Darcey Bussell

in conversation with Alastair Macaulay

DARCEY BUSSELL: My first school performance was [in Kenneth MacMillan’s] Concerto. So, I did the third movement of Concerto.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Oh, my goodness!

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yes.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Toughie!

DARCEY BUSSELL: Real toughie and especially at my age because I was… it was my first year in the Upper School, and to be given that opportunity was extraordinary. And I also [think] Kenneth… I remember him coming to watch, as well, our rehearsals, and thinking, “Wow, we’re doing a Kenneth MacMillan ballet and he’s actually here”.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And you went into the what’s now the Birmingham [Royal Ballet] company. We think it was…

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yeah, it was Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet at Sadler’s Wells theatre, and I went there straight away and, you know, I did a couple of corps de ballet roles straight away, which I was slightly deflated [about], but I think everybody is when they go into the corps de ballet. Um… but I did Paquita, which was incredibly challenging in the corps de ballet, and I got… um… noticed, which was lovely. And then I started doing some solo work straight away in my first year, and that was incredibly exciting.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: What were your solos?

DARCEY BUSSELL: I did the Pas de Quatre. It was the old Pas de Quatre.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: The [Frederick] Ashton Pas de Quatre in Swan Lake? Oh, really?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yeah, I did that. Which, of course, nobody would ever put me in because, of course, I was tall. And that would have been because it was made on Merle [Park] and Antoinette [Sibley], wasn’t it? Yeah. And so that was fab, and I loved the music. I think I loved anything that obviously wasn’t to be seen as a tall dancer. So, as soon as somebody put me in a role that wasn’t seen as my forte, it was even more fun. I also did a Princess, which was a solo role in Swan Lake. I did Elite Syncopations. So, I did the main role in that, which was brilliant. I missed my first rehearsal because I didn’t even believe I was doing the main role. You know, when you go, “Really? Is that my part?” So, I didn’t even turn up for my first rehearsal. But yeah, it was a bit of a… everybody was really surprised at me. And I said, “But no, I didn’t really believe that would be me”. You know, I did that with Wicky, Stephen Wicks, yeah, which was great and taught me a lot. I got so many advantages, actually, when I suddenly got into Sadler’s. I think being a smaller company and going on tour, so you’re thrown into things all the time. And I remember when I first went on tour, we were in the [Big Top] tent, I think in Cambridge or somewhere, and I got thrown on in La Fille mal gardée, and I had literally only just learnt the steps the night before.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Were you one of the friends [in Fille] or…?

DARCEY BUSSELL: I, I wasn’t a friend. No, I wasn’t a friend. I was just in the scene. But I just remember being at 4 am in the morning, going through the steps, going, “Oh God, I’ve got to remember this, I’ve got to remember this”, like this, you know, because I knew I was being thrown on the next day. Yeah. Fab. Really enjoyable. Yeah, it was an enjoyable time.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And it was Kenneth who came to look at the company and said, “I want her for [The Prince of the] Pagodas?”

DARCEY BUSSELL: Well, it’s funny. I was just with Deborah MacMillan, actually, yesterday. I was with her and she said, when Kenneth saw me – he saw me in Concerto at, at at the school – and that’s when he said, “I’d like to work with that girl”. But then I got put into the touring company, and she said he was furious that I got put into the touring company. I would have never known. And that’s when he came and said, “No, I want her back. And I want to create this role on her”. So yes, he did turn up, but apparently it had all been planned, way ahead, just things had gone against him, and we were all quite excited because it was the end of the season and Kenneth was sitting there watching class and everybody thought, “He’s going to create a work on the company.” And no, he just come and had a look at me.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: He was just checking that you were the girl?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Double checking. Yeah. Double double double checking.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: So, you transferred to [The Royal Ballet at] Covent Garden for the next season? The 88–89?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Um, it would have been ‘88. I graduated in ‘87. So, yes, it would have been September ‘88.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And you went straight into quite a lot of repertory then. I think you were in a new David Bintley ballet then.

DARCEY BUSSELL: I went straight into a David Bintley [ballet]. That kind of made Kenneth rather irritable, but I love how choreographers work. We don’t care as long as we’re chosen. Um. And then, I went into [the role of] Gamzatti in Natasha’s… [Natalia Makarova’s production of La Bayadère]. I worked with Natasha Makarova straight away.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Tell me about that.

