Sir Anthony Dowell

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:09

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a dancer. He knew he wanted to be on the stage from the age of five and realized it would be in ballet when he was eleven, and stood in front of Ninette De Valois, the founder and director of the Royal Ballet School. He became the finest English classical dancer of his generation, performing all the great roles with all the great choreographers such as Frederick Ashton and Kenneth Macmillan.

Presenter0:54

For the last ten years he's been in charge of the company of which he was such a star. But in this role the plaudits have been tempered by a good deal of adverse criticism. He thinks it's unfair and shrugs it off. We're establishment, he says. We're bound to be bashed. He's the director of the Royal Ballet, Sir Anthony Dow. It must nevertheless, Anthony, be a very strange experience looking back across your career. You know, you have twenty years of being fated as a star, and then ten years of well, taking the brickbats, really. Does it feel like two entirely different lives?

Sir Anthony Dowell1:26

It does actually. Even when I walk on stage before a show and see my own artists getting ready, I think I can't believe I did that.

Presenter1:32

But do you do you sit there now watching your own company on the stage and and just ache to be there, to be up on the stage?

Sir Anthony Dowell1:39

I miss certain elements of it. I don't miss the nerves and the tension. I used to feel sick. It was like execution time.

Presenter1:46

Me.

Sir Anthony Dowell1:49

No, it didn't. Uh i I was sort of given a rather blessed release from it when I had a long injury and I was away from the stage for about a year. But I knew I wanted to get back to the business. But the actual art of performing, of being just in charge of yourself and of course I can't get away from it, the adulation too that I received.

Presenter2:09

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Dowell2:09

It's very nice, yeah.

Presenter2:10

Well, it's not surprising, is it? But it might never have been ballet from what I understand. You know, you you you might have been in musicals, you might have been a singer or an actor, you just wanted to get on the stage.

Sir Anthony Dowell2:12

I'm not

Sir Anthony Dowell2:16

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Dowell2:19

Backed

Sir Anthony Dowell2:20

Almost.

Sir Anthony Dowell2:21

I've had a wonderful career as a performer and dancer, and uh there were great things I got out of it. But I when I sit in out front of a Broadway musical or singers or actors and I think um you know, maybe it's the grass is always greener, but I would love to have been able to use my body and my voice, not just speaking but singing as well.

Speaker 32:36

You know.

Presenter2:44

Can you sing?

Sir Anthony Dowell2:46

I had pretty good pitch as a young s schoolchild, and I have in fact spoken on the stage. I in fact worked with the great John Dexter when I narrated Oedipus, something that fell in my lap that I never thought I'd do. And having appeared in New York, hoping that people would think, oh God, here's a dumb dancer, as it were, who has a voice, I thought, well, maybe MGM will call, but they didn't.

Presenter3:10

But when was there a single moment when the die was cast? I mean, was it when you stood in front of of aged eleven, of of Dame Lynette de Valois?

Sir Anthony Dowell3:16

Drifty.

Sir Anthony Dowell3:18

Yes, my mum took me into the opera house and sort of a watership down. It still is now, or was all the corridors, and we went right up to an office through the paint frame, and this was magic to me, because I loved model theatres and things. That was one of my first loves. And there was this desk and this woman, rather sort of foreboding expression on her face, and sort of well, dear, was very brusque and matter of fact, and just said, Well, let me see. And I had to stand back from the desk while she eyed my

Sir Anthony Dowell3:48

Little knees, and that was it.

Presenter3:51

I saw the knees and said, You're in.

Sir Anthony Dowell3:51

Yeah.

Presenter3:55

Tell me about your first record.

Sir Anthony Dowell3:57

Well, this is back to the perhaps the career monkey, the one thing that I would when I sit in front out front, especially in New York, and a wonderful overture of a musical start, and I think, my God, to be in that dressing room hearing an overture such as this, the adrenaline is really pumping, and I'm thinking, God, I'd like to get up there and do it.

Presenter4:47

Part of the overture to the musical Gypsy composed by Julie Stein. Perhaps Dame Nynette didn't spot your full potential herself, because I remember seeing a um a programme of a television programme about you in which Rudolph Nurieff said it was he who leaned forward one day in the box when you were on stage and said to Madame as you call her, There's your first truly classical dancer.

