• 2025
• 2024
• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020-2011
• 2010-2001

• Alejandro Muñoz
• Francesca Hayward
• Francisco Serrano
• Gemma Bond
• Harris Bell
• Johan Kobborg
• Joshua Junker
• Julia Roscoe
• Kevin O'Hare
• Layla Hotham
• Luca Acri
• Petal Ashmole
• Pietro Zironi
• Sae Maeda
• Stuart Cassidy
• Yasmine Naghdi

Yasmine Naghdi

Principal, The Royal Ballet

Interviewed by David Bain
American International Church, Mon 25th Nov, 2024

 

Initially, Yasmine was due to visit the Ballet Association on Friday 29 November, so she began by explaining why the date had to change. She was meant to be dancing at the Kazakh Opera House in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Sunday 24 November but, as she had stage calls scheduled for her upcoming “Cinderella” performances, she had to cancel her guesting invitation. She initially also intended to participate in “Draft Works” but, as her rehearsal schedule became too hectic, she pulled out of “Draft Works”. This meant that she could have made our original date. However, doing the interview at the end of a very busy week, she decided an interview the following Monday would work better for her.

Just as “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker”, “Cinderella” is a ballet in which she has performed since childhood. When she was an 11-year-old Mid-Associate she was a Spring Page in the cast with Anthony Dowell and Wayne Sleep as the Stepsisters, Alina Cojocaru as Cinderella and Johan Kobborg as the Prince. As a Graduate student at The Royal Ballet Upper School, she danced in the corps de ballet as one of the Stars. This was also the first role she danced soon after joining the Company mid-Season in 2010. Furthermore, aged 16, she danced the “Summer Fairy” as one of her two solos when she won the Young British Dancer of the Year in 2009. This Season she will dance “Cinderella” again, with her regular stage partner Matthew Ball as her Prince, on 12, 19 and 23 December.

On 26 December, she will fly to Kazakhstan to guest at the Abai Opera and Ballet Theatre in Almaty, in their own production of “The Nutcracker”. She will simultaneously dance the role of Clara/Marie and the Sugar Plum Fairy in the matinee and evening performance on 28 December. Not an easy feat as dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy is one of the hardest roles for a ballerina: it is approximately ten to twelve minutes long and dancing the solo feels like an eternity, followed by fouettés, diagonal jumps and manèges. This time she’ll have to dance the Sugar Plum Fairy twice within the space of six hours. Kazakhstan has a vibrant ballet scene, and they are truly passionate about the art form. They also have the finances to invite ballet stars from all over the world. The invited dancers are very well looked after by the organiser, former Kyrgyz ballet dancer Nurlan Konokbaev. Yasmine loves the fact the Kazakh audience still make a great effort to dress up when they attend a ballet performance. David commented that the current director of the Astana Opera Ballet in Kazakhstan is Altynai Asylmuratova whom many Ballet Association members would have seen when she danced with The Royal Ballet in the early 1990s. From Kazakhstan, she will fly to Italy to perform at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 3, 4 and 5 January in the “Roberto Bolle and Friends” Gala.

