Darcey's Ballerina Heroines

There's hardly a young girl in the country who didn't grow up

dreaming of being a ballerina,

perhaps even one day performing here

at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.

I'm one of the lucky few who actually followed the dream.

This was my performing home for almost 20 years.

Think of all the amazing roles that ballerinas have had made for them.

You'll realise that the whole history of ballet

has been driven by female superstars.

Dancers like Anna Pavlova...

..Galina Ulanova...

..and, of course, Margot Fonteyn.

Since we first stepped out on to the stage,

ballerinas have been an almost constant source of fascination,

even obsession.

You are a princess on stage

and it's a part of the dream of a young girl.

There is a mystique and a mystery about being a dancer.

In this film, I'm going to look at the lives and roles

of some of my heroines.

A ballerina is not just a good dancer.

A ballerina is somebody who has a spiritual access to the art.

Being a dancer is a gift from God.

Through their stories, we'll discover

how a few extraordinary and talented women

helped shape the course of ballet history.

Wonderfully located in the middle of Richmond Park,

just outside London...

..is the Royal Ballet School, White Lodge.

And this is me, as a 17-year-old, in ballet class

where all budding ballerinas spend years of sweat and toil.

I was one of the lucky few chosen to graduate from the school

to the Royal Ballet company,

where I enjoyed a long and successful career.

I was also fortunate enough to dance

with wonderful companies around the world,

including America's premier company,

George Balanchine's New York City Ballet.

Balanchine is famously reported to have said, "Ballet is woman."

That's not quite fair to the many extraordinary male dancers

who have danced brilliantly in ballets down the years.

But it is probably fair to say that women have played a bigger part

in classical ballet than they have in any other art form.

Think of the best-known ballets,

and the great ballerinas soon come to mind.

You may not recognise some of these names,

but they were all ballet groundbreakers.

Marie Taglioni, the first tutu-toting romantic ballerina.

Anna Pavlova, the first global superstar.

Galina Ulanova, who entranced the villainous Stalin.

And Suzanne Farrell,

one of the best loved American ballerinas of all time.

These were all great ballerinas.

But the extraordinary thing about ballet

is that all these expressive movements come from the perfection

of five basic positions,

on which everything is built.

First.

Second.

Third.

Fourth.

And fifth.

Since the 1700s, ballet dancers all around the world

have endlessly repeated these five positions

in their daily ballet class.

But while the positions are the same,

over the centuries, different schools of ballet have emerged

in different countries.

The focus of the eyes is vital, too.

Broadly speaking, British ballet is lyrical and refined.

You go down and then you come up to there.

And the back arm is just soft.

-Really low, yeah.

-The shoulder is soft, too.

-That's better.

Dee-da dee-da, dee-da-dee.

Dee-da dee-da, dee-da dee-da,

dee-da dee-da, dee-da-dee.

Do you think it's the shapes, the curves that accentuate that?

I think it has to do with temperament, too,

an English temperament,

-which is quite conservative, quite restrained.

-Yeah.

'It's not flashy.

'So you don't do things for effect.'

-Lift the fingers a little.

-Lift the fingers, ah, lovely.

'You do it because it's the essence of something.'

Push down, push down, push down. Beautiful.

And then when you breathe to come out of that...

-Lovely.

-Lovely.

French ballet is elegant and understated.

The students at the Paris Opera Ballet School

are working at perfecting their footwork.

From the age of 11 until the age of 14,

they are really trained in the old traditional ballet lessons.

To keep the tradition is essential.

It has produced fantastic dancers,

and therefore we are not going to deny this

and to change anything on that basis, at least.

American ballet is all fast attack, athletic.

When you look at American dancers,

people always talk about these droopy wrists...

-..but that's not something taught.

-It was more strength into the...

Energy! Oh, I'm so glad you said that.

-It was strength.

-It was energy all the way down to the fingernails.

So you felt this, tah! And it was the same sort of feeling

that went into the legs, into the arms.

And then in certain ballets, the Balanchine particularly

and the neo-classics, was to have the arm soft

-at the same time as strong legs.

-Yes.

-So, as in a contrast.

-Yes.

Well, we had to do that in Britain as classical dancers,

that this was incredibly soft, it was no effort,

and this was all down there. It's the action...

-The in...

-The out.

-The in...

-Yes, exactly.

And out!

And again, the cou-de-pied,

the foot's at the back of the leg right away.

