Lauren Cuthbertson: ‘Dance transcends anything you feel in your day-to-day life'

Telegraph

08-04-2025

Listening to Lauren Cuthbertson talk about leaving her native Devon aged 11 to become a boarder at White Lodge, The Royal Ballet School 's seedbed, before being scooped up by the company, aged 17, it becomes crystal clear why millions of us are fascinated by the lives of ballerinas. Why Darren Aronofsky's gothic-y Black Swan with Natalie Portman and Milan Kunis was such a huge hit in 2010. How podcasts about the potential darkness of a life en pointe attract such large audiences. A recent 14-parter, The Turning: Room of Mirrors, presents a can't-stop-listening insight into seven decades of ballerina trauma stemming from the rule of the great George Balanchine, who virtually invented American ballet. I listened to it three times.
Apart from nuns, it's hard to think of a self-selecting group of women who lead such otherworldly, often hermetically sealed lives. Ballerinas may present as normal. And yet, one minute they're twirling in tulle and a tiara, the next they're on the Tube in jeans – designer ones in Cuthbertson's case, and with a Bottega Veneta bag. She loves fashion, and was off for fittings at Roksanda and Erdem immediately after our interview so that she could sit appropriately attired in the front row of their London Fashion Week shows.
All the ballerinas I've interviewed (including Darcey Bussell and Tamara Rojo) went out of their way to seem earthy and streetwise. But the clue's in the physicality of what they do: they're just not entirely earthbound, even when, like Cuthbertson, they have two tiny daughters (Peggy and Dolly) under four. How can they be when their work, as Cuthbertson attempts to explain, 'completely transcends anything you feel in your day-to-day life'?
Athletes have a similar physical dedication – at 40 Cuthbertson says she still puts in eight hours of exercise some days – and even grace. But the artistry required of a ballet dancer is of a different order. And Cuthbertson's artistry is outstanding, in a field of superlative performers. 'She has an impeccable technique, but more significantly, is a captivating dance-actor,' declared the review website Seen and Heard International of Cuthbertson's 2017 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a role she helped create.
Presumably a grand jeté (those flying splits ballerinas do) must be even more exhilarating than a gymnast's cartwheel? 'You're sort of operating in another space, and you're bringing all of these valuable techniques and the dedication, the striving,' she says. 'I hear that music, I think of that character, I imagine the poetry, I smell the scent.' Indeed she does: Cuthbertson works with a perfumer to create a library of scents for each role.
We're sitting in the Royal Opera House beneath a lavish wedding-cake ceiling in a room frequented by royalty (the King and Queen saw a performance only the week before). The latest manifestation of her art has seen Cuthbertson spend the past few months listening almost non-stop to Tchaikovsky and reading Pushkin in preparation for her sublime turn as Tatiana in The Royal Ballet's Onegin, a role she shared with Marianela Núñez, who is 43. Tatiana is a teenager, and a naive one at that. For the record, she/Cuthbertson wears iris and rose-based scents that become progressively more sophisticated as the ballet goes. Matthew Paluch of Gramilano called her and her Onegin, Ryoichi Hirano's, interpretation of the leads 'the performance of a decade'.
Crêpe midi dress, £660, 16Arlington
Unlike many prima ballerinas, Cuthbertson has never been solely allied with one dancing partner, performing with many of the greats, including Matthew Bourne, Rupert Pennefather, Reece Clarke and Sergei Polunin, the Russian-Ukrainian prodigy who walked out of The Royal Ballet in 2012. All those different partners have been invigorating, but also in some ways, she concedes, 'like dancing off a cliff'.
I wonder whether the creators of these classical ballets, which are generally so merciless towards their heroines (most die) and so demanding of their female dancers, ever envisioned their adolescent creations being played by dancers in their 40s? 'I didn't even envision it,' says Cuthbertson. 'When I was 25 I couldn't imagine being 40. It seemed incomprehensibly old.'
How hard is it to transport herself into the mindset of Tatiana, a country mouse who is inexplicably devoted to the pillock Onegin. Much as I adore classical ballet, the twittishness of the male protagonists and the awful fates of the women are a niggle. Cuthbertson has a far more poetic interpretation: 'I think Tatiana doesn't understand her place in the world until she meets Onegin. He ignites all these feelings in her.'