Presenter5:12

What would Nouriev have meant when he said that what is a a truly classic why are you the greatest classical dancer of your generation? What does it mean?

Sir Anthony Dowell5:21

It's based on what pleases the eye first good proportions.

Sir Anthony Dowell5:27

Very musical.

Sir Anthony Dowell5:28

And I suppose I w if I was asked to describe my qualities, what was important to me was to make dancing look natural and easy, not to show any of the preparations involved, to make it seamless. That was my own

Sir Anthony Dowell5:44

Uh natural ability, I suppose.

Presenter5:46

So it's authority, it's command.

Presenter5:49

and its natural elegance.

Sir Anthony Dowell5:50

Yes.

Sir Anthony Dowell5:51

Yes, because the classical roles you are of aristocratic bearing.

Presenter5:55

Mm.

Sir Anthony Dowell5:55

And the classical vocabulary is very exposed in a classic. They're still the hardest ballets to dance well, they still provide the greatest challenges for me.

Presenter6:05

Because this is sort of Siegfried in English. The Prince of Beauty, yes. Is that because the choreography is

Sir Anthony Dowell6:07

Yes, or Albert Hinge's. The princess.

Presenter6:15

Absolutely precise in a way that that there's no sort of freedom of expression.

Sir Anthony Dowell6:20

Oh no, the th that's as you grow up the ladder and in years too you gain in artistry, you you bring something of yourself to them. I mean they're your framework. They've got to speak to the public. They're you've still expressing the character through them. But they are still because you're following in so many great dancers' footsteps you also have that to carry on your back. Yes. And the exposure of that. But the geometric lines, the bare bones of the classical vocabulary, is quite hard to achieve.

Presenter6:42

Yes, I think so. Yeah.

Presenter6:52

But you know, when when an opera singer sings the wrong note, you don't have to have you know a a scholarship in music t to spot it. I don't think the average member of the audience would spot, would they, if a if a ballet dancer put his foot in the wrong place?

Sir Anthony Dowell7:03

If you ban it up

Sir Anthony Dowell7:05

I think a dancer uh gains in that respect. Yes, if you're a very experienced dancer, I don't want to use well.

Sir Anthony Dowell7:12

Fudge sounds awful, but yes, it's part of your training. You know how to disguise what's happening. You're absolutely right.

Presenter7:18

So how often do things go wrong as a dancer and we don't notice?

Sir Anthony Dowell7:23

Quite a lot. Not that it would drop the performance, but that it would perhaps...

Sir Anthony Dowell7:31

upset the artists themselves. But yes, things can go wrong. I've even been a ventriloquist in my time when things are steps difficult scores, difficult ballets, someone who had perhaps has had a short time to learn it, or someone perhaps who can't remember things so well. Stage directions are. Or if they're luckily light enough, you just bodily pick them up and move them where they should go.

Speaker 17:48

Uh

Presenter7:48

Stage pictures are equal.

Presenter7:55

Tell me about your next record.

Sir Anthony Dowell7:57

Oh, this is month in the country. It's it's here because of my association with Sir Frederick, who really again put me on the the map in my first creative role, that of Oberon in the dream.

Sir Anthony Dowell8:09

It's the pas deux that starts just on the solo piano, which again is triggering off the memory that I think really my mum wanted my sister to dance and me to learn the piano and I was pushed through piano lessons and then that didn't work and then it went into the theory of music which is very useful for me but it it didn't it didn't happen. Now of course you know every kid says, Oh, I regret I wish I'd stuck at it, but it wasn't for me.

Presenter9:34

Part of Chopin's music used for the ballet A Month in the Country. That was conducted by John Launchbury, but played by Philip Gammon, who originally played it for you and still does, I think.

Sir Anthony Dowell9:44

Yes, Philip is uh one of our principal pianists who plays for rehearsals and was very much in the creative process playing for Sir Fred and um he's played nearly every performance.

Presenter9:56

So you were meant to be the pianist, you say, and your sister was meant to be the ballet dancer. Is that how you came into the ballad? Did you go with her then to these lessons?

Sir Anthony Dowell10:05

Yes, I think a really matter of convenience for my parents. Here was a school that took boys and girls, and I was taken along too.