DARCEY BUSSELL: That was… Ooh, that was a… it was like being slapped… like a naughty child. It was amazing. I mean, I really appreciate it because of everything she had to say. But, um, she really wanted to break me down, and I think because I was literally out of the corps and I was going straight into this principal role of Gamzatti. And, again, it’s a hard role, and it was waking me up to not just worrying about the technique and performing everything well and having that continuity with your… just with the rep[ertoire] of that ballet. It was more the character I was playing and think about that, create an image and create a person you are on that stage and everything.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: You told me that, or somebody told me that she just made you work and work and work on that entrance when you’re just pointing the toe.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yeah. Well, just walking in, just walking into a room. So, you’re walking into a room, and… I would come around the curtain and walk into the space. It was… and it was my space, and she said, “You’ve got to own this space. Do you understand?” And I was like, “I’m owning it”. “No, no, you’re not owning it. You’re not owning it at all”. And I’d walk off again and I’d come in, and again, “No, no, no, not again, not again”. So, I ended it and I was literally crying my eyes out, going, “I’m trying to understand”, you know. She didn’t give the explanation of what she was trying to get from me as well. I mean, she kept saying, “Just think of the person you’re playing. Who are you? Who are you?” And I went, “I’m feeling grand. I am the princess. I have money, I have wealth,” and I was going. “I’m thinking about this”. “You got to show it in your…” You know. And I was like, “Oh, my God…” So, it was all a bit… it was all a bit frantic. You know, it took a while and I think that was my inexperience. I was young and I think I was also young for my age.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Was this the first major ballerina you’d ever been coached by?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Um…

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And you then got quite a few in quick succession.

DARCEY BUSSELL: And I was very lucky. Monica Mason coached me… Um, we used to do solo classes with her when I was in graduate year in The Royal Ballet [School], so to have that was phenomenal because her detail and attention was lovely, and her care. Um, I suppose.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Do you remember what solos she taught you?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Checkmate. Lilac Fairy [in The Sleeping Beauty], because that was one of my first solo roles, I remember. Really fabulous to have Monica.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: She told me that one of the most scary things in her own career, she was already doing the Lilac Fairy, but she’d begun to teach the girls at the School, and she said, “To dance the Lilac Fairy, when all of your girls are on stage as Ladies in Waiting, that’s the most exposing”.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yep. No. And she said that… She said that to me. I remember, yeah. Which is really nice, because it’s so human. And that’s… as a dancer… that’s all you’re thinking when you start coaching others. You know, I coach now and I coach in a way of something I’ve always wanted to produce as well. It’s not whether I did it that way, but I wanted to do it that way. And I try and make the people I work… “So, you’ve got to try and do it this way. I might have not done it that way, but you[’ve] still got to try and do it that way”, you know? I like that. So, it’s, you know, you are letting down… you’re coming into the rehearsal room naked, sort of thing, and being very honest with them and truthful.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And jumping forward, but I last saw you in February when you were coaching the Raymonda Pas de Deux for The [Frederick] Ashton Foundation, and you very self-deprecatingly showed the audience the film of yourself doing it more than 20 years before and were extremely critical of yourself. But, for us, it was such a treat because we had already seen you demonstrating it all for Marianela [Nuñez]. And, I forgot, Anna Rose O’Sullivan, I think.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yes. That’s right. She was lovely.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: It was as if the choreography had gone on maturing within you. As if you’re saying, “I now understand the performance I’d like to have given”.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Well, that also… the film that’s there is a rehearsal, so we hadn’t performed it enough, either. And I remember I had just come back from an injury. And so, I remember everything that was going through my mind watching that film again. Oh, my goodness, everything I doubted about myself then. And then I was going, “Oh, my God, it’s all there. It’s all there”. And it’s horrible watching yourself and also understanding at that time, in space, what was – what was your confidence problems, as well of coming on in a role like that? It was really hard. And also, it had been made on my coach. It had been made on Donald MacLeary. And so, he was coaching me. So, you know, giving that value to him and understanding. We had to cut things because I physically wasn’t strong enough, because I’d come back from this injury and I felt like I was letting him down. So, it’s very funny when you come back and you coach it again. So, all those things came back, but it was actually really lovely because, you’re right, you suddenly… you’re still maturing into what you would have wanted to produce at that time, I suppose, as a dancer. Yeah. And so that never stops, I don’t think. It’s like when you look at everything.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: There’s an interview where [Margot] Fonteyn says that about [Tamara] Karsavina. Someone said, do you… to Fonteyn… did you feel that Karsavina was still in the roles as she had danced them for [Mikhail] Fokine? And Fonteyn said, “I had the feeling from her that the role went on maturing non-stop in her mind”.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yeah, I think it’s exactly that, because, as a dancer, you never stop learning from what you’re trying to produce or what you want from something. You’re never satisfied. And it is an ongoing thing and what you want from it; you never seem to tick the box. I don’t think ever being pleased with anything I did, even though I enjoyed the whole process. If anything, I enjoyed the process more than the actual performance. When I think back and I enjoy, I suppose that’s why I probably really enjoy coaching, because I enjoy that whole process of study, the study of the detail and the technique and the… just how you express yourself that way. It’s nice. I feel very lucky.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: I could once have told you all the early chronology of the Darcey Bussell career at Covent Garden. I can’t remember the details now, but let’s say in your second year on comes Pagodas. You’d been working over the year with Kenneth?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yes.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: What was the process like there?

