Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Ballerina, writer and broadcaster who was a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet for nearly two decades.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral" (Ode to Freedom)
GUEST: My very first dance memory... this piece of music I've picked is the Beethoven 9th, what's traditionally the Ode to Joy, but in this case the Ode to Freedom, which Bernstein conducted six weeks after the wall fell.
GUEST: This is a perfect segue... it's Orbital with the signature piece really chime.
GUEST: My most vivid memory is of my father singing Streets of London by Ralph MacTell.
Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492: Overture
Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Sir Colin Davis
GUEST: I've chosen the overture from The Marriage of Figaro... for me this brings the adrenaline of a live performance.
Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004: V. CiacconaFavourite
GUEST: If I ever had a signature ballet, this was it. It was a piece called Step Text by William Forsythe... so I felt I carved this ballet into my body. Even now, when I hear it, I have a sense of exactly how I'm supposed to be doing it.
Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, FP 146: II. Andante con moto
Pascal Rogé (piano), Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit
GUEST: I will play this CD of Poulank, and the second movement in particular has this beautiful soaring melody which would act as a kind of painkiller.
Helen Chadwick, Joanna Foster, Barbara Gellhorn, Hazel Holder
GUEST: We commissioned Helen Chadwick to write this piece with words by John Lloyd Davis... it's called Unforgotten, and this is for Philadelphia, Pat, and my mum.
GUEST: I was hoping Dad would do Streets of London, but he won't sing it anymore. However, he chose to sing Forever Young by Bob Dylan.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:02What mark has ballet left on you?
I think the mark it's left is a strong sense of values, values which are derived from repeatedly working on yourself, on your profession, the sense of discipline, the sense of teamwork, the sense of playing the long game, the sense of learning from failure, and that constant pushing the boundaries forward whilst respecting the past.
Presenter asks
3:21What is your recollection of that night at the Oxford Union when you got up to speak?
I was invited to go down and be on the panel that obviously argued against that notion, and it was a life-changing moment. That act of research in marshalling the arguments was a first really, marshalling arguments in words, not movement, and then seeing the impact.
Presenter asks
12:25To what extent do you think you are your parents' child?
I do think I have elements of both of them. I have my mother's practicality, determination, appetite for hard work, creativity and performance. From my father, you know, I think there is nothing more profound than seeing your dad every week, put on a dress and stand up in front of a congregation and say what he believes in. So when people say to me now, how come you're not frightened of talking about the value of the arts? I look back and I say, Well, I grew up with it. I grew up with that sense of it's a duty to say what you believe in.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Film of Pleasure's Progress by Will Tuckett
my partner made a film of a piece by Will Tuckett called Pleasure's Progress, which is Will cresting the wave of his genius. It takes the Hogarth stories and and brings them to life. If I wanted to weep, I could watch Gin Lane. If I wanted to laugh, I could watch Beer Street.
Presenter asks
20:06Can you paint a picture for us of being a principal ballerina, waiting in the wings? You know your music cue is coming shortly, you're peeling off your leg warmers, you're scuffing your satin pointe shoes in the resin box, and you feel what?
Everything crowds in on you. You have this sense of the ghosts hovering, the people who've danced the role before, the people that you have to live up to. You have a sense of your own expectations. For many dancers there's a strong sense of self-doubt comes in. I can't do it, I can't do it. So it's a very profound moment. You have a sense of all of those ambitions, years and years of wanting, months and months of rehearsing, and suddenly the moment is there.
Presenter asks
28:49How can it be justified, do you think, spending public money on things like opera and ballet?
I think I have to pick you up on the notion of elitist arts because I've always felt the arts are practised by elite artists, but they're not intended for an elite group of people. … We don't live our lives in boxes, but we fund things in boxes. … For me, the arts are profoundly educational. If you explore and engage with the arts, you're necessarily engaging with those big questions of life. … Everybody has the right to expand beyond their immediate horizons.
Presenter asks
29:56When you were creative director of the Royal Opera House, you argued for the importance of mad ideas. What did you mean?
I think it's really important that we take leaps of faith and we take risk. The thing that fascinated me was what is the impact of success on an organisation's appetite to take risk. Because as you get more and more successful, you have more stakeholders, longer term plans, budgets, etc., etc., your capacity to take risk reduces. Now, if you bring in people to work within your organisation who aren't subject to those constraints, you can create a place where people can experiment, they can collaborate in mad and bold ways and come up with new approaches.
“I am one of those privileged people who has been accompanied every day of my life by live music. Not just music, live music. I've lived my life to the sound of a full orchestra.”
“If you're used to having a script, it's very hard when people say you'll go ahead and dance without a script. That's the classic dancer's anxiety dream. It's not being in an exam and not knowing the question, no. It's being on stage, the curtain goes up, the music begins, you think, I haven't got a clue what I'm supposed to be doing.”
“I once had an odd experience of sitting between Mrs. Putin and Mrs. Bush at a dinner. … She said at the end of it, she said, Do you know, I think you got the best from your father and the best from your mother, which I took as a huge compliment.”
“There was a performance of Don Quixote in Japan where I was yet again stepping in. I was upside down, literally. We had two days. I was jet lagged. My partner was sick. We went on, and from somewhere I found the reserves of strength, of self-belief, and confidence to do the show. … I think I wrote, you know, I hugged this unusual bedfellow to myself, this sense yeah, I'd nailed it.”
“I was in the dressing room, and the ballet mistress called across the room, Deborah, I do think you should stay off the milkshakes. I know, I know. And I look back now and I think, gosh, it was another time.”
“It was something I guess I was always clear about. … It has made me more attached to the family I have. I call them my upwards family because I haven't got a downwards family.”