What you do notice about

a lot of Americans is, they do have a very good elevation.

It's a quick take-off, so that you're in the air longer.

They can actually teach them to have elevation, though.

It's not whether you either have a good jump

or you don't have a good jump, you are TAUGHT to have a good jump.

Russian ballet is big and punchy.

At the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St Petersburg,

the students study the method first established in 1918

by the famous teacher Agrippina Vaganova.

Do you believe you've been able to hold on to that style

that was first produced with Vaganova's teaching?

The directions are so clear,

very clear from the upper body and the hips, it's very nice.

You know, where we think that sometimes we open out,

but this is very good, the back,

how you use the back is really good.

'But great ballerinas have always developed their own unique performance styles

'and I want to introduce you to some of the most exceptional

'and ground-breaking women in ballet history.'

I'm going to start with Peggy Hookham,

our nation's favourite ballerina for nearly 40 years.

She's better known today, of course, as Margot Fonteyn.

I love watching Fonteyn dance.

Even though technical standards in ballet have moved on a lot

since her prime, only she,

with her extraordinary symmetry of arms and head,

could capture the spirit of a water sprite so completely.

Her statue has been here at White Lodge since the 1960s.

When I came here as a nervous 13-year-old,

Margot was right outside my dormitory.

Like generations of budding ballet dancers,

I used to touch her middle finger for luck.

For me, she was the direct link to the history of ballet in Britain.

To generations before me, Fonteyn WAS ballet,

one of those rare artists who imprint themselves

on the nation's consciousness.

Fonteyn almost single-handedly propelled the Royal Ballet

and its English style onto the international stage.

Here, dancing with her frequent partner Michael Somes,

Fonteyn shows her unfussy style.

But again, watching her,

it's easy to imagine the elegance and serenity of a swan.

Margot had a fantastic proportion,

a great beauty, she was radiant, she was so alive.

She managed to leave us impressions that you never forget in your life.

Her entrance in Sleeping Beauty

is absolutely inoubliable,

it's sparkling.

Margot Fonteyn was revered and adored

by all who knew her and saw her dance.

She came to a few of my rehearsals.

The experience was unforgettable.

Here was not just the most famous ballerina ever,

but a connection to the great ballerinas of the past.

But even a dancer as great as Margot doesn't work alone.

Right beside her throughout her career

was one of history's most renowned choreographers,

Frederick Ashton.

It was he who moulded Fonteyn into the iconic ballerina

the world remembers.

I would say what makes his works are the musicality of his ballets.

He would listen, in those days it was gramophone records,

he said that he listened to those records every night

for three months before he began to create a ballet,

so that he knew every note.

And all of his movements are very much tied in

with the expressiveness of the music.

Ashton created a central role for Fonteyn

in his ballet Symphonic Variations.

Its elegance and complete harmony of music and design

make it a pure joy.

It's regarded as one of the most beautiful short ballets ever made.

His eye for detail, like how fingers worked and focus of eyes.

He said to Margot,

"It's so important that you finish everything -

"AND we see it - so that it registers to the back of the theatre."

-So it doesn't get lost in the space.

-No.

And as much as he loved fluidity,

so he also absolutely loved the punctuation.

Fonteyn had one extraordinary piece of luck.

At 42, just as she was approaching retirement,

a 23-year-old dancer defected from the Kirov ballet.

His name was Rudolf Nureyev and he came to London in 1962,

saying he wanted to dance

with the ballerina he had heard so much about in Russia.

She invests everything in me.

But it is something what we generate between ourselves.

And then it is thrown out

to have a stronger impact.

Are you taking from each other or giving to each other?

-Is it a battle?

-It is not a battle.

No, I don't think so. It is a gift to each other.

I say it is absolutely... We are face to face.

We play, or we live, for each other.

Fonteyn put all thoughts of retiring from her mind

and enjoyed a glorious late summer of her career.

Despite the two decade age difference,

Fonteyn and Nureyev had an obvious physical chemistry on stage.

No other ballet couple before or since

has matched their worldwide fame.

Fonteyn's partnership with Nureyev defined the image

of a ballerina in a tutu with a handsome prince.

But ballet hasn't always been this way.

When it first started 500 years ago,

it was different in just about every way.

Ballet, known as baletto - little dance -

started in the city states of Italy as a dance for the nobility.

They were very elaborate social occasions,

so ballet really was a social dance.