DARCEY BUSSELL: It was extraordinary because we also had time, that luxury to go over something. And he obviously… the music was, you know… he’d been listening to it for years, you know, dying to do this work. And it was all fresh for me. I’d never heard this score before. It was wonderful, but we would work on something for two weeks, and then the next two weeks we’d change it altogether. And he said, “Wipe it all. I want to start fresh again.” And that, in itself, was extraordinary. So, we had something like four pas des deux and I had, like, four solos. And then I had another four pas des deux with another four men. And the amount of work… I had never, ever experienced that sort of study where you come in and you’re with somebody for two hours every day for nearly a year… I think… I don’t know how to explain it. At the time, it was slightly numb because I was also getting to know Jonathan Cope. I think they also, you know, Kenneth was getting to know me, and Johnny just was like this voice in my ear, “Don’t make it harder. Don’t make it harder, Darcey”. And, um, I’d go, “Am I, am I making it harder?” He said, “Yes. You’re trying to. You’re trying to impress him”. And I go, “It’s not intentional. I just, I just want a reaction”, you know, because Kenneth wouldn’t. His face wouldn’t change. He’d be like that.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Did he wear dark glasses in those days?

DARCEY BUSSELL: No, he didn’t. He had a very kind face, but it didn’t change. So, you know, he’d lean and he’d slightly frown and go, “Hmm. Turn it around. On the other leg. Go, go the other way round. No. Then reverse that”. And you’d be like this, you know, kind of it would be overkill at one point, that I would forget from one day to the next what we had produced. I mean, Johnny had worked with Kenneth and understood this whole process and knew how to break it down. And I would come in the next day and just go, “I can’t remember anything. Help me. Help me”, like that. I mean, it was easy.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Thank God it was Johnny Cope, because, apart from anything else, he is one of the great partners.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yes. Oh, no. Extraordinary partner. And I think he enjoyed it as well. I mean, we did some whacky things. I mean, we really… I mean, I look back and even I think when it [Pagodas] came back into the repertoire, I was like, I can’t do this again. I really… this is so challenging. And there was so much, so many steps. It was, you know, bigger than any classic I’d ever experienced. And no, it was [an] extraordinary opportunity.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Kenneth must have had great delight in what you could do. You were given gargouillades. What were you? 19 or 20 when this ballet opened?

DARCEY BUSSELL: I was 20 when it premiered.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: British dancers didn’t do gargouillades seriously in those days.

DARCEY BUSSELL: Seriously, No? Really? I love gargouillades!

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Well, very rarely, Sugar Plum…

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yeah. Yeah, well, admittedly, you know… Johnny used to laugh. He’d go, you know, “You’ll do anything. If it was upside down, you’d do it for him.” And I went, “I don’t know, I just thought that’s what you are meant to do.” I think Johnny used to… I used to amuse him. But I did feel they used to… I did feel that they were teaming up on me at one point. I think I felt so vulnerable at one point. I think it was such a new thing for me to work with a choreographer like that, and I wanted them to speak and explain certain things, and I would just have to leave straight away and go straight into another rehearsal because I was learning a whole new rep, because I’d come from the touring company. So, it was a hard time. If I hadn’t been so new, I suppose maybe it would have been easier.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: How much was MacMillan’s rehearsals to do with you moving, and how much was he then trying to enter your psyche and tell you the character?

DARCEY BUSSELL: I think he left it totally in my boat. I literally… I think I was the character he wanted, so I was this naive young person to life, and he wanted somebody like that. Then what we did and created on top of that, you know, everything was there to surprise me as a person on that stage. And it is exactly how it came across as well, I think. And it was real. Everything was a surprise. So, it didn’t, didn’t feel like I had to be anybody that I wasn’t, you know. He, you know, obviously with repetition and making sure that everything seemed as fresh as it was the first time you did it, you know. He’d explained that and, you know, the funny things where he said, “I want to see your face more. I want to see your face more.” And I think, also, I wasn’t a showy person, so, you know, it was gaining that confidence of expressing myself with my face up and forward and in front, you know, so that everybody could see it. Just things like that. I think it changed more when I worked with him again on Winter Dreams.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: That’s my next question. That’s a very different character. Tell me about that process. It begins with the pas de deux…

DARCEY BUSSELL: So yeah, the pas de deux and that we first created.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And did you know it was going to be a Chekhov pas de deux?

