Tamara Rojo

Tamara Rojo0:00

Hello, I am Tamara Rojo and this is a download of my Desert Island Disc.

Tamara Rojo0:05

It's been an incredible honor and a pleasure to be invited to do this programme. I hope you like it. The details of all the tracks I've chosen are on the Desert Island Disc website. The tracks have been shortened because of right reasons. Here it is.

Presenter0:38

My castaway this week is the ballerina to Mara Rojo. On stage she is principal dancer for the English National Ballet. When the curtain comes down she performs the role of the company's artistic director. World renowned as a stunning, emotional and dramatic performer, it must surely be a very different set of characteristics she employs offstage, marshalling her company of dancers and propelling the organization's creative journey.

Presenter1:03

She was just five years old when, sheltering from the rain, she found herself in the school gym, instantly beguiled by the peace and order of a dance class. Despite her father's attempts to widen her horizons with music and sport and art lessons, her path in life was set. She says Life on stage is like nothing else. I've never done heroin, but I'm sure that's what it's like. Every feeling and sense exploding, every nerve in your body completely awake. So to Maru Rojo. That is a fascinating idea. Tell me a little bit more, if you will, about that physical sensation of dancing.

Tamara Rojo1:41

It's it is really like nothing else. It is as if the end of your nerves in your body were completely raw, as if you had no skin. So you feel everything. You feel your partner and you feel his emotions and you feel the air and you feel the audience. You you just feel everything in such high level.

Presenter2:03

said that ballet has no words, it goes straight to the soul and the heart. You can become overcome, these are your words, with emotion. Now surely a big part of your role must be to somehow marshal those emotions.

Tamara Rojo2:16

Yes, you have to balance getting into the role to that absolute limit that you can move the audience with you, that they believe you're not interpreting something, but you're actually becoming something.

Tamara Rojo2:29

And at the same time you have to keep some of your head straight because there's a technical demand that has to be achieved. There's very few shows that you have that you're not even aware of making steps, that you're just dancing. But when it happens, the audience feels it and the dancer feels it.

Presenter2:47

It's been noted that when you take often one of very many of your curtain calls you look totally exhausted. At the end of a performance, when you have given your all, tell us how you feel.

Tamara Rojo2:58

It's sometimes difficult, like at the end of something like Juliet, you've lost everything and you have killed yourself. And the applause, although it's is of course very re rewarding, it feels like an intrusion. It's almost like I need five minutes to come back as as tamara.

Presenter3:15

You look sitting here exactly as a ballet dancer should look. I mean, you're you're incredibly attractive. You've got this long dark hair scraped back, and you look very, very delicate as well as fit as a fiddle. Uh you must be as tough as old boots, though, physically.

Tamara Rojo3:28

Physically. Are you? We are, we all are, yeah. Dancers are really tough actually. We lift enormous amount of weights and we have incredible stamina and flexibility and so physically we are very strong people, yeah.

Presenter3:42

It's time to turn to the music then. Georges Balanchine once said, as a as a dancer, you must see the music and hear the dance.

Tamara Rojo3:49

Yeah, I think for a dancer every note you hear becomes a step, a physical movement. And yes, and when someone teaches you steps, they become instantly music, because one without the other cannot exist.

Presenter4:02

So tell me about your first piece of music today then. What are we going to hear?

Tamara Rojo4:04

We're going to hear Nina Simone in Love Me or Leave Me. I adore Nina Simone. If I'm blue, she's just the person to put on. Or sometimes preparing for certain roles, she also helps me get there. And I do like this song very much.

Speaker 34:22

Love me and leave me and let me be lonely You won't believe me but I love you only I'd rather be lonely than happy with somebody else You might find the night time the right time for kissing Night time is my time for just reminiscing Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else

Speaker 34:46

There'll be no one unless that someone is you

Speaker 34:51

I intend to be independently blue

Presenter4:56

That was Nina Simone and Love Me or Leave Me. So to Mara Rojo, artistic director, then. What is the most demanding part of that job at the English National Ballet?

