Backstage at The Royal Ballet: Francesca Hayward and Cesar Corrales
Dasa Wharton took her camera backstage to glimpse Francesca Hayward and Cesar Corrales preparing for a performance of Romeo and Juliet at The Royal Opera House. She was also there to capture moments of the ballet from the wings, and to take shots from behind the curtain during Hayward and Corrales’s triumphant curtain call.
Romeo and Juliet 5 pm
Getting ready
Francesca Hayward
English dancer Francesca Hayward is a Principal of The Royal Ballet. She trained at The Royal Ballet School and graduated into the Company during the 2010/11 Season. She was promoted to First Artist in 2013, Soloist in 2014, First Soloist in 2015 and Principal in 2016.
Hayward studied at The Royal Ballet School from 2003–11 and while a student won the 2009 Lynn Seymour Award for Expressive Dance, the 2010 Young British Dancer of the Year and both silver medal and the Audience Choice Award at the 2010 Genée International Ballet Competition.
After joining The Royal Ballet she represented the Company at the 2012 International Competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize and won Best Emerging Artist (2014) and Grishko Award For Best Female Dancer (2016) at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards.
Cesar Corrales
Cuban-Canadian dancer Cesar Corrales joined The Royal Ballet at the beginning of the current 2018/19 Season as a First Soloist.
Corrales was born in Mexico City and trained with his parents, Taina Morales and Jesus Corrales, both professional ballet dancers, before attending Canada’s National Ballet School.
He played the title role in the musical Billy Elliot in Chicago and Toronto from 2010-2011. He danced with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company in 2014. That year, he won the Grand Prix Award and Artistry Award at the Youth America Grand Prix, and soon afterwards joined English National Ballet.
Corrales was promoted to Principal at the ENB in 2017 and his repertory with the company included Ali (Le Corsaire), Nephew (The Nutcracker), Mercutio (Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet), Albrecht (Giselle) Franz (Coppélia) and roles in Fantastic Beings, Le Jeune homme et la mort and In the middle, somewhat elevated. He created the role of Hilarion in Akram Khan’s Giselle.
His recent awards include 2016’s Emerging Dancer Award and the 2017 National Dance Award for Outstanding Male Performance (Classical) for Le Corsaire.
Romeo and Juliet 7 pm
Act One
Romeo and Juliet 8.25 pm
Act Two
Romeo and Juliet 9.20 pm
Act Three
Romeo and Juliet 10 pm
Curtain call
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
Lovely thank you !