Presenter10:12

This was Mrs Hampshire in Knightsbridge.

Sir Anthony Dowell10:13

Yeah.

Presenter10:15

It sounds very upmarket.

Sir Anthony Dowell10:18

It does, but actually if anyone I think if it was perhaps a school inspector saw it today, it would have been condemned. But the the church, St Saviour, still exists, and I'm sure the church hall is still there. But there we were in this church hall, which had curtains at the end which could make a stage. But each form at a trestle table was being taught a different subject.

Presenter10:39

And what about Mrs Hampshire herself? What was she like? Who was she?

Sir Anthony Dowell10:41

Um

Sir Anthony Dowell10:42

Incredible woman, Mrs Hampshire, actually Susan Hampshire, the actress's mother, and Susan was a a pupil along with my sister and myself. A very amazing woman. I mean she really I think if she was plomped on this desert island it would be very well organised and probably a housing estate and everything would be up there. She used to cook lunch, teach, teach ballet and of course where I caught the theatre bug was instead of a school display for the parents in that church hall, she hired the Fortune Theatre in Drury Lane and that's where I caught the bug going into a real theatre.

Presenter11:16

What did your parents do then? Were they well to do, that they could afford all this private education and tuition?

Sir Anthony Dowell11:22

My dad was wanted really to be in the merchant navy, but was in the motor trade. And he just saw the last years when the motor cha trade was sort of glamour time, individual body work by hoopers and sultans wanting their Rolls-Royces the colour of the bloom of a grape, all the exotic things. And he sort of saw the slump come, and that affected our incomes, and we had to move. And that's why I'm just so very grateful that I made it, because in those days, once I went to the Royal Ballet School, they didn't see what they were paying for. And of course, in the fifties, you know, the stigma attached to the son of the family doing ballet dancing, which was really, I think, from part of my family, was frowned upon, although my mother only told me that in later years. And they started to get a lot of things. But did they really?

Presenter12:09

They really didn't like it.

Sir Anthony Dowell12:10

I think there was opposition, yes. Yes, why was I being trained to do this? You know, for a

Presenter12:15

Not what the chat does.

Sir Anthony Dowell12:16

Oh, no, no, no, no. Absolutely terrible. I grew up with that stigma attached, you know, and it's it's a lot, lot better, but it's one of the easy laughs for a comic to get into a dress and do the dance of the little swans in Wellington's, you know, it's all getting a bit tired. But you can see why bad ballet a ballet is very easy to send up, and it was one of my big crusades when I came into the ballet world, as not only as a dancer, but now as a director, to take what I call the cringe factor away, the posiness. And of as ballets develop, both Ashton and Macmillan have given us flesh and blood people to be in the new works, and that's taken a bit of the

Presenter12:55

Poor look.

Sir Anthony Dowell12:57

Fairytale imagery away.

Presenter12:59

Next record, please.

Sir Anthony Dowell13:02

My choices are really memory lane triggers.

Sir Anthony Dowell13:06

Because I'm all right at being alone, but I think after a while of just sea, sun, and sand.

Sir Anthony Dowell13:13

And maybe the brain addles after a while and I would like to touch back to roots and things. So this is family time. This is the radio which I absolutely adored because my first love was very much painting and drawing and making sets for theatres and things, a wonderful model theatre that my dad made me. So to be in bed with not too bad flu with all the paints and paper in front of me on the bed and the radio on was just my idea of heaven.

Presenter14:11

The theme tune to Housewives' Choice on the Light programme is called In Party Mood, I never knew that, and that was played by the West End Celebrity Orchestra.

Presenter14:19

Do you remember, Antony Dahl, the first time you stepped on to that stage at Covent Garden?

Sir Anthony Dowell14:26

Yes, I do. Um I was in the Opera Ballet, and the first time I went on was in Aida, part of that big ballet section, covered in the most appalling red brick coloured wet brown that was doled out to us in the bowels of the opera house in old milk bottles.

Presenter14:44

But what were you were sort of slaves or

Sir Anthony Dowell14:44

Oh wait.