Tamara Rojo5:08

I think transforming an organization is always difficult. Coming in with a set of new ideas and not able to compromise on them, because I truly believe

Tamara Rojo5:19

They are our best chance to be extraordinary.

Presenter5:22

Yeah.

Tamara Rojo5:22

Uh

Presenter5:22

And what are you new?

Tamara Rojo5:23

Uh

Presenter5:23

Yeah.

Tamara Rojo5:23

From the way we train the choreographers we bring, the meaning of those pieces, how they have to be relevant to where we live, the society we're in, the people that come to see us. Um the way we present the classic repertoire, how we have to update it, the places we go on tour, just everything really.

Presenter5:41

Of course, just to remind people then, English National Ballet is this touring company. You don't have a a permanent home anywhere. English National Ballet receives just over.

Tamara Rojo5:47

Beware.

Presenter5:50

Six million taxpayers' pounds every year. And people might say, well, you know, when we're cutting.

Tamara Rojo5:51

Uh

Presenter5:56

All sorts of benefits for people who most need them. Why should we be putting money into an organization that?

Tamara Rojo5:57

People have

Presenter6:01

Although you have programmes that go out and perform publicly and try and get involved in communities, essentially it's an infinitesimal elite that chooses to go to the ballet. Why should we give all this public money to it?

Tamara Rojo6:14

That's actually really not our case. In English National Ballet, we are one of those companies that goes to the regions, that goes everywhere, and therefore our audience is really not the elite. And we offer hundreds of tickets at ten pounds, less than the cinema, much less than football, definitely. So we are very much a company that is working class, both the actual artist and also our audience. But beyond that, what we have been able to prove all of the art sector is that for every pound that we receive, we actually multiply that by three in terms of the business that we create, the revenue that we create, and the tax that we give back to the country. But of course, beyond that is what makes a nation. And I think the arts is one of the most important things about Britain. What would you say to people listening who would think, oh, you know what? Bally's not for me.

Tamara Rojo7:09

I think ballet is for everyone because they want

Tamara Rojo7:12

Art form that we all share, all of humankind is dancing. Everyone moves. And because it has no words, because it doesn't have one language, it's able to be understood by anybody instinctively. You don't need to know anything about the history of the piece you're gonna see. You don't need to know anything about the story behind it, who created it. Don't worry about it. If you want to know, that probably is gonna enhance your experience. But if you don't want to know or you feel you don't know, you don't have to because it's about emotion. It's just about human emotion.

Presenter7:46

Let's have some more music tomorrow, Rojo. Uh, tell me about this, your second disc of the day.

Tamara Rojo7:50

Is Bags Pasakalia in Fug in C minor? It's actually for me is Jeanon Me la Mour, is a piece of choreography created by Roland Petit. And I was very lucky to be able to perform it last year with Nicola Le Rees, who is a dancer I first met when I was very young in the school. And he came as a guest artist and I asked if I could stay to put on the tape for the rehearsal. And I completely fell in love with him. And then, of course, he was a big star, so I didn't see him for years and years and years. And he came back to the Royal Ballet and performed there as a guest, but I can never perform with him. And finally, last year, because as artistic director, you do get some good choices, I invited him to dance with me, and he accepted. So it's just like a dream come true.

Presenter9:41

That was part of Basque, Pasacaria, and Fugue in C minor, performed there by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokovsky. So, to Mararojo, you were born in Canada, I understand. Both your parents there were Spanish. Tell me how they met.

Tamara Rojo9:55

Uh they met in Canada, um, through the Spanish society, I think. My father he left Spain because um Franco was still around and he was quite a lefty man and therefore he knew that if he had to do the army service, which was obligatory at the time, he would probably get into serious trouble. So before he was sixteen he went to work to Canada and he met my mother there who was studying there.

Presenter10:19

Right.