Compared to the past, it seems that not many ballet companies invite guest dancers to perform in full-length ballets. Yasmine remembers for example Darcy Bussell when she was a Principal dancer, she was able to guest with New York City Ballet, Australian Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, the Kirov Ballet (now Mariinsky Ballet)) and La Scala. The Gala “formula” still seems to be financially do-able but dancing one or two Pas de deux is not the same as dancing a full-length ballet. She did guest in a full-length ballet with San Francisco Ballet in 2019 and danced Aurora in Helgi Thomasson’s version of “The Sleeping Beauty”, partnered by Joseph Walsh. Guesting as a Principal dancer is an enriching experience and it not only gives Yasmine the opportunity to keep performing whenever she has a performance gap at the Royal Opera House, but it also keeps her inspired, motivated, and in good physical condition. She loves meeting dancers from other ballet companies, as well as occasionally dancing with non-RB Principals. Performing on stages in various parts of the world allows her to really appreciate her position as a Royal Ballet Principal dancer, and all the superb facilities that are available to dancers at the Royal Opera House, but above all she highly values the tremendous support she gets from Director Kevin O’Hare. Moreover, guesting allows her personal and artistic growth as she meets and works with new people. As a Guest ballerina she has travelled to many countries, from Japan to Taiwan and South Korea to Australia, as well as to countries she would normally have no immediate incentive to visit such as Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Colombia, to name but a few. Guesting also gives her experience of dancing on different stages. Once she performed in Italy, in a small town called Pavia, where the stage had a very steep rake. She was dancing “Le Corsaire” pas de deux which is full of turns and fouettés, all difficult to execute on a raked stage. She explains when performing fouettés your weight must be forward, but on a raked stage you must do the opposite and lean backwards. That she had to perform on a raked stage was not mentioned in her contract, and this taught her to always ask the organiser whether the stage is flat or raked whenever she has to perform on a stage she is not familiar with. Some of the floors she has had to dance on have been questionable, even floors with ridges and nails under the linoleum which are very dangerous when you are wearing pointe shoes because you can damage your ankles if the floor beneath you is uneven when on pointe. Yasmine remembers dancing the Black Swan pas de deux with William Bracewell on a floor which was simply linoleum laid over an ordinary floor with nails underneath. As she came off stage after the rehearsal shaking her head in disbelief, Polina Semionova sympathetically put her hand on Yasmine’s shoulder and told her everything would be fine, to which Yasmine replied that Polina could afford to smile because she was not the one having to dance Black Swan on that floor! That said she has never come back injured from any of her guest appearances.

David noted that many Principals were not involved in the programming at the beginning of the 2024-2025 Season and would only appear by December. He was interested to know how Yasmine felt about having such a big hiatus in her performance schedule. Yasmine said there is nothing a dancer can do about the way a season is programmed. This meant that her first performance would be on 19 November in “Maddaddam” to dance “Oryx” and her final performance was on 23 November. The whole process, from starting rehearsals in early September to dancing the last performance in November lasted three months. Yasmine had received various invitations to dance abroad between September and November, including performing in “La Bayadère”, but she had to turn them all down. “Maddaddam had previously been performed by the National Ballet of Canada, but it was new to The Royal Ballet, and a great deal of time was to be devoted to it. Firstly, they were taught the steps by ballet notator Amanda Eyles, so that they learned the “language” of the ballet. That took approximately four weeks. Following that process Wayne McGregor joined in the studio and started to make changes. He also kept his two casts separate and the changes he made were not identical. These changes were subtle and the skeleton of the Pas de deux remained the same. For the main Pas de deux, Fumi Kaneko was partnered by Joseph Sissens and Yasmine by Marcelino Sambé. Yasmine further explained that, for example, she might have done an extra turn, or she and Marcelino may have separated, a move that Wayne liked on them but not on Fumi and Joseph, or vice versa for other moves. It was only when she and Marcelino watched the other cast that they noticed the differences and omissions. This really allowed both casts the freedom to make the Pas de deux their own, without taking anything away from the drama. The next stage was to continually run the ballet so that the dancers could build up the necessary stamina. Wayne continued to make changes, questioning and challenging them to approach their roles in an alternate way. The story of this ballet is extremely complex and what is presented are highlights and snippets of the stories from Margret Atwood’s Trilogy. Furthermore, there are stories within the stories, it is not a narrative ballet with an arc. Yasmine’s husband came to see the ballet twice and although she had provided him with the synopsis, he remained confused even after two viewings, but he loved the staging and the music, as well as the dancing. Yasmine can appreciate the process preparing to dance in a Contemporary ballet, but she admits to being a true classicist at heart. General practice when learning a ballet is to watch it on video and learn from scratch or refresh one’s memory of the steps. This helps by sending cognitive messages to the rest of the body. However, for “Maddaddam” Wayne did not allow the dancers to watch videos of the National Ballet of Canada production because he did not want them to have a pre-conceived notion of what the ballet was all about, or for them to copy what the Canadian dancers did. He wanted us to be able to work with a blank canvas so that he could add his own touches. Amanda Eyles read the notation, watched the video, and then showed The Royal Ballet dancers all the steps. They began with steps which they had to fit to the existing music score themselves as Wayne does not work with counts. The dancers also worked with the dramaturg, Uzma Hameed, who broke down each act for them, explaining all in a very digestible form whilst outlining the history of the characters. This was extremely helpful. Some of the Ballet Association audience members felt that they would have benefited from a session with the dramaturg to help with understanding what was happening on stage. One member also commented that reading the Trilogy in advance helped greatly as, indeed, the ballet represented only snippets of the entire written work. Another member recommended viewing the Insights where Uzma Hameed and Wayne McGregor explain the concept of the novels and how the ballet relates to them. Over the past fifteen years, Yasmine has danced many of McGregor ballets such as “Woolf Works”, “The Dante Project”, “Multiverse”, “Raven Girl”, “Chroma”, and “Infra” in which she danced the beautiful “Final Duet”. “Chroma” and “Infra” are her favourite McGregor works as she finds his early works fantastic, innovative and explosive.

