Dancing’s Dame speaks out on Strictly strife
Darcey Bussell opens up about tensions on ‘Strictly’, being a dame and childhood discipline
It’s a sweltering day in South Kensington, tourists wilting in the museum queues outside, but Darcey Bussell steps into the room looking fresh as a daisy. She has spent the afternoon across the road at a Royal Academy of Dance awards ceremony, meeting and posing for photographs with each of this year’s students. All 500 of them. Didn’t that get tiring? “No!” she says, arranging herself in her chair with the kind of perfect ballerina’s posture that makes the rest of us look like a sack of spuds. Had there been another 500 students waiting for their photo opps, she doubtless would have approached the job with just as much enthusiasm.
Bussell’s Twitter biography lists her as president of the Academy, co-author of the Magic
Ballerina children’s books and a judge on Strictly Come
Dancing, in that order. Indeed, while she may be familiar to millions these days for her role on the
BBC’S shiny-floored
Saturday night show, her life is more workaday for the other nine months of the year, and ballet remains her true love.
She coaches principals at The Royal Ballet, teaches an array of classes, and campaigns for dance to be accessible to all, from children with autism to “Silver Swans” (a very elegant name for the over-55s). Then there are documentaries to present and books to produce. Keeping busy, she explains, was essential to her retirement as a ballerina in 2007.
“I planned all these ideas of how to retire and not have that unbelievable pain of wanting to come back again,” she says. “That’s why I suddenly reached out and looked at all the other options. That’s why I did a West End show, and that really helped, then I dabbled in many styles of dance, which I loved, and then Strictly came along.”
She is now 49. Does she feel the occasional pang of envy when she sees Tamara Rojo, artistic director of English National Ballet and a dancer who got her first big break standing in for an injured Bussell, still performing in her 40s? “No. I’m totally content that I’m not a classical ballerina any more… it’s a young person’s career,” she says.
From someone else, that might sound like a catty remark aimed in Rojo’s direction. But Bussell doesn’t do catty. Her great professional rival, Sylvie Guillem, was known as “Madame Non” at The Royal Ballet due to her imperious manner – whereas earnest, hard-working Bussell’s only nickname was “Duracell Battery”, due to her seemingly limitless energy.
She is friendly and courteous, treading a diplomatic line only when asked if it was awkward to have her
Strictly salary (£150,000-£199,999 at the last count) published in the BBC pay disclosures last year. “I understand why [they published it],” she says. “I don’t object.”
Yet the tabloids would have it that Bussell and Shirley Ballas, brought in as head judge last year to replace Len Goodman, are at each other’s throats. Headlines during the last series were full of “simmering tension” and “epic snubs”, although with no evidence to back them up.
Bussell claims not to read any of the stories, but is keen to put them right. “Of course I get on with Shirley. She’s hysterical, she’s got a great sense of humour, and I totally respect her amazing amount of knowledge. She’s great to be with.”
I say it’s only ever women who have to deal with these kinds of rumours. “Funny that,” she laughs. Then she takes a moment to really think about it. “I don’t know why that is. Maybe we ask for it?” she says, furrowing her brow. “I’m not sure. If we were in two suits, I wonder if they would treat us differently.” Strictly does demand a high level of glamour, but Bussell is lower-key away from the TV, elegant today in a floral tea dress, make-up and hair understated. People recognise her in the street, she says, but sometimes struggle to place her. “Usually people go, ‘Oh, but you look so different in real life’,” she says.
She is now a dame, having received her honour from the Queen earlier this year, although you won’t find her deploying the title when making restaurant reservations.
“I don’t know how to use it quite yet. I think it will take me a while to digest. Altogether, it’s odd,” she says, wrinkling that famously retroussé nose.
Of course, Bussell was also very famous in her dancing heyday, after becoming the youngest principal dancer in the history of The Royal Ballet at the age of 20. The selfdiscipline remains: she took her first dance class at the age of five and joined The Royal Ballet Lower School at 13. Several years of hard work later, she was talent-spotted by Kenneth Macmillan, the legendary choreographer, and went on to star in the roles that are every girl’s dream: Odette in Swan Lake, Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, the Sugar Plum
Fairy in The Nutcracker.
She has a competitive edge, though, and this week marks the beginning of the Genée International Ballet Competition in Hong Kong, a prestigious annual event run by the Royal Academy of Dance for dancers aged 15-19. “The strength and discipline and focus you need to perform at such a young age is a wonderful lesson,” she says. “I remember one of my first dance competitions was a big eye-opener, a wake-up call of the talent that was out there. It just makes you think, gosh, I’m going to work a lot harder if I want to accomplish more.”
Competitions are the point at which dancers realise if they’re cut out for a professional career, she explains. “There are many people that don’t make it, that realise it’s not for them. Some people’s nerves engulf them and they can never get rid of that.”
I tell her that I’ve toyed with sending my five-year-old to ballet lessons, but have heard that the local teacher is a stickler for discipline, even with tots. “That’s good, isn’t it?” Bussell says, with a rare flash of steel. “They enjoy that. My daughters both did classical ballet, and what they loved was having those boundaries. When I was very young and stepping into classical ballet for the first time, I so enjoyed having the ability to perfect something and all the rules that came with it.”
Her girls, Phoebe and Zoe, are now 17 and 14, and the family – Bussell is married to Angus Forbes, a hedge fund manager – live in south-west London after a spell in his native Australia. She continued at The Royal Ballet for several years after her daughters were born, and that taught her to work smarter.
“It was interesting – as soon as I had children my whole attitude as a performer changed and I felt much more satisfied and appreciative of what I had. I structured my day better, I focused better when I had to, instead of hanging around and dithering and wasting time.”
She also fits plenty of exercise into her schedule – that lithe figure doesn’t maintain itself – and most of that is in the form of dance classes. “I found out very quickly that I couldn’t do without it,” she admits. “That was my drug.”
‘If Shirley and I wore suits, I wonder if they’d treat us differently?’