Presenter10:22

And you say quite lefty. Both your parents were actually they were sort of committed communists, were they? That was the

Tamara Rojo10:26

So I think my father will describe himself as anarchist republican.

Tamara Rojo10:32

Not just communists. Okay, more complex than that.

Presenter10:35

More complex than the very

Tamara Rojo10:37

Active

Presenter10:37

Political household though.

Tamara Rojo10:39

Yes, when we return uh I was a few months old, but um a year after we returned there was the second coup d'etat in Spain and there was serious danger that both of them will end up in prison because among other things they had an illegal print under my bed. Uh um

Presenter10:55

That was a printing

Tamara Rojo10:56

Press Under your coat, I've read. Is that right? So yes, they were very much uh involved in the political transition to democracy. I mean, every weekend there was uh dinners and people over and constantly discussing the future of the country, constantly discussing

Presenter10:57

Times red, is that right?

Tamara Rojo11:12

what democracy means and where it should go and things like that. So I I learned quite soon that uh words can be quite a dangerous weapon and and that you should learn very quickly how to talk to somebody and and um and how to have a a conversation.

Presenter11:30

Is it relevant at all, then, that in your professional life words are are n not prevalent?

Tamara Rojo11:35

Maybe that's what I was trying to escape. I mean, I I can't tell you how many meetings, endless meetings, political meetings, and for a two-year-old, for a three-year-old, they're really boring things together.

Presenter11:46

You were taken along to all the

Tamara Rojo11:47

Yeah, and and to um and to demonstrations. Yeah, of course. I mean, I was a lonely child, so they would take me everywhere. Did it matter to you?

Tamara Rojo11:57

Um, I think there were moments where I would have liked a a sibling. But then I remember my mother said a bit later when I was already doing ballet and I said I would like a a sister or a brother and my mum said, Well, if you have a sister or a brother, we couldn't afford to send you to ballet And very soon I went, You know what, I can live with being an only child.

Presenter12:17

Let's fit in some more music tomorrow. Tell me about your third choice.

Tamara Rojo12:20

This is Leonard Cohen, Take This Walls. And in my home, one of the things we didn't have was a television,'cause my parents didn't believe it was a good thing to have. So I will entertain myself every day just putting music on. And of course, being in Canada for so long, they had a lot of music by Leonard Cohen. And this walls was also inspired by a Spanish poet by Federico Garcia Lorca. So it just kind of touches me in every way.

Speaker 412:47

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women There's a shoulder where death comes to cry

Speaker 412:58

There's a lobby with 900 windows

Speaker 413:03

There's a tree where the dogs go to dine.

Speaker 413:07

There's a piece that was torn from the morning.

Speaker 413:13

And it hangs in the gallery of frost.

Speaker 413:19

Die

Speaker 413:20

Ayy aye Take this wall Take this wall

Presenter13:27

That was Leonard Cohen and Take This Waltz. So, Tamara, I said in the introduction that you almost really found ballet by accident. You were this little five year old girl at school sheltering from the rain, and a teacher ushered you into the gym. Can you actually remember the moment when you saw the class?

Tamara Rojo13:39

Mm-hmm.

Tamara Rojo13:42

Yeah, I remember. I really didn't enjoy school at all. I found it really noisy and and just too much happening all the time.

Tamara Rojo13:50

And then because my mom was a working mother, she couldn't pick me up at the end of school, so I used to just wait for her or do something. And that day it was cold, and the teacher just said, Well, come into the gym and as I walked in, there was this piano music.

Tamara Rojo14:05

and these beautiful girls moving, and of course the ballet teacher was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She smelled amazing. I mean, my school was nunn's school, so the contrast between the teachers and her was like a different world.