It was often elaborately staged out of doors

where there would be, you know,

water, and fireworks, and castles crashing down.

It makes special effects today look simple.

Ballet soon caught on and was adopted by the French court.

Eventually, a French style of dance was developed.

This glorious creation behind me,

the Palace Versailles, didn't even have a theatre when it was completed

in the early 1680s, so ballets were performed in the temporary theatres

often erected in the gardens, or in this ornate courtyard.

It didn't look like ballet

as we see it today on the stage,

it was much more restrained, much more refined,

and much smaller steps.

The reason for that is that it's an aristocratic ideal.

The idea behind ballet was,

how can you present yourself in a noble way?

Well, you can organise your movements

and organise your body so that you have grace

and a certain kind of beauty, and you look relaxed all the time.

You don't look as if you're working, because aristocrats don't work.

You look like you're at ease,

in control, a certain kind of power and comportment.

This early form of ballet had powerful support

in the shape of Louis XIV.

He often performed himself,

and, at the age of 14, he played Apollo, the Sun God,

leading to his famous nickname, the Sun King.

He studied very seriously and he made ballet

not just an entertainment, but a kind of central part of living.

This is the amphitheatre at Versailles,

used by Louis XIV, in which he both performed

and watched his ballet spectaculars.

Just imagine dancing here for Louis XIV.

But when he started piling on the pounds -

never a great career move for a dancer in his thirties -

he left the stage.

Even though he no longer performed,

Louis XIV kept himself artistically busy.

In 1661, he founded the Academie Royale de Danse

to train professional male dancers.

And in 1669, the Royal Academy of Music was formed,

which went on to become the famous Paris Opera.

Paris became the worldwide centre of ballet.

And it was here that we find not one, but two ballerina stars.

Marie Camargo was technically brilliant,

and Marie Salle was renowned for her expressiveness.

This distinction between dancers with technique

and dancers who could act runs all through ballet history.

So advanced was Marie Camargo's technique

that she became the first ballerina in history

to be able to perform an entrechat quatre.

Nothing to it,

you just jump up in the air

and cross your feet four times.

Although it's called an entrechat quatre,

you actually only cross your legs twice before you land.

And the move that Camargo first performed has come a long way since.

Would you like to try the entrechat dix?

-Well, if it doesn't cost anything, I'll have a go.

-Have a try.

Wayne Sleep still holds the world record for entrechats.

-Did you do it?

-Well, I don't know, I think so.

One, two, three,

four, five.

You did it. That's an entrechat dix!

Camargo was technically ground-breaking

but Salle was forging a more individual path.

I think of her, in a way, as the first modern dancer,

because she really went out on her own.

She performed in solo performances which she created herself,

she was a choreographer.

I don't think she would have put it that way,

but she made her own dances.

She had gowns that were a little transparent,

hair released,

a sense of freedom and self-expression

that was quite striking at the time.

Dancers in the 17th and even in the 18th century

often wore the costumes they would be wearing on the street.

-Oh, my gosh, yes.

-Really hard netting.

Really very stiff, yes.

Though you are actually able to see the ankle and foot

-which wouldn't originally be this length in the court.

-That's right.

In the court, the dresses would have been to the floor.

It was all to show the gavotte

and all the steps they would have done with their little heeled shoes.

Gradually, what happens is, the footwork becomes more intricate.

The costumes of the stage start to depart from the costumes of life.

The idea of the ballerina

becomes more and more a theatrical invention.

These are not just women. You're not watching just women

that you would see on the street on stage. She's a ballerina.

In their different ways, Camargo and Salle started to move

the ballerina towards centre stage.

In the early 1800s, the Romantic movement began to impact on ballet

as it had on many other art forms,

with its obsession with the supernatural.

The stage was flooded with sprites, sylphs and fairies.

This is why women become so important,

because women are thought to be able to express

and have greater access to dreams and the irrational.

This world of the imagination is a feminine world.

And it's why the ballerina has such power on the stage,

because she can show that.

Men may have been the stars of the ballet in its early years,

but by the mid-1800s, the ballerinas had stolen the spotlight.

The dancer who built on the success of Camargo and Salle

and put women firmly at the front of the stage was Marie Taglioni,

the first great Romantic ballerina, and my next ballet heroine.

So famous was Marie Taglioni and so famous was her fancy footwork,

that a bunch of Russian ballet fans - men, naturally -

once proposed a grand dinner in her honour.