Last Season, Yasmine debuted as Titania in “The Dream”. Many years ago, when still in training, she had danced the role of a Fairy in the end-of-year Royal Ballet School show, and again soon after she had joined the Company, followed by dancing as a Super Fairy and finally the main role of Titania. Her Oberon was Calvin Richardson who was still a First Soloist at the time but was soon after promoted to Principal dancer. They were coached by Anthony Dowell and Lesley Collier. Yasmine has performed a great number of Ashton roles including dancing her debut in “Scènes de ballet” a few years ago. This was a tough role to dance, and it gave her neck spasms as it is very angular (like Cinderella). It also requires a great deal of work in the lower legs which makes it a “top and bottom heavy” role to dance. She has performed “Symphonic Variations” several times, including the live cinema relay, a most wonderful ballet but the dancers call it a “killer” ballet as it is twenty minutes of non-stop dancing. As a way of building up stamina during the rehearsal process, the dancers would start with the finale and then run the ballet the whole way through. This would push the dancers to their limit so that when they had to dance the ballet on stage, they were more able to manage. Many years ago, she also danced in “Monotones” (green pea) as a newly promoted First Artist, and performed in “Two Pigeons”, her husband’s favourite ballet she added, as well as one of hers. It is a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, feel-good ballet that leaves the audience elated and uplifted.

During the Festival of New Choreography, she created the main role in “Boundless”, a Main Stage choreographic debut by Gemma Bond, who danced with The Royal Ballet but had moved to America. Her style is light-hearted and fun, movements are not very classical, but rather jarred and flat-footed. Gemma would film herself at home doing various movements and show it to Yasmine in the studio asking her if she could imitate it. Yasmine then had to try and translate those movements and make them her own. During the creation of a ballet there is a great deal of repetition and trial and error. It is also possible that, after working for hours on a particular sequence one day, the choreographer changes his or her mind and alters everything. Her partner was Ryoichi Hirano with whom Yasmine has danced several times before, and he is one of the most reliable partners she has ever worked with. He is solid and has an exceptionally good, and intuitive, understanding of where a female dancer’s weight needs to be. If she accidently slips or trips, he is always right there to support her. He is very professional and quick to learn the steps, so working with Ryoichi again was such a pleasure.

At the start of Season 2023-2024, Yasmine began rehearsing Kitri in “Don Quixote” just two days after her wedding. In fact, their two-week honeymoon had to be scheduled in for mid-August, beforeher wedding day on 2 September 2023, so she would be able to start rehearsing on 4 September. Her wedding date had initially been fixed on 21 May, with prior agreement of Director Kevin O’Hare. One day he called her into his office and said he wanted her to dance the role of Aurora for the live cinema relay of “The Sleeping Beauty” on…21 May. He had completely forgotten that 21 May was to be her wedding day. As it was impossible to change the already fixed life relay date, Yasmine had to make a choice between getting married on 21 May or dance Aurora for the live cinema relay. That evening, after having discussed it with Riccardo, he told her to follow her heart and dance Aurora. The next morning, he called their wedding venue and wedding planner to discuss the changed date. He was told their venue in Tuscany was now only available from 2 September onwards, not any sooner. In the end, Yasmine and Riccardo postponed their wedding so that she would be able to dance Aurora.