Sir Anthony Dowell14:45

Oh, we were sort of archers. We had a dance to do with rather large bows that the elastic used to break. All the worst things happened in these terrible sort of uh Egyptian rope wigs. And then it was left to two of us, who had to wait right till the end of the opera, to actually jump on the sort of sliding tomb that was pulled across. And in those days, the opera used to use now I've probably got this wrong, I can't remember which regiment, but for the slaves and all walk-ons were used from a section of the the army, so these were great big lads. And here were two rather slim eighteen-year-old dance students whipping these great hulks to pull this tomb across.

Presenter15:32

But it all happened pretty quickly for you after that, really. It wasn't quite instant stardom, but I mean, what you were twenty one, I think, when Frederick Ashton

Sir Anthony Dowell15:38

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Dowell15:40

I did about a maybe just about a year in the Opera Ballet and then joined the company just before they went to Russia for the first time in'61.

Presenter15:41

Yeah.

Presenter15:49

Now he he said, Ashton, that that your your character suited that role, Oberon. He said he perceived you as being aloof and inward, and I quote, and rather private and mysterious. Is that

Sir Anthony Dowell16:02

Hmm.

Presenter16:03

Was that you? Was that an image you cultivated?

Sir Anthony Dowell16:03

Is that an image you cultivate? Well, all that equals shy, I think.

Presenter16:08

Yeah.

Presenter16:09

But it it does make it all sound as if it was quite a a a lonely business in those early days, being Anthony Dahle. You know, you lived at home with your parents in Wimbledon, I think you lived into your when you were still thirty.

Sir Anthony Dowell16:19

But that was by choice. I was very happy at home. And of course, when you're climbing up the ladder, it's very tough. You're very tired because you're not only in the cord de ballet, but you're studying solo strolls. So to come home to that cosy womb-like nest and have your mother have the food ready and everything, and no pressures, and because they were a unique couple, I mean, I think that's, in a way,

Sir Anthony Dowell16:46

Not that I would change it, but once you leave the nest and go out into the big world, you search for that relationship in your own life and you realize it's very rare to have two people who are that devoted. So it's a very good idea.

Presenter16:57

Well, it's a completely selfless love, that's why, isn't it?

Sir Anthony Dowell16:59

Twitch

Presenter17:01

But you've also stayed very much apart from eighteen months uh i in America, very much within the Royal Bally. It's almost as if they're your surrogate family, isn't it? There's an again a a large support system that that loves you.

Sir Anthony Dowell17:14

I I don't know. Now well, the times have changed, people have moved on. This is sort of I have a great loyalty and allegiance to it. It gave me so much. That was just one of the reasons I considered taking on this directorship. I never would have ever thought in my performing time that this is where I would be now.

Presenter17:32

But yeah, because you I know you that you didn't envisage doing anything like that, but at the same time it meant you could stay there. I mean essentially you are a a home bird.

Sir Anthony Dowell17:42

Well, I suppose Bloodstock really. I mean, that was one of the obviously there were people and my predecessor, Norman Morris, felt very strongly that when he left I should be it. And I thought, well, it has given me so much. If these people, including Madam, feel I should be it, I will try to give it back what it gave me.

Presenter18:02

Next record.

Sir Anthony Dowell18:04

This is the first of Malcolm Arnold's English dances. I know that when I've travelled, and although I adore being in America, I adore the American people, I love working there, some of my happiest experiences have been when I'm in the United States, I would always have to settle here. The roots are very strong in the English soil. And this sort of theme, whenever it's played, it sums it all up and I think will remind me of the landscape.

Presenter19:36

Part of the Andantino, the first of Malcolm Arnold's eight English dances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold.

Presenter19:43

You worked, as I said at the beginning, Anthony, with uh two great choreographers, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth Macmillan, both both now dead, but um

Presenter19:51

Who've left the banner with a wonderful legacy. What was the difference between them as a dancer working for them? What essentially were the differences?

Sir Anthony Dowell20:00

Funnily enough, not much difference, having worked with other choreographers since then. Both suffered with incredible nerves before that first time in the studio. I think that's what makes choreographers a rather odd breed. They are jelly inside and they have this sort of exterior they create that appears sometimes to have an amazing ego, but it ain't really. It's another cover-up.

Sir Anthony Dowell20:27

And the most they gave you such freedom. That's why um a role created by them was tailor-made. It fitted you like a glove.

