Was Tamara Rojo, when she danced Swan Lake last Saturday at the Albert Hall, thinking as she shaped each phrase, ‘This will be the last time I dance this …and this …and this’? I wonder. She told me a few years back that she had a five-year diary to cover the rest of her dancing career, a diary ending in 2016. Akram Khan’s modern Giselle this autumn will be a Rojo role, but if at 42 she was privately saying farewell to her classical career on Saturday, she did it with the spectacular and refined artistry the public has come to expect.
A woman sitting next to me complained that the 5ft 2in Rojo is too short for this ballet. To which I responded that Rojo understands the possibilities for romantic connection with her princes and for wickedness in her manipulations of a good man as few other ballerinas ever have.
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