Lauren Cuthbertson, star of the Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has hurt herself: “Something just went”

The Observer’s Ruar­idh Nicoll goes to find out what’s going on:

Dan­cers are stretch­ing in the stalls of London’s Royal Opera House. On the other side of the aud­it­or­ium, gla­cial dir­ector Mon­ica Mason is sit­ting on her own. Upfront, cho­reo­grapher Chris­topher Wheel­don is attempt­ing the all-but-impossible – pla­cing a new, full-length bal­let, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, into the heart of our culture.

On stage are fant­ast­ical scenes: pigs being fed into min­cers; Simon Rus­sell Beale rust­ling about as a duch­ess; the white rab­bit set­ting sail in a paper boat. All that is miss­ing is the star, Alice. And then, out of cos­tume but in the neatest of bobs, she taps me on the shoulder and leads me backstage.

Lauren Cuth­bertson has hurt her­self. “Some­thing just went,” she says. It is 11 days before the gala open­ing. The weight of expect­a­tion on the 26-year-old, the sole Eng­lish prin­cipal baller­ina in the Royal Bal­let’s line-up, is enorm­ous. And what’s more, she has only recently recovered from glandu­lar fever. “I was just start­ing to do barre when my name went up on the cast­ing board for Alice and I thought, ‘I’m not even doing classes.’”

read all via Lauren Cuth­bertson: ‘There are no Black Swan moments in this bal­let’ | Stage | The Observer

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