Presenter20:37

Was it a much more difficult business coping with them both as the director of the Royal Ballet?

Sir Anthony Dowell20:42

Yes, I used to they were the two creative juggernauts as it were and I got my first taste of you know making sure that both were uh catered for and that uh the heritage rep that they had um fed into the company there was an equal balance and that the creative work they had an equal share too, yes.

Presenter21:03

Yes. Or one or the other would come knocking at the door.

Sir Anthony Dowell21:05

Can you knock

Sir Anthony Dowell21:06

Um well y yes, you didn't you made sure that you planned it so they didn't

Presenter21:12

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Dowell21:12

Yeah.

Presenter21:14

Why then, and this is one of the policies that you've been much criticised for, have you not appointed a a principal choreographer since since Kenneth Macmillan died so suddenly and tragically in'ninety two?

Sir Anthony Dowell21:25

Well, they're a rare breed. I think it would be wrong to give a mantle to someone who I didn't feel was ready or hadn't perhaps realized their full potential or was not right for the company. I mean, they are they are very, very rare people.

Presenter21:42

But is there not a danger that you just compare, you know, any choreographer who comes along with those two great juggernauts, as you call them, and th and there's never going to be anybody to compare unless you

Sir Anthony Dowell21:52

Oh no. We are bringing people on. We have our now in the Royal Ballet School, both the junior and senior section. There is a choreographic group where the young children work on this and work and even write the music and design. I keep my eye open. We have several young gentlemen, some that have Ashley Page and Matthew Hart and Tuckett and are already

Presenter21:52

Bring them on.

Sir Anthony Dowell22:14

making their mark and so I'm providing when I can as many opportunities for them to

Sir Anthony Dowell22:21

use their crafts and experiment.

Speaker 122:23

Meconam 5.

Sir Anthony Dowell22:26

This is

Sir Anthony Dowell22:27

Part of Gloria, a ballet I wasn't involved with, but a masterwork of Kenneth Macmillan's to remind me of Kenneth. I'd thought whether to include a piece of music that represented the roles that I had created with him, but that would have brought the old nervous feeling to the pit of my stomach. And it's always wonderful when I in fact this ballet was done when I was with an American company, so I came back and was able to sit out front and watch it and enjoy it. It's sort of the master's touch, and it's a very, very moving piece.

Presenter23:59

Part of Poulin's Gloria, qui sedes ad dextre ampatrice, with the choir of Radio France and the French National Orchestra conducted by Georges Preêtre. You you didn't uh dance in in Gloria, you you did dance in Ashton's Enigma, and I remember seeing it on film once, and I think you said you were like a a gnat trying to get out of a paper bag.

Sir Anthony Dowell24:20

Yes, it was a quite demanding solo that. It was the only solo I think I've ever found whereas when I walked off stage I sort of almost had to unwind and do a sort of small

Sir Anthony Dowell24:31

Exercise routine bar to get the muscles from, you know, being so seized up. Yes, it was pretty manic.

Presenter24:38

But it you what about the the old chestnut about ballet dancers going on dancing even though their their points are filled with blood, you know? Does that happen?

Sir Anthony Dowell24:50

One has to work through sort of basic aches and pains when you once the bloom of youth wears off, sometimes with youth if you're nursing something. But I played safe and actually it did stand me in good stead. I went on longer as a dancer than I thought I would. Maybe some will say I was way beyond my peak, but you know, that's going to be standing in good stead.

Presenter25:14

It's one of those difficult things, isn't it? Because of course

Presenter25:17

With all of the experience you have, you should be bringing more and more to the role, but the body meanwhile is

Sir Anthony Dowell25:21

The public

Sir Anthony Dowell25:23

Yes, it's the biggest tragedy of a dancer that rather like the Hofnung thing with the bucket and the thing, your artistry is moving up and the body's moving down. But although I was very unfairly accused that as director I was putting on ballast so I could still dance these roles, that was not the case. I had two great choreographers who were saying to me, Anthony, I still want you to do it. A Fred, even with the dream, said to me, Anthony, I don't care, change it, you've still got to do it.

Presenter25:24

Biggest tragedy

Presenter25:52

We'll get the bums on seats and God's money else come to see you.