Last Season she also danced the role of Odette/Odile in the live cinema relay of “Swan Lake”. Other live relays she has danced are “Giselle”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “The Nutcracker” (Sugar Plum Fairy), “Concerto - 2^nd Movement”, “Symphonic Variations”, “Dances at a Gathering”, and “The Winter’s Tale” in which she danced her debut as Perdita. She is deeply honoured Kevin O’Hare trusted her to dance all these fabulous classical roles. She was being filmed for “Swan Lake” when dancing her third Odette/Odile performance of the run, and her biggest fear was to disappoint herself by performing below the standard she had set for herself. Everything must be done to perfection during the first-time round of filming. On this occasion Yasmine spent more time in the rehearsal studio working with her coach and drilling herself by constantly repeating the steps until she was satisfied. She also felt the need to strengthen her performance mindset in preparation for the live relay knowing that her performance was to be shown in over 1500 cinemas worldwide. The mental pressure is not to be taken lightly. She contacted the Norwegian Performance Psychologist, Britt Tajet-Foxell who works with The Royal Ballet as well as with elite athletes, including the Norwegian Olympic Team. She gave Yasmine several useful mental tools and made her aware that she was not rehearsing in the “present time” but with the future live relay in mind. This change in mindset was extremely useful. There are so many layers needed to be a successful ballet dancer, it’s not only about mastering technique or improving one’s artistry but also mastering your mind. She is fortunate to always have had a strong body and good health and is very aware of what food she needs to eat. She has a strict daily routine, and practices nutrition timing to optimise her food intake and gain maximum energy to rehearse and perform. When she is dancing classical ballets, her coach is Alexander Agadzhanov who has been with The Royal Ballet for decades. He has such great knowledge and coaching experience, and deep insight. He is a very demanding coach, and Yasmine enjoys working with him as he always knows how and when to push her to her very limits and constantly challenges her, even on what feels like low energy days. They have great synergy.

Regarding the development of her characterisations, Yasmine fondly remembers Kevin O’Hare talking to her and Matthew Ball after their debut performance of “Romeo and Juliet” in 2015. He asked them to never ever lose the way they had just portrayed Romeo and Julietbecause they had embodied what was the very essence of who the characters are. As they both would obviously grow and become more mature artists as the years went by, they should always be able to return to this initial characterisation. Tatiana in “Onegin” has a vast arc of personality change to be reflected in the characterisation, starting as a shy and naive young provincial girl, gradually gaining more confidence, further developing into a mature, experienced woman, with her personality deeply affected by heartbreak and rejection. Princess Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty,” is vivacious and effervescent as a 16-year-old but matures, and by the end of the ballet, becomes a confidant queen-in-waiting. In “Swan Lake” you need to show the stark difference between Odette who is lyrical and graceful but has a sadness about her while Odile is cunning and sensual, threatening and evil. Although the contrasting white and black tutu and the make-up all help, the ballerina must be very clear with her interpretation of these two different personalities. Stepping into the shoes of these amazing characters, portraying their psychology and mindset, the steps and body movements must reflect what is going on in the mind of a character, and this is what makes dancing ballet so beautiful for Yasmine. She now finds that when she revisits roles, the pressure she puts on herself has increased because she sets higher standards for herself and never wants to perform below a previous set level. When she was younger, she would often wonder why the most experienced and established Principal dancers could still feel nervous before going on stage. It is assumed because they are so experienced and are physically at the top of their game it will be a piece of cake for them but now that she is mid-career dancer – her mother teasingly calls her “a middle-aged ballerina” – and she has a rich repertoire having danced many ballets from the great classics, to MacMillan, Ashton, Balanchine, Wheeldon and McGregor, feeling nervous comes from the high demands she puts onto herself.