Tamara Rojo14:22

And there was this quietness and this, yeah, harmony and it just felt perfect. It felt like a different world that I have never seen. And I just didn't want to leave. When my mother finally came to take me home, I was like, No, but we sh we need to stay and watch this to the end, whatever this is.'Cause I didn't know what ballet was. I didn't understand ballet was a performance. Performing wasn't what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do is ballet class and ballet rehearsals. And then once I started performing, I found a different love, another side of it that I really enjoyed.

Presenter14:56

What about now on stage, then? Um it is intensely physical. Were you a physical, robust little girl? Did you like running and jumping and risk?

Tamara Rojo15:02

Were you a

Tamara Rojo15:06

I was incredibly lazy. I wouldn't walk anywhere. I just wanted to read, and I would dance all the time, but at home, with music, with any kind of music.

Presenter15:16

And so, how did your parents react? Again, I mentioned in the introduction that I'd read that your dad sort of tried to persuade you out of dance. Is that accurate?

Tamara Rojo15:23

Yeah, he he he wasn't happy for me to to be a dancer. He didn't think that was the best that I could do. And they had fought so much for a new country, a new beginning, that all of that generation wanted their children to achieve more than they have achieved. You know, it's it's a working class people wanted to make the next generation middle class. So how do you become middle class? You go to university. I mean, my generation and the generation after me are probably the most educated generation in Spain because all of our parents wanted us to achieve what they couldn't, which is go to university, learn languages, have a career like a doctor or or uh some something that that feels like you you you're better off than we are.

Presenter16:08

So did your parents come round to you dancing?

Tamara Rojo16:11

Yes, I think once they saw that, well, there was no way of getting me out of it, and I will sacrifice my holidays and my personal time and time with friends and family and everything just to do another ballet class. Then eventually, when they saw that, they came around. But m for my father, it was an article that came out in the Times. I happened to be at the cover of the Times, and one of his colleagues at work said, Well, you must be very proud. And something changed. He suddenly thought,

Tamara Rojo16:45

My God, I'm blind, you know, she's

Tamara Rojo16:48

clearly quite special and achieved so much that from then on it was completely the opposite. He read everything about ballet, knows more about ballet history than I do. It's is completely different now.

Presenter17:01

And he comes to watch you, does he?

Tamara Rojo17:02

Always, always to every show.

Presenter17:04

I do, yeah.

Presenter17:05

Let's have some more music tomorrow. Rojo, tell me what we're gonna hear now.

Tamara Rojo17:08

Actually we're going to hear Romeo and Juliet, the last scene, the crib scene. I love this because even though it's clearly very sad, if you actually listen to the music, it's actually hopeful. It's not a sad piece of music. And when you're in it, it's it's just tender, it's just beautiful.

Presenter18:30

That was part of the ending of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet the Krypt scene, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Andrei Previn. So, Tamara Rojo, when you went to ballet school in Madrid, you you described your time there as hell. What was hellish about it? What happened?

Tamara Rojo18:45

What happened?

Tamara Rojo18:46

Well, it was it wasn't so bad. I don't know when I described the asylum. It must have been a lot of people.

Presenter18:50

You were having a bad day.

Tamara Rojo18:52

Yeah. I remember in the summer there was like a summer school, and you could do one class, two classes, and I will always do all of the classes. I will be there from nine AM until six PM, regardless of what they were teaching, sometimes doing the same class twice, just to be in a ballet class.

Presenter19:09

And this uh obsessiveness that you had, i is that just how you are in life generally, or is it only when it applies to Valley?

Tamara Rojo19:15

Only when it applies to Bali. Yeah, I am a perfectionist and a little bit obsessive. You can't be a little bit obsessive.

Presenter19:22

Okay, okay.

Tamara Rojo19:23

I just want it to be a little yeah.

Presenter19:25

Yeah.

Tamara Rojo19:26

Yes, I am quite obsessive uh when it comes to ballet. Everything related to ballet, my ballet shoes, what I'm wearing, um, class, rehearsals, and as an artistic director I'm quite the same.

Presenter19:37

What do you mean what you're wearing and what you do? How does that manifest itself?