The centrepiece would be a pair of Marie's ballet shoes,

cooked and served with a suitably spicy sauce.

Unfortunately, the meal doesn't seems to have actually taken place.

Shame.

These were painted by Queen Victoria,

one of Taglioni's greatest admirers.

After seeing her perform La Sylphide,

the Queen wrote in her journal, "She danced quite beautifully,

"as if she flew in the air, so gracefully and light."

She developed this whole way of moving

that allowed women to become the premier performers.

One reason she was able to do this

is because she was one of the first dancers to dance en pointe.

Audiences loved this new technique.

And the iconic image of a ballerina en pointe is still as potent today.

Ballet shoes take an enormous beating during a performance.

In some ballets, I could easily get through three pairs a night.

Mine were made here, at the Freed's factory in North London.

Oh, you're gluing it all down? OK.

-You're getting all the satin into place.

-That's right.

Oh, the pleats! This is the most important part.

So this is the right end of the toe, basically.

So to keep that flat,

and the pleats are just on the sole of the foot.

And they have to be as flat as possible, it's, like, how many...

two, three pieces of material?

-Pardon?

-Three pieces of material, the satin and two pieces of canvas?

-Absolutely.

-Amazing.

And how many pairs do you try and do in one day?

-I'm doing 38 pair.

-38? Fab.

'Dancing en pointe is what allows us ballerinas

'to float and glide across the stage.'

Pointe shoes help extend the line

and adds another dimension to our movement.

Pointe work is often used by choreographers

to show the strength of the female dancer.

If you think about what a toe shoe is,

it's a small surface, maybe the size of a coin.

That's the only part of the human body that is touching the earth.

The rest of her is in the air.

Taglioni's exploits en pointe helped create the image

of a modern ballerina and kept her at the top of the tree.

However, she soon acquired rivals.

First, Fanny Elssler, an Austrian dancer

famed for her precise footwork.

And then another superstar appeared,

in what was to become one of THE great Romantic ballets of all time.

The dancer was a 22-year-old Italian, Carlotta Grisi.

The ballet was Giselle.

Giselle became an instant classic.

It's still firmly in the repertoire today.

On stage, dancers like Taglioni and Grisi

portrayed a romantic ideal of chaste womanhood.

Off stage, though, things were rather different.

Ballerinas had been in demand as courtesans

from the earliest time female dancers appeared on the stage.

But by the 1830s, in Paris,

this had become virtually a form of organised prostitution.

Subscribers to the Paris Opera had an access-all-areas pass

which allowed them to enter the foyer

and make assignations with any dancer who caught their eye.

The dancers' mothers often handled the business arrangements.

Despite the best efforts of Degas

to portray us in a more flattering light,

from the 1850s, French ballet went into a gradual decline.

As the 19th century progressed,

ballerinas were much more likely to make their names not in France,

Italy or Britain, but in a country that was fast becoming

the new epicentre of ballet.

Russia was to produce some of the greatest ever ballerinas,

and two of my ballet heroines.

Anna Pavlova...

..and Galina Ulanova.

St Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703.

It was Russia's window on the world - in particular, on Europe.

The European invention that the Russians made their own

more than any other was classical ballet.

The Tsars and Tsarinas took ballet very seriously,

throwing huge sums of money at it.

They spent a fortune importing the best dancers, teachers

and choreographers from all over Europe,

establishing their own Imperial Ballet School

with the aim of creating home-grown stars.

The most glamorous imports from Europe were a whole series

of brilliant Italian ballerinas who danced here at the Mariinsky.

With their stunning technique,

they were to be the stars of three Russian ballets

that became the most famous ever produced.

A who's who of French and Italian choreographic talent

passed through St Petersburg to make ballets.

But it was a relative unknown who was to have the biggest impact,

creating two of the best known and loved ballerina roles of all time.

The choreographer who did more than anyone else

to put Russian ballet on the map was Marius Petipa,

a Frenchman who spent 63 years working here in St Petersburg.

But it was Petipa's collaboration

with one of Russia's most celebrated composers

that would redefine ballet for centuries to come.

Tchaikovsky was the first composer

to take ballet seriously as an art form.

His music wasn't easy to dance to

but the demands it made on choreographers and dancers

forced them to raise their game.

In 1888, Tchaikovsky was asked if he would write the score

for a ballet based on a fairy tale

about a princess who was cursed to sleep for 100 years.

The ballet would become known as The Sleeping Beauty.