Sir Anthony Dowell25:54

Well I

Sir Anthony Dowell25:56

Yes, funnily enough, then I didn't think of that so much. I think those we are very much concerned with all that now, with the specter of the money looming in all areas.

Presenter26:07

But that's the difference, of course, now, isn't it, with this job as director? It it's not the job that Tim Ninette did. It it is very much a finance committee meetings the whole time.

Sir Anthony Dowell26:10

That's direct

Sir Anthony Dowell26:14

The

Sir Anthony Dowell26:16

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Dowell26:19

Yes, I mean in in Madam's old words, she said to me, you know, dear, it's very different and difficult now for you. I didn't have half these problems. Amazingly generous of her to say that.

Presenter26:27

Mm.

Presenter26:29

It's a very small world, the world of ballet, isn't it? I mean, I think that there are very few critics, and they portray you as a kind of.

Sir Anthony Dowell26:32

Yes.

Presenter26:37

you know, Norma Desmond figure who's lurking in his office surrounded by people who love him and indulge him and never coming out to face the real world.

Sir Anthony Dowell26:45

Well, that was a very unfair piece. That was horribly unfair. I mean, I

Sir Anthony Dowell26:51

don't live on my reputation what I was. I'm there to help the young dancers, and I hope the one thing that I have done is to bring up the standards of dance in the company, and I'm giving the talent the chances. I'm doing what every previous director has tried

Sir Anthony Dowell27:07

To do. I'm not basking in a faded glory in in any way. I never thought of myself in that way either.

Sir Anthony Dowell27:15

That's the trouble. When you're in a position of power and control or you've been successful, I think there's an element when you're written about they think you're really up there loving it and feeling very sort of complacent and self-satisfied, and you're still that insecure person wanting to do your best. Okay, sometimes you don't get it right.

Presenter27:35

Record number six.

Sir Anthony Dowell27:38

Oh, a great gear change here. My beloved Barbara Streisand. She was a great ballet fan. She came and saw us at the Met. She took us out to dinner after a show. Antoinette and I flew at her invitation when she returned after the big success of Funny Girl the Movie to a new hotel and nightclub that was opening in Vegas, her first live performance back. And she is great on film, but there's nothing like her live. I mean, she's to me such an incredible artist and an enormous talent and an enormous star. And I love all that.

Presenter28:16

Our children will listen.

Presenter28:20

Children will look to you for which way to turn

Presenter28:26

To learn what's a pea.

Presenter28:32

Be careful before you say listen to me

Presenter28:38

Children will listen.

Speaker 128:39

Yeah.

Presenter28:47

Barbara Streisand and children will listen from Sometimes Musical Into the Woods. You're now um the Royal Valley artistic nomads, two and a half years uh in the wilderness while they renovate the opera house. Do do you object to it being called the Opera House? Have you ever thought you should press for a change? You know the

Sir Anthony Dowell29:04

Oh, I think when we move back it's got to, yeah.

Presenter29:06

What will you call it? Or what would you like to have it called?

Sir Anthony Dowell29:10

Well, I suppose it could be.

Sir Anthony Dowell29:13

The Royal Ballet and Opera House. That's not bad for starters. Or just the Royal Theatre, Covent Garden, or something like that.

Presenter29:20

You've always been the junior partners, really, because you couldn't charge so much for seats for ballets, I understand it. Is that right? The opera brings in more money.

Sir Anthony Dowell29:28

Well, for the the big stars, although I I have lived through when they put up the seats for Fontaine and Urev, but it's when you're it's not wonderful for the the home team when you have to live amongst that. But I mean, we brought in a lot of dollars to that opera house through all the big American tours that um the pioneer work that was done in those early days, so we supported that place.

Presenter29:49

Yes, but it's very difficult with both of you now. I mean what what would happen if ultimately and I know you hate the idea yes if you went in with the English national opposite

Sir Anthony Dowell29:54

Ultimately, and I know you hate

Sir Anthony Dowell29:56

Well it's a natural sort of result is that less performances for less of the companies in that house.

Presenter30:04

In the meantime, what about this audience that you are or aren't getting out in in whether it's the Apollo Hammersmith, which is vast, isn't it?

Sir Anthony Dowell30:05

What?

