Tall, handsome boys with long legs and beautifully arched feet do not grow on trees (if only). Every ballet director knows this and yet tall, handsome Xander Parish spent five years blushing unseen in the Covent Garden chorus. The London critics soon spotted him — a rogue tulip in the ensemble — but it was only when the Mariinsky’s Yuri Fateyev was guest coaching the Royal Ballet in 2010 that his potential was realised. Within months he had joined the Mariinsky in St Petersburg — the first British dancer ever to do so. After four years he was made soloist, then first soloist and, last Thursday, on the Royal Opera House stage, he was promoted to principal after a performance of Swan Lake.
Parish had danced Siegfried before, during the company’s 2014 visit, but a controlled explosion of media interest — front page of the Times, TV interview, a slot on the Today programme — meant that the packed house was fizzing with a mix of goodwill, anxiety and sheer patriotic zeal even before Boris Gruzin struck up the overture.
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