The starring role of Princess Aurora

was danced by the Italian virtuoso dancer Carlotta Brianza.

It's recognised as one of the most demanding roles

ballerinas ever have to perform.

The greatest challenge for Aurora is the Rose Adage.

At the end, as the music builds,

you have to hold four successive, terrifying balances.

It's a part of the dream of a young girl - being a princess,

having a nice costume and it's...

I think it was a part of the dream I had when I was young.

Being a princess on stage and having all this group...

The music of Tchaikovsky is amazing, it's a great partition.

It's really a great score.

The French ballerina Elizabeth Platel was a famous Aurora...

..with her natural elegance and purity.

Here she dances the opening solo where she shows

her steely technique, total control,

and exquisite line.

Being alone on stage, it's...

For me, it was like... It was gorgeous.

The solos are very still.

Do you know that was the first solo

-I choose to do my first examination in the company?

-Really? Wow.

Yes. I felt that it was really showing the purity of the arabesque.

It's the control.

The two pirouettes, when you make these pirouettes,

you have no music, you are turning in the silence,

and you have to finish in the best fourth position you can imagine.

The first time I danced Sleeping Beauty, I was in the wings

and I said, "OK, I will not go on stage,

"I am sure there is somebody who will take my place."

-Quite happily!

-And next remembrance is, I was doing the sauts de chat

and I don't know what I did between.

Then, seven years later, Tchaikovsky followed up on his success

with what is probably the most loved ballet of all time.

Swan Lake provides one of the ultimate ballerina roles.

Or, more accurately, two roles.

The Queen of the Swans, the lyrical Odette...

..and her evil alter ego,

the scheming Odile.

Playing two characters

allows a ballerina really to show off her range.

In 1895, the Italian virtuoso Pierina Legnani

was the first dancer in history to perform 32 consecutive fouettes.

They immediately became part of the classic Swan Lake choreography.

Marianela Nunez executes these fouettes exquisitely.

I have done these many times

and I can tell you, it's incredibly hard to keep them rooted to the spot

as Marianela has done whilst keeping this beautiful shape.

By the 1890s, a new generation

of Russian ballerinas was beginning to emerge.

One of the most famous was Mathilde Kschessinska.

A scheming and manipulative woman,

described by Petipa as "that nasty little swine",

she once let loose a flock of chickens on a stage

whilst a rival was dancing a solo.

She was a great ballerina, she was a great woman,

and she was a great technician.

And, do you know, the surprising thing is that, say, for a week,

she could play cards all the night and have quite a lot of wine...

-Oh, really?

-Yes. And then, well,

in a couple of days, she danced beautifully.

-So it never affected her.

-Never, never.

Kschessinska's scheming ways, and her talent, made her a real success.

The Imperial Theatre School, here in St Petersburg,

had created a generation of performers

who would revolutionise ballet.

But it wasn't till later in the decade

that a truly great ballerina emerged from Russia -

Anna Pavlova.

Pavlova was an unlikely star.

She wasn't pretty

and she wasn't small, rounded and compact,

as was then the fashion for ballerinas.

Instead, she was plain and gangly.

Classmates called her The Broom.

Technically, she was weak,

and yet she managed to transcend all these disadvantages

to become ballet's first ever genuine superstar.

I saw her in Lima in about, I suppose, 1917,

and it was the first theatre to which I ever went.

I was thrilled at the fact of seeing her,

and I remember that when the curtain went up, I said in Spanish,

"Que feo," which means, "How ugly she is,"

and this was the first impression she gave me.

Well, by the time she'd started to dance, I was completely beguiled

and I thought her the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

She was certainly, to me, the most...the artist with

the greatest theatrical impact that I've ever seen anywhere.

In 1909, Anna Pavlova left Russia

to dance with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris.

But, as is occasionally the way with demanding ballerinas,

she didn't like dancing to Stravinsky's music.

She refused, actually refused to dance Firebird!

Diaghilev wanted to have Firebird written for her,

Stravinsky wanted her,

she said, no, she can't bear to have count music and all of that.

It was impossible.

I don't think she could have ever stood the restrictions of Diaghilev.

I don't think that she would have liked

the avant-garde attitude at all.

I think with her, her impact had to be immediate and

I don't think that she would have ever succumbed to that restriction.

The following year, she formed her own dance company,

based first in St Petersburg, and then in London.