She has previously said she is done with Swan Lake, 'but I'd just had two babies in rapid succession. Physically, it's one of the most demanding ballets.' Nowadays she'd never say never – not even to playing the 13-year-old heroine in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. 'I might, yeah, I slightly regret saying I wouldn't [do Swan Lake]. But I felt I was at a real crossroads last year. All those big classical ballets are incredibly demanding. I'm completely ruined at the end of a performance. The other night, after Onegin, I threw up in the wings.' Not even this makes her seem totally one of us. Nor does the fact that all those floaty costumes have to go into a hotbox after each performance to steam the sweat out of them.
She is currently on the Covent Garden stage in Serenade, in a George Balanchine triple bill. It is part of the Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Reflections festival, which sees venues including Sadler's Wells, Tate Modern and, of course, the Royal Opera House stage performances of modern and contemporary ballets. The jewellery house began creating its ballerina brooches in the 1930s as a way of capturing the beauty of movement in the form of precious stones. In return, Balanchine, founder of the New York City Ballet, created the first-ever abstract ballet, Jewels, to bring to life the sparkle of Van Cleef & Arpels' diamonds, rubies and emeralds.
One Monday morning, 10 days before opening night, I watch her and approximately 50 other dancers from the company rehearse. What a way to start the week. Sitting quietly on the floor, back against a mirror, legs akimbo, Núñez is breaking in a new pair of ballet shoes – a disconcerting process that entails meticulous darning of the toes and bending the sole until there's a faint but decisive cracking sound. It's an egalitarian environment: corps de ballet, soloists and principals are all being put through their paces by 82-year-old Patricia Neary, an American former ballet dancer, choreo­grapher and director who performed for Balanchine himself in New York, and has the anecdotes to prove it.
Jersey dress, price on request, Acne Studio
The genius who choreographed the Ballets Russes in the 1920s and then went on to shape American dance, Balanchine casts a long shadow, good and bad. Cuthbertson adores dancing in his works. 'It's completely different from the big classical ballets,' she tells me after rehearsals. 'There's no plot. No character. You are this essence that becomes part of the music. And the music meshes so perfectly with the choreography so that although the choreography was very demanding in its day, the movements feel very natural.'
Off last Friday with back twinges, Cuthbertson is gliding, pirouetting and bourrée-ing effortlessly across the studio, her red hair streaming behind her. At one point, standing on the shoulders of her partner and leaning back, she mentions calmly that she doesn't feel quite secure. They repeat and repeat. 'You really have to trust the company,' she says.
With her alabaster skin and poise, Cuthbertson is ballet's answer to Julianne Moore. You'd think the extreme exercise would take its toll, but many ballerinas seem to look much younger than they are. 'You're not the first to say that,' she responds. 'We're quite fortunate at The Royal Ballet in that we have nutritionists, and access to lots of experts who can help us be in the best shape. There are times in your career when you really need to avail yourself of everything they can give you, and others when it all seems to flow quite naturally and your body feels in harmony with the work. I think we're quite pioneering in that aspect, judging from the messages I get from dancers in other international companies.'
I've long wondered when ballet dancers find the right moment to eat – not right before a performance, surely? She tells me she has lunch around 3pm, has her hair and make-up done, then grabs a cheese sandwich that she leaves in the wings in case she needs to access some speedy energy between pirouettes. All ballerinas have their rituals; hers involve bland carbs and gallons of electrolytes. 'It basically takes me all day to prepare for a performance.'
Cuthbertson's career, from the outside, seems like one exhilarating glide to the top. Born in Torquay, she was first taken to ballet lessons when she was three years old. 'Apparently I was quite naughty, and my mother thought it would tire me out. I took to it like a duck to water,' she says. A local ballet teacher spotted her potential and she was off – for good once she was 11: 'One minute I was helping my father [a butcher] make his pies and sausages, the next I was boarding in Richmond.'
