Polunin speaks! “It’s a confusing time”

Sergei Polunin, who stunned the ballet world earlier this week by walking out on the Royal Ballet, has broken his silence by speaking with the Sunday Telegraph:

Polunin told the paper that he planned to spend the next few days “alone” before coming to a decision about his future.

It's a confusing time at the moment, I have made a big decision and the next one will be important so I don't want to rush it. For the moment I'm concentrating on ballet and on rehearsing. I need a few days alone to think about what I'm doing as I haven't decided yet.”

Polunin has spent the past few days at his home, a Victorian terrace house in north London, where he lives with Marinos and Arlene Christofi, who have adopted the role of his ‘surrogate parents', and their son Jade Hale-Christofi, 25, himself a ballet dancer and occasional model, said The Telegraph.

Polunin is listed as a co-director with Anthony Lammin of the London Tattoo Company, which operates from a parlour called Holloway Ink. On Thursday Polunin tweeted to Lammin: “So we gonna start tattooing now?” This was interpreted as being the direction in which Polunin wanted to move.

But Mr Christofi dismissed such talk. saying,

Tattooing is a hobby, I don't think he will want to quit ballet to work in the parlour as people have been saying.”

A Royal Ballet spokesman said,

Sergei decided that he wanted to leave and told us about it on Tuesday afternoon. He talked for a length of time with Dame Monica and she would have tried to offer him any number of opportunities to stay, but he was adamant that he wanted to go.

“If you say you want to leave and that you are not planning to come in tomorrow, we can't make someone come in. Of course it is disappointing and surprising for Dame Monica.”

Mrs Polunin said last night,

I worry about him. I do not think it was a spontaneous or rash decision, although he had never told me that he planned to leave London.