She moved to Ivy Lodge in Golders Green in 1912.

This was to be her home for the rest of her life.

She toured the world with her company, performing The Dying Swan,

which she danced for more than a quarter of a century,

more than 4,000 times.

Like her, the dance would become world famous.

When you see the films of Pavlova, she had technique,

that was more than moyenne.

She had a sex appeal, beauty, expression, crazy,

elated, enivrante, as we say.

She was incredible, but that's what we want to share with an artist,

not only pirouettes.

This is Anna Pavlova's Dying Swan costume

that she travelled the world in, is that correct?

Exactly. It was offered to the museum in 1931 after she died.

Each single feather were attached on a rigid support,

in the shape of a wing, but it's not an actual real one.

That's the wonderful thing with this feather work.

-The feathers are even inlaid perfectly on the underside.

-Exactly.

So when she would have gone down into her Dying Swan position

on the floor, it would have just shown.

Yes, it would have looked like a real wing, exactly.

It would have just flipped up

-and you could see the whole...

-The feathers everywhere.

Pavlova wasn't the greatest dancer ballet had ever seen,

but she understood better than anyone before or since

the mystique of stardom.

By sheer force of will,

she made herself into the most famous ballerina on the planet,

the name on everyone's lips.

Whilst Anna Pavlova was touring the world with her Dying Swan,

the Imperial Ballet School of St Petersburg was about to produce

one of its most talented dancers...

..a ballerina who was to become

the poster girl of Stalin's Soviet Russia.

This is Galina Ulanova in Prokofiev's Romeo And Juliet.

She was one of the greatest Russian ballerinas ever.

My ideal has always been Ulanova,

because, with Ulanova, suddenly to dance meant something much more,

not just a divertissement, it was like entering in religion.

The purity of her inspiration,

the dimension of her thought transfigures everything.

In 1956, a 46-year-old Ulanova and the Bolshoi Ballet came to London.

This was during the Cold War, and her dancing thrilled

and astounded British ballet fans,

and British ballet dancers.

Miss Grey, how do the Sadler's Wells company feel

now the Bolshoi are definitely coming to dance here?

Oh, we can hardly believe it's true.

We are very excited and longing to see this great company from Moscow,

which, after all, is the home of ballet,

which it has been for so many years.

I think not for 200 years has a company come out from Moscow.

You're meant to be on tour while they're here.

Are you going to be able to come in and see them at all?

Yes, we are only in Croydon, and we are there for two weeks,

and most of the ballerinas and I think nearly all the corps de ballet

will have at least one or two opportunities to see

the Russians here at Covent Garden.

Ulanova would come in in the morning with a little hat,

you know, a little sort of beret thing on,

looking quite elderly,

and then she'd be changed, and she'd be in class,

and she'd be like a young woman.

She just transformed.

Stalin was clever, to have something, you know,

to represent the country.

Here's our ballet, the best in the world.

The only thing is that because of the Iron Curtain,

the world did not know our great dancers.

I call them generation lost to the West.

All the people remember her famous run with the cloak.

Like a young woman, really, overpowered with passion for Romeo.

She was a great actress,

besides being a very technically well-equipped ballerina.

Ulanova retired in 1960,

having moved from poster girl to postage stamp,

but her legacy as one of Russia's most celebrated ever ballerinas

is still as potent as ever.

The Imperial Ballet School also trained

a dancer-turned-choreographer who was to make

one of the biggest impacts ballet had ever seen...

..George Balanchine.

For his story, we need to look to the youngest of our ballet nations.

He arrives in America where it's a blank slate,

so he can invent the art form here,

and he invents it with American dancers.

One of Balanchine's best known phrases is

"Ballet is woman",

and I think for him,

the women were his real inspiration.

He found them infinitely interesting,

infinitely varied, and mysterious, too,

and I think what stimulated him was finding different ways

to reveal their beauty to other people.

Balanchine was inspired by ballerina muses

throughout his 50-year career.

He even married four of them!

The one that got away was Suzanne Farrell,

and my most recent ballerina heroine.

I remember very well, George and I talking

and, I suppose, he was being somewhat philosophical,

or maybe just testing me and him,

and he said, "You know, Suzanne, if I weren't a choreographer

"you wouldn't look at me twice."

And I looked at him and I said,

"You know, George, if I weren't a ballerina,

"YOU wouldn't look at ME twice."

She was fascinating because she was extremely feminine,

but, at the same time, allowed to be physical,

in a very different way.