Tamara Rojo19:41

everything from the costumes, I'm really finickety about the costumes and how they have to fit and how that has to help my proportions. But even in in class, you know, what I wear every day is is just a leotard or something, but it's always the same cut of leotard. And when they stop doing those things, it's a drama for me because I have to find something else that is exactly the same.

Tamara Rojo20:04

So yeah, I am I am quite

Tamara Rojo20:07

Maniatic and things like that.

Presenter20:09

You were only twenty when you won a gold medal at a very prestigious international dance competition in Paris, and it was then that you were spotted by the artistic director of Scottish Ballet, and you decided to take up their offer at twenty of moving uh from Spain uh to Glasgow.

Tamara Rojo20:19

Yeah.

Presenter20:23

You went on then to spend twelve years at the Royal Ballet. You danced at one point. Now, would this be in bar class behind Sylvie Guyem? Tell me about that.

Tamara Rojo20:32

Well, for me, Sylbie was the absolute perfection. For me, it was what a ballerina should be. And I have seen her dance both in videos, because of course at the time it was really difficult without internet. So it was almost like an illegal trade. You know, someone will bring a new video from Paris and it will spread through the school. I've seen her in videos, and I've seen her in a gala performance. I remember I went to ask her there's only two people I've ever asked for a signature, and one was her. And she was really angry because she didn't want to be seen in a rehearsal, so she bollocked me.

Tamara Rojo21:07

for being there in the first place. Um but when I suddenly joined the Royal Ballet, being able to do bar behind her and watch how she worked, that was incredibly inspiring because then I realized there is no accident, this person is who she is because of the time and dedication and and completely commitment that she has for the art form.

Presenter21:29

Some more music tomorrow, Rocho. Tell me about this next piece. We're on your fifth choice.

Tamara Rojo21:33

Well, this is Paco de Lucia, Comulagua, and Paco de Lucia, he he was the most incredible guitarist. And I used to come and see him live when he came to London. But he is uh here with Camaron, which is his partner, his perfect partner, because they were opposites. Paco was a perfectionist, a a classicist, and Camaron was all duende and all nature, and and together it was amazing.

Speaker 422:12

Limpia vara guadar río, como la treadadara remañana, limpia varcariño mío, almanantía de tu fuente glada.

Speaker 422:28

I tomorrow

Speaker 422:31

Yeah.

Presenter22:35

Paco de Lucia and Como El Agua. So, tomorrowjo, um, let's talk a little bit about your debut in Giselle, the principal role, um, for the Royal Ballet. It happened in in true fairy tale fashion. Um you stepped in when Darcy Bussell was injured.

Speaker 422:50

Mm.

Presenter22:50

But you yourself were injured and and somehow you decided to what did you do? You ignored that, you ignored advice and you

Tamara Rojo22:57

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Presenter22:57

I'm not going to miss my opportunity.

Tamara Rojo22:59

Of course, I had sprained my ankle in my last show with English National Valley and it was a really bad sprain. And I think the day after, Antony Dawel called me to say, We need you. Darcy is not able to perform Giselle. Would you come and do it? And I said yes. And I just called uh a friend of mine, a physiotherapy from Spain, and he helped me with uh rehabilitation while I was rehearsing for the show.

Presenter23:24

And you are standing backstage and the audience is out front and at that point the announcement comes over. Um this may be unfair to ask you, but was it an audible kind of oh as people heard that Darcy was not dancing?

Tamara Rojo23:30

Yeah.

Tamara Rojo23:33

As people had that

Tamara Rojo23:36

It was. And I understand I understand because, you know, Darcy was a a a star of the Royal Ballet. People had bought tickets to see her. They might have been waiting for months.

Presenter23:36

And I understand.

Tamara Rojo23:46

to see her.

Presenter23:47

And just like in the fairy tale, you stormed it.

Tamara Rojo23:50

Well, it it was all right.