Sir Anthony Dowell30:12

It is vast. I mean, I think that's a lot of unfair thing. They could they couldn't wait to say that we'd done badly and at a loss. We did very, very well there actually. It is a a barn of a place, it's an old cinema, but the audiences that came, the enthusiasm they showed, we enjoyed some wonderful audiences there.

Presenter30:29

So who are they, these audiences? How different are they from the people who've come in the past to

Sir Anthony Dowell30:34

Well, uh the difference is that there are people coming to see the product. I'm not saying this with everyone in the Opera House, but there's a lot attached to the plush and the guilt of making an evening at the Royal Opera House, which again is wonderful. But I think what we're getting now are people who are seeing what is on where, and they're coming to see to see us.

Presenter30:51

So there's something in it for you, and you

Sir Anthony Dowell30:53

Absolutely. I mean, we we are a touring animal anyway. It's not shock, horror, hardship. We're used to moving into theatres and having um sometimes difficult conditions. But the thrill from us as performers is knowing you are being seen by different eyes, and it's a new challenge each night.

Presenter31:12

Record number seven.

Sir Anthony Dowell31:15

Again, back to the musicals, but this time on film. Although I admire greatly, even more now, F Fred Astaire and the great talents, at the time Gene Kelly was the man for me as as the dancer, and I I think my mum would have loved it if I'd become another Gene Kelly. I wouldn't have minded it either.

Speaker 331:37

May clouds chase everyone from the plains.

Speaker 331:44

Come on with the rain, I've a smile on my face.

Speaker 331:52

Down the lane.

Speaker 331:54

With a happy refrain.

Speaker 331:57

Just singing

Presenter32:00

Singin' in the

Presenter32:03

Jean Kelly singing in the rain. So it's casting away time, Anthony. Um I should think with all you've got on your plate you'd be quite pleased to get away from it all, wouldn't you?

Sir Anthony Dowell32:12

I think that's probably why I'm a candidate, you've rather kindly thought he needs a break. Send him away quick.

Presenter32:20

What will you dream of sitting on the beach? I mean, is there a.

Sir Anthony Dowell32:20

William.

Presenter32:24

Well, is it what about your favorite ballet? Is there a ballet role that you will reenact for your s

Sir Anthony Dowell32:29

No, not at all. I don't take that

Sir Anthony Dowell32:32

home. Funnily enough, I'm not someone who lives, eats and sleeps at or has ballet memorabilia or statues and pictures of myself. No one would know I was a dancer if they came to my house. No, I didn't like any of that.

Presenter32:44

Arena

Presenter32:47

Why not?

Sir Anthony Dowell32:49

I don't know. I had a great, great career and made it and worked with some wonderful, wonderful people, but maybe there's a tiny speck of that stigma that I grew up with and maybe I wish I'd really been able to sing and dance.

Presenter33:10

Tell me about your last record.

Sir Anthony Dowell33:13

This is one of the C interludes by Benjamin Britton. Again, I don't necessarily want to be reminded too much of roles in the ballet, but it's very descriptive music, and this is actually this interlude. It sort of means a lot. It's a sort of bustling, there's a feeling of hope in in the theme of this, a new day starting.

Sir Anthony Dowell33:50

Uh

Presenter34:31

Part of the third C interlude from Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House Coffin Garden, conducted by Benjamin Britton. If you could only take one of those eight, Anthony, which which one do you think you'd take?

Sir Anthony Dowell34:45

I think it might be the um the English stances by Malcolm Arnold.

Presenter34:50

Reminder of your roots. What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Sir Anthony Dowell34:51

The roots.

Sir Anthony Dowell34:56

It is the wind and the willows. It's a great sort of escape to me during um perhaps not such happy times when I was at the school. It's a magic world of domesticity and not too much gloom around the corner, so I would pick that.

Presenter35:13

And your luxury.

Sir Anthony Dowell35:15

I'm going to go for sort of unlimited sketch pads and watercolour paints and oils. It was one of my first loves as a child which sadly got really rather shelved away because of the dancing and the demands of it. And that's took over and I'm very much looking forward to tapping into that one day.

Presenter35:37

Sir Anthony Dahle, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Anthony Dowell35:41

It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 135:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.