You know, how they break the hip line, the legs were high,

she was very tall with very long legs,

very musical.

But, essentially, American.

She didn't look like an English dancer at all.

Balanchine and Farrell were reinventing ballet,

tearing up the rule book as they went.

She wasn't the first one to push the ballerina off-balance,

but she did it more.

She could recover better than most of us could, somehow,

and she found a way to make that

almost her trademark in the early days.

Part of her beauty was inexplicable,

you couldn't say that wasn't there,

but she had a musicality that was very, very special.

She had this ability on stage that she could look at the public

and it seemed like even if you were sitting there or there,

she was looking straight at you.

There was a feeling that she included everyone.

You never had the feeling when you watched Suzanne Farrell dance

that there had been a rehearsal, in a way.

Nothing was calculated, she was living at that moment.

The real world for her was the world on stage.

I think the real gift of Suzanne Farrell

was not so much physical, but it was in her mind.

She was able to completely let go and just dance.

Balanchine also changed the way his dancers were dressed

with the debut of the puff tutu.

The process of scaling down the ballerina's costume

that had begun 100 years earlier came to a full stop.

Here, we have a Balanchine tutu

because, basically, the style is short.

That's right. It's the diamond tutu.

Iconic for Balanchine,

it's the powder puff, short, soft.

It shows off the leg action and all the physicality

that Balanchine would have had in his ballets.

This reflects exactly what the ballet was about, with the jewels.

-It's encrusted, basically.

-It's totally over the top, it's fabulous,

and it would have carried so perfectly across to the audience.

The design of the tutu is a key component

in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

There's a wonderfully theatrical moment

when the performers all lean forward near the end of the ballet.

Well, this kind of moves tutus on and on and on.

I can't believe, actually, the evolution that we have come to now.

That's right, yes, very modern.

And they are just made out of a foam or a card?

It's a foam top skirt

and, then, underneath, it does have a tutu.

Oh, it's lovely. I love that.

-It's pointed.

-Yes, it's cut to the shape of the design on top

so, for each card, whether it be heart, spade...

-They all had one like the shape.

-All different shapes.

It would really affect, actually, how they dance, very differently.

-The guys wouldn't be able to get close to them...

-No, not at all.

..with this very stiff frame.

I think it's really clever,

it's very edgy and a fun tutu to dance in.

Designs in ballet have become more and more innovative,

but the ballerina still remains the focus.

In the turn of the century, the ballerinas were the stars.

They were unquestionably the people that drew in the crowds.

That, throughout the 20th century, changes,

and, suddenly, the choreographer was the star.

It was them who people came to see.

Somehow, this is changing again.

I think partly because of economic reasons,

companies need to draw the public,

and the public, like to the cinema, they want to see stars.

So, suddenly, the ballerina is becoming more powerful.

Tamara Rojo is a ballerina who still performs

at the top of her profession,

as well as being the new director of English National Ballet.

Tamara personifies the 21st century ballerina.

The biggest change to the demands of a ballet dancer today

is that we are expected to be both

able to dance the very classical works,

and then go to really contemporary choreography.

And that takes quite a lot of effort physically

and demand from your body.

Because you are pulling it in different directions.

Classical ballet is all about lengthening

and contemporary is all about grounded.

So you do physically go from a rehearsal that is asking you to

pull up, up, up, to one that is asking you to get down.

And, so, it just, you know, hurts a little bit more.

By conquering your own body limitations

and your own mental limitations, and going,

"I CAN, I can do this, I can deliver this,"

it's exciting in that kind of way.

The whole point of ballet is

human, emotional, communicating between the artist and the public.

Because we don't have a language, it's something that everyone

from any cultural background and any country can relate to,

and we should continue to investigate that

because the emotions of today are not the emotions of yesterday.

We can use our emotions today in classical ballet,

we can, let's say, modernise them.

But we should be looking at

what do we want to express emotionally today

as individuals of society today?

Whatever's next, no-one will have expected it.

Ballet never stands still.

We've seen how great ballerinas

like Taglioni, Pavlova and Fonteyn,

revolutionised the role of the ballerina...

..and how different styles have evolved over the years.

Today's choreographers are redefining and reworking

classical ballet and ballerina roles

even as we speak.

And ballerinas never stand still, either.

We have been dancing for your pleasure

for three-and-a-half centuries

and I'm sure we'll be around for a few more.