And she adds, perhaps only half jokingly, "I have been thinking, I wonder how I'm going to react, when I don't have these opportunities to go and get it all out...".

One door may be closing for Schandorff but maybe another is opening. She ran off at the end of our interview to a rehearsal of Louise Midjord's Othello, a version made for a teenage audience and using some of the company's youngest dancers. She's working as Midjord's assistant - "She's the choreographer and I'm the cleaner" - following on from something she did last season. "I started last year when Kenneth asked me to rehearse the principals in his Nutcracker. He wasn't going to have enough time, and he wanted me to have a look at them, so I shared rehearsals with Nikolaj on the pas de deux and also the flower fairy, and I will continue doing that this year - it's something I really enjoy." She won't be drawn, though, on whether this is something she's likely to continue after she stops dancing. "I haven't made my final decisions yet. When I'm dancing it has to be 100%, and though of course I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next, my dancing has to take priority." The traditional Danish progression is a move into character roles - there had been two former Giselles in the cast with her the night before - but it doesn't sound as if this appeals to Schandorff. "I don't think I would be very happy just to walk on and sit on a platform and watch. I'd rather be in the audience. I love to watch, but I'd rather watch from the front than from the side. And it's not so important for me actually to go on stage - it's more the work that I like." It will be fascinating to see what she does decide to do next, but whatever it is, her honoured place in the history of the Royal Danish Ballet is already assured.