Darcey Bussell
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Darcey Bussell became principal dancer of the Royal Ballet at the age of only twenty; she went on to become a household name thanks to her seven years as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, a job she unexpectedly stepped down from earlier this year.
In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she looks back at a career which started when, against the wishes of her mother, she went to ballet school at thirteen \\u2013 and was desperately unhappy, thinking she\\u2019d made the worst mistake of her life. Alone, away from her family, she used to listen to Mozart\\u2019s Requiem again and again. She had little hope of becoming a star ballerina as she was \\u201ctoo tall\\u201d at five foot seven, and \\u201cnot British-looking\\u201d; what this amounted to is that most British male dancers were not tall enough to partner her. But then she met choreographer Kenneth Macmillan, and he saw her potential. She reflects candidly on the \\u201cdisciplines and sacrifices\\u201d of a life devoted to dance: the long hours training, dancing till your stamina runs out and you literally can\\u2019t feel your legs. Tchaikovsky\\u2019s Sleeping Beauty pushed her to the limit. She reveals how becoming a judge on Strictly gave her new confidence to speak in public for the first time and why she doesn\\u2019t mind being labelled as the judge who was \\u201ctoo nice\\u201d. She talks too about creating a new post-performance life out of the glare of the public eye, her mission to bring dance to all schoolchildren, about injuries and the battle for fitness, and about the toll dancing has taken on her feet.
Her music choices range from the intensely serious \\u2013 Stravinsky's 'Agon, Poulenc's Gloria, the Mozart and Faure Requiems - to Dinah Washington\\u2019s \\u201cMad about the Boy\\u201d and \\u201cRoxanne\\u201d by The Police.
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3\\nProduced by Elizabeth Burke
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