En avant

‘Nose over toes.’ ‘Index fingers in.’ ‘Hands at cheekbone width.’ Watching morning classes at the Royal Ballet School in Richmond Park is a revelation. If you’ve ever sat in the stalls at Covent Garden and wondered what it takes to be Giselle, Odette or the Sugar Plum Fairy, here is your answer: devotion, dedication, concentration and several hundred pairs of worn-through slippers. And if you’ve ever wondered why the dancers of the Royal Ballet look so at home among fairytale castles, kingdoms of sweets and enchanted woods… Well, they grew up with it.

White Lodge, built as a royal hunting retreat for George II in 1730, would make an enchanting backcloth to a performance of Frederick Ashton’s Sylvia. At any moment you expect a nymph to leap from behind the science block. George II’s Consort, Caroline of Ansbach, used to canter the length of the Queen’s Ride and dismount in the loggia. Today, the loggia is the school’s health and recovery centre, with rows of pilates benches under the arches. The Royal Ballet was granted the lodge in 1955, and — alongside the School of American Ballet in New York and the Vaganova Academy in Saint Petersburg — it has become one of the top three classical ballet schools in the world. Present Royal Ballet principals Francesca Hayward, Lauren Cuthbertson and Edward Watson are all RBS alumni.
 

 

I visit during the rapturous February heatwave. Sunlight pours through the Diocletian windows of ‘the Pav’ — the Anna Pavlova studio. Eleven boys from Year 7 are at the barre. The pianist consults his iPad sheet music and the room fills with music and motion. ‘We come in all shapes and sizes,’ says White Lodge’s artistic manager, Hope Keelan, ‘and we’re all gorgeous.’ It’s true. I had expected tall boys and tiny girls. But there is no one model here.