Strictly Come Dancing Darcey: Ballet saved my life ‘it was my saviour’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

Dancer Darcey Bussell says The Royal Ballet helped her negotiate each twist, flip, and pirouette, of agonisingly early teenage years during which she felt a failure.

Known to hundreds of thousands as an effervescent choose on Strictly Come Dancing she admitted to struggling in mainstream faculty.

But her rise to worldwide stardom – and unbridled confidence – got here after discovering salvation as an aspiring ballerina on the celebrated academy.

Darcey, 56, joined The Royal Ballet in 1982 on the age of 13 and is its most well-known alumni.

She now options as certainly one of dozens of artists in a brand new e-book to rejoice its centenary, saying: “It took all my energy in the right direction – it let me focus. Being very dyslexic and having a tough time in the classroom, ballet felt like my saviour. I could work my socks off and actually come up with results. It seemed to make sense.”

The Royal Ballet was based by Ninette de Valois who opened a non-public dance faculty in South Kensington in 1826.

Its goal is to coach and educate excellent classical ballet dancers with admission primarily based purely on dancing expertise and potential, no matter educational potential or private circumstances. Nine in 10 present college students depend on monetary help to attend.

Strength and Grace: Portraits of The Royal Ballet School is being revealed to coincide with the varsity’s centenary during which celebrated previous pupils together with Francesca Hayward, Yasmine Naghdi, and Beryl Grey, share private anecdotes of how the academy formed their lives – even when some moments didn’t fairly go to plan.

Principal dancer Anna Rose O’Sullivan, who made her debut in Sleeping Beauty alongside Matthew Ball, mentioned: “We had this really emotional moment because we joined The Royal Ballet School on the same day. We have grown up together. He’s like my little brother, and suddenly we remembered holding hands in the opening of the performance when we were 11, pointing our toes, and thinking, it was the best thing that ever happened.”

Matthew added: “We were part of an evening at Buckingham Palace in front of Prince Wales, now King Charles. We did the pas de deux from Frederick Ashton’s Rhapsody, which was really nice…but then we did a finale and I dropped her from a lift. Which was really embarrassing.”

* Read the total characteristic within the March Issue of Tatler out there by way of digital obtain and on newsstands from February 5.