“I don’t have children,” says Tamara Rojo. “But I imagine that’s what it’s like.” The artistic director of English National Ballet, no stranger to winning prizes as a ballerina, is talking about ENB recently scooping the National Dance award for outstanding company. “It’s a completely different thing,” she says. “The satisfaction you get when your company achieves something multiplies the pleasure. I genuinely didn’t expect this, so I was surprised and honoured.”
If Rojo was surprised, she was in a minority of one. In the two and a half years since she left the Royal Ballet for ENB, the 40-year-old ballerina has been firing in all directions. She’s overhauled the repertory with a new production of Le Corsaire, and with the boldly contemporary works of her first-world-war programme Lest We Forget. She’s taken ENB to Glastonbury, secured a new role for it as an associate company of Sadler’s Wells, and won a coveted invitation to perform at the Paris Opera. And this week she raised the game of the entire ballet profession by announcing a programme of all-female choreography for ENB’s 2015-16 season. The last time the Royal premiered a single work by a woman was over 15 years ago, and I can’t recall when it ever happened at ENB.
As ambitious as Rojo has been as a director, she has yet to relinquish the stage: when we meet at ENB’s base in London, there’s a batch of shiny new pointe shoes piled in the corner of her office; and Rojo herself, dressed in an elegant maroon onesie and black clogs, looks as if she’s just walked out of the rehearsal studio. She says she’s accomplished all she ever wanted from her dancing career, more than she imagined possible. But she knows how important it is for the company’s profile that she continues to perform. “I’m very aware that one of the reasons I got the job was because of my name,” she says with a level gaze, “and I know that this is why critics like you want to come and talk to me.”
I wonder if it’s difficult to be on stage with her dancers while maintaining authority over them. She admits it requires a degree of distance. “I have a lot of colleagues who are my friends here, but at the end of the day I can’t enforce a false camaraderie. Their jobs are in my hands. So I’m very lucky that I have close friends outside ballet, who have been my friends for 20 years.”
Rojo has always been guarded about her private life, saying that being “quite driven and a perfectionist” can be difficult for the people she is closest to. Certainly, she now seems willing to do whatever it takes to succeed as artistic director. It was a terrific gamble for her to take the job, since ENB were then struggling through rocky times. “I was actually told by someone, off the record, not to accept it because the company was probably going to have its funding taken away and be closed down. But I was determined to fight for it. I thought it would be an incredible loss for Britain if it went – a loss of talent and history and of all this company does in taking an incredible standard of dance around the country, and in developing talent.”
As an evangelist for ENB, Rojo is impressive: what others may bemoan as problems, she spins into assets. ENB is a small company with a small budget, but Rojo believes that makes it full of opportunities. “If you’re a young, talented dancer and you want to be principal in five years, would you go somewhere with 200 dancers, like Paris, or one with 68, like here?”
Similarly, the fact that the company is a touring ensemble and has no home theatre is, she claims, a chance for flexibility – allowing ENB to target different audiences in different venues. She’s thrilled that the company’s annual Sadler’s Wells seasons will allow her to experiment more with repertory, citing the planned new Giselle by Akram Khan. “Ballet is such an exciting world now – there’s no longer that linear break between classical and contemporary. And at the Wells, there’s an audience who are very open to that.”
Some have feared this extra London season will result in a lessening of Rojo’s commitment to the regions, but she says the reverse is true. She wants to use London to test-drive new ballets for touring, thereby challenging the received idea that regional box offices can only accept a diet of Nutcrackers and Swan Lakes. And she’s particularly hoping to break the mould with her forthcoming showcase of women choreographers: Yabin Wang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa andAszure Barton.
“It was part of my vision before I got the job,” she says of the project, which she’s been working on for four and a half years. “I really believe we need more women’s voices on the stage.” However, it has been “the hardest programme” to put together: “There are so many talented female choreographers out there, but they’re much less quick than men to accept work. Some of the women I approached had little children and decided it was too much to deal with. Some felt they were not ready for a big London commission. I find it’s the same with the choreographic workshops in the company. There’s no shortage of men who want to experiment and put themselves forward, but we have to go out to find the women.”
Rojo accepts that a whole raft of social, economic and biological factors can make women less confident or less pushy. But, in terms of her own career as artistic director, she’s never felt at a disadvantage. “It was women like Marie Rambertand Ninette de Valois who created the whole landscape of ballet in this county,” she says. And so far, she seems to have enough steely determination to follow in their footsteps.
Rojo, whose parents were fierce anti-Franco campaigners when she was growing up in Spain, is a passionate lobbyist for ENB and for dance in general. She’s fearless in talking up her company: the fact that it has just broken company box-office records in London and seen a boom in the number of dancers wanting to join, although she admits that losing her leading male principal, Vadim Muntagirov, last year was “very disappointing”. And she is moved by the collective spirit and passion of ENB’s dancers. “They have a real love for what they do.” She grins. “They’re clearly not here for the money.”
She’s also fascinated by the people her role brings her into contact with, thriving on the fact that part of her job is to scout out new choreographers and spot the latest cultural trends. “I’m someone who’s very bad at staying home. I love seeing what The Place or the National Theatre are doing, what’s the latest film or exhibition.”