Presenter23:53

It's more than all right. The reviews were more than all right. You've had your fair share of injuries, it should be noted, throughout the years, including

Tamara Rojo23:53

Yeah.

Presenter24:00

This sounds horrific, a burst appendix whilst you were actually on stage.

Tamara Rojo24:04

Yeah.

Presenter24:05

What role were you dancing, and how did you know something was badly wrong?

Tamara Rojo24:08

I was doing Clara in Nutcracker and it had been created for me so it was a big deal. And I had been having Tommyache for a few days. And that day I was particularly feeling unwell. And in one lift I just felt something pop inside. And then I knew it wasn't Tommyache. And I clearly had to make my way to the hospital. Did you abandon the performance? No.

Presenter24:31

Oh, I finished. I finished the performance. Right, okay. Let's have some more of your music then tomorrow. We are on your sixth choice of the morning. What's this?

Tamara Rojo24:41

This is List Funere. It's actually a piece that appears in two valets. First in Meierlin, where uh Jonathan Cope is doing this incredible solo that is just before we kill ourselves. So it's very moving. And then it was chosen again this year by Liam Scarlett for the piece he created for us, for No Man's Land. So it's very beautiful.

Presenter26:08

That was Alfred Brendel, performing part of Liszt's Funerai. So to Marurojo, what about the intimacy? I'm talking about the the really the physical proximity that you have with your dancing partners. You know, you spend many hours in practice, not to mention, of course, the moments when you're on stage together and you're entirely relying on each other physically to make the whole thing work. When you're dancing with somebody new, how do you begin to build an intimacy with them?

Tamara Rojo26:33

It's difficult. You sometimes it's instant. There's the same kind of movement, the same musicality, the same instinct. And then there are dances that have a completely different rhythm, inner rhythm, not not in terms of the music, but physical rhythm of breathing, of attacking something. And then you just have to learn how to adapt to that.

Presenter26:56

Your partner in real life, not on stage, is Neil Austin, who's the Olivier Award winning theatre lighting designer. The way you talk about your partners on stage makes it sound like a very intense relationship indeed. Do is does that ever make your private life complicated?

Tamara Rojo27:13

Uh not anymore.

Tamara Rojo27:15

He used to. But thankfully not, not anymore. Um I think I'm very grateful that he comes from the theatre industry because he understands that what happens in the studio is not reality and I can fall in love a million times with the men on the stage, but I don't carry it home.

Presenter27:36

I can't remember now. It escapes me which ballet it was precisely, but there was one extremely passionate scene where your kiss was considered to be beyond the norm of what we see on stage, the passion that was exchanged between you and your male lead. Do you remember that?

Tamara Rojo27:50

Yes, I do, I do.

Presenter27:51

Yes. Tell me it was Mirely. Was it Meyerly? So tell me a little bit more about that. What happened?

Tamara Rojo27:52

Telling you as my

Tamara Rojo27:57

Well, you know, th again, there are partners that become very important in your artistic life. You know, Jonathan Koch, Carlos Acosta. They're people that you connect in a not in an intellectual way. You know, you know, I know this could never work in the real life, you know. But you connect in a purely animalistic way. You you smell right for each other and your your heartbeats are right for each other. And then when you dance such emotionally charged roles, it's normal that you're gonna feel

Tamara Rojo28:31

intensely in love with those people for those hours.

Presenter28:36

Neil must be a very secure man, that's all I can think of. And when you first went on a date together, he took you somewhere rather unusual.

Tamara Rojo28:42

Yes, he took me to see Pf, which was an amazing musical that he had created with Michael Granditch and Christopher Oram. And I think he was obviously trying to impress me because it was an incredible piece of work from him. So he did a good job. Yeah, obviously.

Presenter29:00

Having time for some more music then. Tell me about your next piece, your seventh.