Silk crêpe dress, £1,990, Stella McCartney
Academically advanced, in 2002 she was plucked from White Lodge by The Royal Ballet when she was just 17. This is where, it seems, the contradictory strands in a dancer's life are first stress-tested. On the one hand, these teenage dancers exchange one environment for another where everyone has the same single obsession, on the other, they suddenly have to find themselves somewhere to live and deal with the complexities of life on their own. I'd always assumed there was a wing there that organised their accommodation and dealt with the mechanics of surviving in a big city. Apparently not but she has no complaints: 'It's a nurturing, supportive environment in many ways. It's not like Black Swan. Or at least not at The Royal Ballet. I'm not saying it's not tough, but it's the dancers who put the most pressure on ourselves. We're constantly demanding more of our bodies.'
By 19 she had pulled off two major roles, in Romeo and Juliet and Symphony in C. 'Cuthbertson is not especially tall – 5ft 5in – but she dances on a grand scale,' wrote the dance critic Judith Mackrell at the time. 'Her reckless pleasure in occupying centre stage makes her appear even more powerful. She is evidently being fast-tracked, but looks as if she has the physical and mental resources to survive the pressure.' Not reckless, perhaps, but she is certainly a calculated risk-taker. Despite two major injuries that forced her to take time out, she has no fear, she says of still performing the grand jeté and arabesques that can so easily go wrong: 'If I had fear, I couldn't go on.'
At 23 she became a principal dancer, with all the concomitant bonuses and demands: non-stop dancing, artistic challenges (as well as Alice, she helped create the role of Hermione in The Winter's Tale), guest appearances at other companies, including the Mariinsky in Russia, and, thanks to her photogenic looks, magazine covers.
It's something of a mystery how dancers ever make connections in the outside world. Cuthbertson met her partner, Matthew Gerrish, founder of The Antique Jewellery Company, on a dating website. I ask what picture she posted on her profile. Given some of the crazies out there, tutus might be risky. 'I had a photo of a cat in a bow tie. He says he loved the bow tie,' she laughs.
They had their first daughter, Peggy, in 2021. Dolly followed 18 months later. Cuthbertson was performing sneaky leg lifts within a day of giving birth to each of her daughters. Routine ballet exercises are, she says, after all these years, second nature: 'You don't even have to think about scheduling them in.' Yet despite her physical robustness, she stopped performing the moment she knew she was pregnant. 'It just didn't feel right,' she says. If you're imagining a dancer's stamina and breathing techniques make labour easier, the reality is surprising – although perhaps not if you're a gynaecologist: 'You spend your entire life lifting up your pelvic floor, so pushing it down to get the baby out is utterly counterintuitive.' She had elective Caesareans both times. 'They say control the controllables, and that way I felt like it was a little bit more under control.'
Balancing any demanding job with motherhood is tough, particularly if your peak hours are 7-10pm, with adrenaline-spiking curtain calls. All that adulation and all those flowers. Speaking of which, she received at least five bouquets the night I saw her in Onegin. I imagine the company isn't stumping up for all of them? 'Absolutely not,' she laughs. 'They're from fans and friends.'
She gets home (near Portobello Market) towards midnight. 'You're so hyped you can't really sleep till about one or two, and then the girls bound in at six,' she says. Yet she's garnered some of the best reviews of her career since giving birth. It's a long way from the early days of the company, when founder Ninette de Valois set the tone. ''You're pregnant darling, goodbye!' That's how it was,' Jeanetta Laurence, a dancer in its touring company in the 1960s and '70s, told The Guardian. Even now, Laurence says, 'It's hard to think of another industry where having a baby is so intrusive to the work. I'm in awe and wonder at how they manage it.'
Last September Cuthbertson announced that she was stepping back to become a principal guest artist with the company, 'to develop in new ways, both on and off the stage'. This came as a shock to some of her fans, but Matthew Paluch explained, 'To me, it represents a dancer in a position of authority accessing the agency available to them; an artist calling the shots for once… which still doesn't happen that often in the ballet world. The very nature of the genre being about silent subservience.'
Cuthbertson might take issue with the idea of subservience ('I'm not someone who keeps quiet if I think something's wrong'), but she understands the fan who fretted she might be retiring. 'I'm not planning to. If anything, though I may dance fewer performances, I'm getting more out of them than ever.' She's also taking a diploma in dance teaching. Her ultimate ambition is to become an artistic director.
We've overrun our interview by half an hour, and if she doesn't leave now she'll miss her fashion fittings. We head off to the Tube and she tells me her plans for the evening. The mistress of pain and suffering is going to see – what else? – Bridget Jones.