She even relishes the time she has to spend lobbying and fundraising. “Of course, I’d prefer to focus on the artistic side, but I enjoy having dinner with someone from a completely different world like banking or marketing. I like understanding policy-making.” She breaks into laughter. “I love finding out about people. You know, I’m actually a very nosy woman.”
If Rojo was surprised, she was in a minority of one. In the two and a half years since she left the Royal Ballet for ENB, the 40-year-old ballerina has been firing in all directions. She’s overhauled the repertory with a new production of Le Corsaire, and with the boldly contemporary works of her first-world-war programme Lest We Forget. She’s taken ENB to Glastonbury, secured a new role for it as an associate company of Sadler’s Wells, and won a coveted invitation to perform at the Paris Opera. And this week she raised the game of the entire ballet profession by announcing a programme of all-female choreography for ENB’s 2015-16 season. The last time the Royal premiered a single work by a woman was over 15 years ago, and I can’t recall when it ever happened at ENB.
As ambitious as Rojo has been as a director, she has yet to relinquish the stage: when we meet at ENB’s base in London, there’s a batch of shiny new pointe shoes piled in the corner of her office; and Rojo herself, dressed in an elegant maroon onesie and black clogs, looks as if she’s just walked out of the rehearsal studio. She says she’s accomplished all she ever wanted from her dancing career, more than she imagined possible. But she knows how important it is for the company’s profile that she continues to perform. “I’m very aware that one of the reasons I got the job was because of my name,” she says with a level gaze, “and I know that this is why critics like you want to come and talk to me.”
I wonder if it’s difficult to be on stage with her dancers while maintaining authority over them. She admits it requires a degree of distance. “I have a lot of colleagues who are my friends here, but at the end of the day I can’t enforce a false camaraderie. Their jobs are in my hands. So I’m very lucky that I have close friends outside ballet, who have been my friends for 20 years.”
Rojo has always been guarded about her private life, saying that being “quite driven and a perfectionist” can be difficult for the people she is closest to. Certainly, she now seems willing to do whatever it takes to succeed as artistic director. It was a terrific gamble for her to take the job, since ENB were then struggling through rocky times. “I was actually told by someone, off the record, not to accept it because the company was probably going to have its funding taken away and be closed down. But I was determined to fight for it. I thought it would be an incredible loss for Britain if it went – a loss of talent and history and of all this company does in taking an incredible standard of dance around the country, and in developing talent.”
As an evangelist for ENB, Rojo is impressive: what others may bemoan as problems, she spins into assets. ENB is a small company with a small budget, but Rojo believes that makes it full of opportunities. “If you’re a young, talented dancer and you want to be principal in five years, would you go somewhere with 200 dancers, like Paris, or one with 68, like here?”
Similarly, the fact that the company is a touring ensemble and has no home theatre is, she claims, a chance for flexibility – allowing ENB to target different audiences in different venues. She’s thrilled that the company’s annual Sadler’s Wells seasons will allow her to experiment more with repertory, citing the planned new Giselle by Akram Khan. “Ballet is such an exciting world now – there’s no longer that linear break between classical and contemporary. And at the Wells, there’s an audience who are very open to that.”
Some have feared this extra London season will result in a lessening of Rojo’s commitment to the regions, but she says the reverse is true. She wants to use London to test-drive new ballets for touring, thereby challenging the received idea that regional box offices can only accept a diet of Nutcrackers and Swan Lakes. And she’s particularly hoping to break the mould with her forthcoming showcase of women choreographers: Yabin Wang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa andAszure Barton.
“It was part of my vision before I got the job,” she says of the project, which she’s been working on for four and a half years. “I really believe we need more women’s voices on the stage.” However, it has been “the hardest programme” to put together: “There are so many talented female choreographers out there, but they’re much less quick than men to accept work. Some of the women I approached had little children and decided it was too much to deal with. Some felt they were not ready for a big London commission. I find it’s the same with the choreographic workshops in the company. There’s no shortage of men who want to experiment and put themselves forward, but we have to go out to find the women.”
Rojo accepts that a whole raft of social, economic and biological factors can make women less confident or less pushy. But, in terms of her own career as artistic director, she’s never felt at a disadvantage. “It was women like Marie Rambertand Ninette de Valois who created the whole landscape of ballet in this county,” she says. And so far, she seems to have enough steely determination to follow in their footsteps.
Rojo, whose parents were fierce anti-Franco campaigners when she was growing up in Spain, is a passionate lobbyist for ENB and for dance in general. She’s fearless in talking up her company: the fact that it has just broken company box-office records in London and seen a boom in the number of dancers wanting to join, although she admits that losing her leading male principal, Vadim Muntagirov, last year was “very disappointing”. And she is moved by the collective spirit and passion of ENB’s dancers. “They have a real love for what they do.” She grins. “They’re clearly not here for the money.”
She’s also fascinated by the people her role brings her into contact with, thriving on the fact that part of her job is to scout out new choreographers and spot the latest cultural trends. “I’m someone who’s very bad at staying home. I love seeing what The Place or the National Theatre are doing, what’s the latest film or exhibition.”
She even relishes the time she has to spend lobbying and fundraising. “Of course, I’d prefer to focus on the artistic side, but I enjoy having dinner with someone from a completely different world like banking or marketing. I like understanding policy-making.” She breaks into laughter. “I love finding out about people. You know, I’m actually a very nosy woman.”
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