“Onegin” is Yasmine’s favourite ballet. She has performed every corps de ballet role and her first role was being Tatiana’s mirror reflection. It was a great learning curve for her to be able to watch many great ballerinas who came before her take on the role. She also finds the music very moving, and the story is so well told, this ballet really stands the test of time. The beautiful pas de deux are in a certain way like those of MacMillan qua intricacies, details and challenges. Yasmine danced her debut as Tatiana on 24 January 2020 with Federico Bonelli. She felt so fortunate to be partnered by Federico, who is not only a very lovely, warm and generous man but in him she also had an incredible and experienced partner. On 24 January, exactly five years after having danced her debut, she will reprise the role of Tatiana but this time her partner will be Matthew Ball, who will debut in the role of Onegin. This ballet is also close to Yasmine’s heart because Lensky and Olga were the first roles she and Matthew danced together in 2014, when he was a First Artist, and she a newly promoted Soloist, and these were the first important roles that Kevin gave them when he became Director of The Royal Ballet.

“Manon” is another ballet which leaves her emotionally drained at the end. Yasmine debuted last Season with William Bracewell as her partner, and she was coached by Laura Morera who was an exceptional Manon herself. Yasmine gets the most from dancing dramatic ballets and she feels very lucky to have performed many of MacMillan’s ballets. She is very happy to tick off many roles that were once on her wish list such as Manon and Mary Vetsera in “Mayerling”; in fact, she debuted as Baroness Mary Vetsera as well as Countess Marie Larisch in the same performance run. This was incredibly challenging because the two characters dance together. As dancers we work with our muscle memory, the movements are triggered by the music, so in one performance the music would dictate a left leg movement when dancingLarisch, whereas, in another performance, the same music had to trigger a right leg movement when dancing Vetsera. She has yet to dance Lise in “La Fille mal gardée” and Alice in “Alice in Wonderland” but she would dearly love to dance “Month in the Country”and “Marguerite et Armand”. Regarding other roles she would like to perform in future, Yasmine mentioned she has already danced Gamzatti in “La Bayadère” but is longing to dance the role of Nikiya. Another ballet she is very much dreaming of performing is “La Dame aux Camélias,” choreographed by John Neumeier. It is not in The Royal Ballet’s repertoire, but this is why she believes guesting as a Principal dancer is a good thing as it gives them the opportunity to perform roles they would otherwise not have a chance to dance. Another big dream of hers is to dance at La Scala in Milan, her husband’s hometown.

A Balanchine programme is coming up to celebrate Pat Neary who is officially retiring. Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” is one of the first ballets Yasmine danced as a corps de ballet member. She was basically “thrown into” the Third Movement which is normally danced by soloists. It is a very exposing role, certainly when dancing the role as a corps de ballet dancer because it has only three dancers. Pat would record herself commenting on individual dancers’ mistakes so she could correct them afterwards; they would hear her live commentary on their flaws as they were rehearsing. It is incredibly impressive she still takes class with them in the morning, aged 82, and still demonstrates steps to the younger dancers in her pointe shoes! Her passion is extraordinary and working with her demands 200% focus because she expects you to know the steps after just one demonstration. The most recent ballet Yasmine worked on with Pat was “Apollo”, in June 2021. It was her debut in the role of Terpsichore, partnered by Vadim Muntagirov. An amusing anecdote happened after she had danced the Opening Night when Yasmine was asked by Stage Management to bring Pat onto stage once the ballet was finished but Terpsichore was bluntly “told off” by Pat because Pat felt she should have been brought on to the stage by Apollo himself!

