Royal Ballet’s incoming director Kevin O’Hare leaves his first interview

Although Kevin O’Hare’s appoint­ment as the next dir­ector of the Royal Bal­let was announced months ago, it is only now that he has spoken about his new role. Up until now he has rightly let Mon­ica Mason do the talk­ing in her final sea­son, but with the pub­lic­a­tion of the Royal Opera House’s 2012–2012 sea­son, which includes his first bal­let sea­son, he decided to talk to The Times’ Debra Craine.

Here are his words:

On his first season

I think it has made a big splash. There is lots of new work going on; I’m excited by it, and I will be build­ing on that. It’s a step for­ward. You have to think of the future as well, and there will be other big splashes through­out the next couple of years.”

On defec­tions

We are a big com­pany of 90 plus dan­cers and we have to think of them as a whole. Each one mat­ters, you can’t keep put­ting one per­son in front of another, and some people find that hard to accept. But I don’t think we have a mor­ale prob­lem; the com­pany seem in great spirits.

“Of course it is sad to see a dan­cer like Polunin go, but we have always sup­por­ted him and con­tinue to sup­port him. With his visa applic­a­tion to remain in this coun­try, I wrote the let­ter with Alistair Spald­ing at Sadler’s Wells to help that hap­pen. Polunin has to decide what he needs and wants; we are there to listen, to talk and see what hap­pens. He’s a lovely dan­cer but of course we have lots of lovely dancers.”

On his two new artistic asso­ci­ates, Chris­topher Wheel­don and Wayne McGregor

They have so many ideas and though they come from very dif­fer­ent back­grounds, we all seem to work well together. To have two of the greatest cho­reo­graph­ers of their gen­er­a­tion work­ing with this com­pany is an oppor­tun­ity I wouldn’t want to miss out on. And they care about their work; they leave their egos at the door.”

On col­lab­or­at­ing with Ratmansky

He really is a beau­ti­ful clas­sical cho­reo­grapher, someone I believe will cre­ate some­thing really spe­cial for the com­pany. It will be a great exper­i­ence for the dancers.”

On his own role

It’s an advant­age for a dir­ector not to be a cho­reo­grapher. Cho­reo­graph­ers need to be so focused on cre­at­ing. The last thing they need is to be think­ing about how a pro­gramme is put together, what the budget is, or what our tour­ing plans are.”

On budget cuts

The budget cuts are hard, and there really shouldn’t be any more, but we are being ima­gin­at­ive and find­ing ways to make things work, for instance with co-productions, and by hav­ing big runs of the clas­sics to bal­ance the budget. Though the last thing we want to do is a con­stant diet of Swan Lake and Nutcracker. That would be fatal for the dan­cers. There is so much cre­ativ­ity going on at the moment that we have to give these people as many oppor­tun­it­ies as possible.”

On cre­at­ing new full-length nar­rat­ive ballets

Already you see the first ink­ling of that with Liam in the Lin­bury. Nar­rat­ive is some­thing the Royal Bal­let is really good at, so it’s such a shame when cho­reo­graph­ers don’t work with stor­ies. I would love to see them cre­ate full-length nar­rat­ive works that could become clas­sics for years to come.

“One of my driv­ing forces is to be more pre­script­ive with our cho­reo­graph­ers and say ‘This is what I feel the com­pany needs at this time and this is where I want you to go.’ Our audi­ences love nar­rat­ive; they love to see a story going right through the evening.”

On the classics

The clas­sics are not only pop­u­lar they are also a vital part of a dancer’s career. They never go out of fash­ion. There is always some­thing for audi­ences and dan­cers to get out of them, and it’s amaz­ing how tough they still are to perform.

“We have got very good ver­sions of the 19th-century clas­sics and I’m more inter­ested in cre­at­ing new ones. We will have some­thing com­ing later, a new look to an old clas­sic, some­thing that hasn’t been seen in a while here.”

On using the small Lin­bury Stu­dio Theatre and large venues

We need to be more stra­tegic about how we show the com­pany off in [the Lin­bury Stu­dio Theatre]. I want to repeat the 02 exper­i­ence, per­haps some­where else in the coun­try. It might be a way for us to per­form out­side Lon­don; with an arena-type venue we might be able to make the num­bers work by reach­ing the biggest audience.”

On the future

I’m build­ing on what Mon­ica has achieved so far. But I also think that the com­pany is in such a strong pos­i­tion that I can push it that little bit further.”

Kevin O’Hare Photo: Sim Canetty-Clark

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