DARCEY BUSSELL: No, I didn’t know anything. He said, “Well, I just want to create for a gala, and this is for the Queen Mother and a special occasion. And I have this idea”, and he had this piano score and, “This is a soldier you fall in love with, and he leaves you. He’s going to leave you and never come back.” And that was that anguish, and that, that desperate sort of feel that you feel all the way through that pas de deux, but that kind of beautiful kind of… The relationship where everything’s in sync, that we were very much as one. So, we understood each other even though it was an affair and you were losing that love. So, I understood that, but I didn’t really understand Irek [Mukhamedov]. [Laughs]

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Was this the first time you’d ever met him?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yes.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: So, he’d just arrived?

DARCEY BUSSELL: I had seen him dance with the Bolshoi [Ballet]. Incredible dancer. Incredible name and everything, and everything he had done. And he was coming into the company. He was totally new. And Kenneth said, “Yes, I’m going to put you together”. And. And Irek’s like, “Yes, this was meant to happen.” And I was like, “Oh, really?” You know. He said, “No, I’ve, I’ve heard a lot about you in Russia.” And I was like, “Really? Wow! You know?” So, I was quite shocked by that and I said, “I haven’t been around for very long”, you know. And he said, “No, I’ve, I’ve come and I’ve come to dance with you, Darcey”. And I was like, “I don’t think you have, but that’s really sweet”. Um, but, weirdly, we were put together straight away and it worked so well, I think, because we were so different and he was so experienced as a man, but also as this amazing star. His whole aura, everything was perfect for that role. But it’s funny. We did it. When I retired, at Sadler’s Wells, again, we did the whole of Winter Dreams, which was really lovely to do at Sadler’s as well. When I finished, we did four or five shows there, but it was… Yeah, it was, yeah… Another step in developing as, as just as a person, not just as a dancer. And, and to work with somebody like Irek and… and Kenneth used to, you know, say “Darcey, he’s 100 per cent passion and he is giving it all to you. And you are not!” Like that, like, oh “Oh, my God”. And, you know, just having that confidence with somebody of his calibre, as well of Irek’s calibre, and just feeling assured about myself. I knew what I wanted to produce and do that well, but then there was the relationship to create on, on that stage. We filmed it for the BBC, actually, in a film studio, you know…

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Just the pas de deux?

DARCEY BUSSELL: No, the whole ballet. Yeah. And that was, I think, the first time they’d done something in such detail because it was, it was very much like a play, of course.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Um, and of course, in Pagodas, you’d had Anthony Dowell as your father, and now he is your husband [in Winter Dreams].

DARCEY BUSSELL: I know! It was great.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: You are learning all that knowledge of theatre from Anthony. And what was he like as a colleague on stage?

DARCEY BUSSELL: He was very real, very honest… was a bit of a joker as well. He was very naughty.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Oh, really?