Tamara Rojo29:04

This is um Amy Winehouse Back to Black and

Tamara Rojo29:08

For me, I think Amy changed the music industry beyond recognition. I mean, after her, every female singer is kind of inspired by Amy, and I do love this song.

Speaker 429:20

He left no time to regret.

Speaker 429:26

Campus

Speaker 429:28

Ways with his same old safe band.

Speaker 429:35

And I took a troubled track.

Speaker 429:42

My hearts are stabbed, I go back to black

Presenter29:51

That was Amy Weinheisen back to Black. So tomorrow

Presenter29:54

Put me straight on this. I read that you tried to have your legs insured and the insurance company quoted you thirty thousand pounds a month premium.

Tamara Rojo30:02

Is that true? It's true, yeah. They thought it was just too risky for a dancer to have them in short, and I understand, you know.

Tamara Rojo30:09

But it was just curiosity'cause you hear all these people insuring parts of their bodies and I thought, Well, I probably should insure something. But no, it wasn't worth it.

Presenter30:16

I mean, I know your your working life is here, your personal life is here, but would you think ever of going back to Spain and and and starting your own school there?

Tamara Rojo30:24

I'm not sure. I think people in England are not aware of how lucky you are. Artists are free to create whatever they want. That is not the case in many other countries. And so I think I've become a liberal in that way that uh Britain is such a liberal country that I would find it very hard to to live elsewhere.

Presenter30:48

The thing that attracted you to ballet as a little five year old then was the the peace and the quiet and the thoughtfulness and the reflection. There can't be much room for any of that in your life these days.

Tamara Rojo30:59

Yeah.

Tamara Rojo31:00

That's true. Not much. I mean, I'm lucky because I still do ballet class every day. Yes, of course, with the company.

Presenter31:04

Dias

Tamara Rojo31:07

And I still have to rehearse because I still perform. I do also some fitness uh before for an hour and then I rehearse probably another two, two hours and a half. So that time is still quite precious for me.

Presenter31:19

So on a a desert island, then, all on your own, w will you be a survivor? Do you need the company of others?

Tamara Rojo31:25

I don't, actually. I'm quite good on my own. But I do need human voices and I do need uh noise. Well, you'll have them.

Presenter31:33

Uh Uh You the discs. Tell me about your final piece of music then. What are we gonna hear?

Tamara Rojo31:37

Mozart Piano Concerto No. twenty one in C. Again a masterpiece, this time a choreographic masterpiece by Giri Kiddie and Petit Mort, that I was lucky enough to bring to the company last year.

Presenter32:58

That was part of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. Twenty one in See the Andante, performed there by Alfred Brendel and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner. So, tomorrow, I'm going to give you some books before you leave for this island. I give you a copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can choose another book to go with them. What's it going to be?

Tamara Rojo33:17

Uh Gabriel Garcia Marquez uh Love in the Time of Color.

Presenter33:21

Right, that is yours then, and a luxury something to make it all just a little bit more bearable.

Tamara Rojo33:26

I would like a radio so that even if I'm on my own, I can hear other human beings around the world speaking and and just keeping me company.

Presenter33:36

Sure, technically, that's allowed. I think you're really just allowed the music. I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to crack the whip on this one, like a bit of a sort of old-fashioned dance mistress. I'm going to.

Tamara Rojo33:42

Like a bit of

Tamara Rojo33:44

Yeah.

Presenter33:45

Beat my stick on the floor and say you're not allowed that. You're going to have to think of something else.

Tamara Rojo33:49

You can actually.

Tamara Rojo33:50

Then my bed. Yes, you can definitely have to. Yeah, a good night's sleep is quite important.

Presenter33:55

We'll give you your best. And finally, if you were to have to run through the waves to save one of these eight discs, which one would it be?

Tamara Rojo34:03

Okay, I think I'm gonna go with Paco de Lucia,'cause it's a happy one, so at least it'll make my days happy.

Presenter34:12

Okay, it's yours. Tomaro Rojo, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter34:57

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.