In December 2021, Yasmine’s mother published a book called “Tears of a Ballet Mum” and now Yasmine is herself an author, having co-written a series of four children’s books called “Ballet Besties”. The idea came to her after watching a news item which stated that approximately 80% of schools were cancelling Dance from their curriculum. She found this very sad as dancing is such a great outlet for children and dancing has been proven to help with improving their concentration, their sense of self-worth and builds self-confidence, when dance is taught the right way. In addition, we could lose potential stars by not exposing children to dance. During the Covid lockdowns she began teaching ballet classes over Zoom, including to a dance school in Mumbai, India. It was a school for underprivileged children, and it was heartbreaking to see how these enthusiastic children lacked the necessary resources to be able to blossom. Yasmine’s work with the school in India began after she spoke with a philanthropist friend of hers who works extensively with poor communities in India. On her recommendation, Yasmine reached out to a few schools. A Q&A session always followed an enthusiastically received ballet lesson. The books feature five friends: Indu, Momoka, Dante, Yara and Charlie. Each book focusses on a different ballet, and the children also face a dilemma, such as having to save their ballet studio from closure to helping one of their friends whose family cannot afford to see a ballet performance. Her literary Agent is now working towards selling the book series to a television/streaming network to turn the stories into a cartoon series. Yasmine has a history of supporting The Royal Ballet’s Outreach Program as far back as when she joined the Company. It was the former Director of The Royal Ballet, Dame Monica Mason, who asked Yasmine, then still in the corps de ballet, to learn the role of the Firebird.She danced it in schools around the U.K. Years later she danced the Firebird on the stage of the Royal Opera House, partnered by Edward Watson. After one of her school presentations, a child told her she had been to see a ballet with her school during one of the Royal Opera House’s School Matinees and had since started taking ballet lessons and now dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer. Without these School Matinees, this child would have never had the chance of seeing a ballet.

A question from a Ballet Association member was how does a dancer adjust their make-up for a cinema live relay? Yasmine said she applies less make-up for a live relay. For the “Swan Lake” broadcast she was told to use powder on her body instead of pancake because otherwise the streaks of the pancake would be visible on the HD screens. Depending on the role, dancers are either helped with their make-up or do their own. For the “Swan Lake” cinema relay Yasmine had her make-up done by the specialist team, but for “The Winter’s Tale” live relay she applied it herself.

Another question was how do you feel when taking on a role and dancing steps that were created on someone with a very different body type? Yasmine’s response was that (using “The Dream” as an example), although a shorter dancer may find it easier to move in the Ashtonian way, today’s dancers are incredibly versatile, and a tall dancer can sometimes move faster than a shorter dancer. It’s also about making a role one’s own, it’s never about imitating another dancer or a dancer on whom a role was created.

A further question was how does a dancer cope when guesting and dancing with a partner they have not danced with before? Yasmine usually asks fellow Principal dancers Reece Clark, Matthew Ball or William Bracewell to partner her, depending on who is available. When she is guesting at the Abai Kazakh National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Almaty in December, she invited César Corrales to partner her so they can rehearse beforehand at the Royal Opera House and be performance-ready on arrival. However, there have been occasions where she has had to dance with new partners, sometimes at very short notice, such as when she was invited to dance “Ballet Imperial” in Tokyo with Friedemann Vogel. They usually do have only a few hours to get used to dancing with a new partner, but they are all seasoned performers, so the partnering has never been much of an issue, especially if it is a Pas de deux they’ll perform. Dancing a full-length ballet with an unfamiliar partner is a different story. Yasmine remembers getting a phone call from Kevin O’Hare one evening when she was already at home, asking her to come to the Royal Opera House immediately as she was needed to replace Akane Takada who got injured in the middle of her performance of “The Sleeping Beauty”. Alexander Campbell was the Prince and Yasmine and Alexander had never danced together in this ballet. As soon as she arrived, and while she was putting on her pointe shoes and having several people simultaneously helping her into her tutu, applying her make up and arranging her hair, she quickly discussed with Alexander various details of their partnering as they stood in the wings…until the orchestra started playing their entrance.

Yasmine thanked all the Ballet Association members for their continued support and passion for The Royal Ballet.

David ended with an anecdote from his days as an Ofsted school inspector. On being told by the Head of one school that they would be removing Dance and Drama from the curriculum, David remarked that he felt that Dance and Drama were even more important than mathematics (even though he himself came from a mathematics background). On arriving home, he received a call from Ofsted telling him that the Head had reported his comments and checking if, indeed, this was what he had said. When David confirmed that he had, the reply was simply: “We agree!”

Report written by Herma John and edited by Yasmine Naghdi and David Bain.

© The Ballet Association 2024