DARCEY BUSSELL: But very… Well, he fell into the role very easily, of course, of his experience and everything. And, and he was just very real with me. And as a director, having that time with somebody, I felt really privileged because he would be so natural with me. He didn’t ever act like my director when I was dancing with him. And, yeah, I felt very privileged. As an artist, what I learned from him, I think, was just his focus. So, he knew when to play around or make me smile, or something. And then when it was time, the focus and the attention it would never be budged. You know, where he… what he was thinking at that time when we were actually performing, which, you know, was a wonderful insight to see an artist like that. But it was nice to see him nervous as well, because I was like… but that’s the real thing, isn’t it? So, to see him want to do it really well, and he had a really hard solo. I remember thinking, “Wow, you’re so brave. You know, I don’t think I could do that at that age”, you know? He was stunning. Yeah. Really stunning.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Gosh. Um, now, one of the next great ballerinas you work with is perhaps the most famous of them all. Fonteyn. Dowell brings her in to coach, is it particularly Odette [in Swan Lake]?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yes, we went through Odette first. That’s probably what I remember the most. And it was very much the stagecraft, and I was, I was thinking, “Oh, my God! I’m gonna have to run the whole thing for her”. And she just came in on her own. I had nobody else in the room. And that was strange. And, and she, she obviously wasn’t very well, but not that I knew that. And so, she was quite still, but her insight, just on stagecraft, spacing, why you move in that direction, you have to have different inflections of where reasons – eyes – even if you stuck your chin forward and… But she was very clear that [in] the role you stopped trying to be the swan. So, she was very, very adamant that you were a woman, always a woman. And all the feminine side of being a woman was incredibly important. “Stop fluttering around, stop all that,” you know. I suppose she didn’t like all the affectations, so keep it really simple, really clean. And I think that makes such sense now, you know. I’ve done Swan Lake for many years and watched many other productions of Swan Lake, and you see when it’s really pure, when it’s really simple, it’s just down to the essence of what the real choreography is without all those extra flutters and details. It totally makes sense. Do you know what I mean? When you think of a large bird with long wings and everything? All these little details of fluttering and, you know, that shouldn’t even come into it. And that was so clear the way she described it, and everything. And it was about playing the woman more than anything else. And so that was really nice… And… but she… it was timing. So, you know, in your solo, you’ve got to think of why you’re stepping that way. Give reasons for everything. I was like, “Ah, I love that”. And nobody ever, when they teach you a solo , they don’t always say there’s a reason for this step going that way. No, the step just goes that way. No, it’s really lovely to have a reason or a thought pattern.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: And was Margot saying, “this is the reason” or was she saying, “you have to find a reason?

DARCEY BUSSELL: No, no. It was telling a story through the classical steps. Where we see it as like a training, you know, it’s an amazing piece of training, those solos. They’re so unique because they’re part of your everyday class work. And so, suddenly having it taught in a way that you’re telling a story through those moves, I was just like, “Wow, why have I not thought this before?”

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: No. There are things I’ve learned just through doing these interviews. Monica [Mason], on maybe my sixth interview with her said, “Oh, Michael Somes used to say with Odette’s ronde de jambe into those dévélopes, told us, told me and Antoinette [Sibley], ‘Those are the teardrops’”. And she said, “And Antoinette and I would discuss how do you make her like a teardrop?” And I’d never heard this. How interesting.

DARCEY BUSSELL: See, I feel like it’s the unfolding of the wing, of the wing and, and that ability to go up. But it is sad because you suddenly fall again, and it’s not creating a bad fall, or anything like that, it has to be incredibly fragile and everything, but it makes sense, when you think of the ronde before you would just flick, wouldn’t you? But the ronde before it gives it that sympathy, that’s where you have empathy with her or how she’s feeling because she’s…

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: I’ve always thought about it as his wings because then it’s the descent.

DARCEY BUSSELL: As you cross the legs. Exactly. And if they’re not crossed enough, it’s awful. [Laughs] Yeah. I mean everything you except I always…. I love the exaggeration of moves. When you see those classics as they become more and more square, it’s all wrong. So, you have to show the angles of all those moves and how the cross shapes when the leg steps over, and all those. If you don’t accentuate those, then it just doesn’t carry.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Have you coached Swan Lake?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Yeah, a little bit. Yes, a little bit. More younger, but not to principals. Yeah, it’d be nice.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Um, what about Aurora [in The Sleeping Beauty]? How did you learn Aurora?

DARCEY BUSSELL: Aurora was, again, an unexpected role. I didn’t ever have any ambition to do Aurora. I think… putting myself down again… I didn’t believe that it was the role for me, I suppose, and I suppose because I’d always been told, “Oh no, no, no, you’re not typically English…”, and I thought, “Well, this is such a pure English [style ballet], we really made it our own… that The Royal Ballet and everything, and with Margot and everything”. So, I just had this image that it wasn’t going to be me. And, actually, I loved it. I really loved it, and I didn’t think I would, but I loved, again, the solos, how changeable they were. Again, the musicality. I enjoyed the challenge of them technically. But also, I suppose, for me as a taller girl and looking always athletic, it was lovely to be fragile and innocent on stage and reflect that through my moves because that was obviously more difficult for me. And I really found something that I didn’t know I had, and I really enjoyed performing it. I enjoyed taking risks with it as well.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY: Which were your risks?

DARCEY BUSSELL: All the time! Well, usually musically, and understanding the musicality and how the musicality creates an excitement. And it wasn’t more, not as much as what you were trying to produce, but what you were trying to produce with the music. And that was a wonderful tool to understand, I think. And I think I was just watching people like Margot because she didn’t do anything unusually amazing, but it’s how she interpreted the music and how she was able to create that excitement with the musicality. And that suddenly came to light. And it was fun. It was fun!