Interview: talking to Melissa Hamilton, The Royal Ballet’s new principal dancer

The Royal Ballet’s Melissa Hamilton, recently promoted to Principal Dancer, will dance in Christopher Wheeldon‘s Fool’s Paradise, opening the company’s Ballet to Broadway mixed bill of Wheeldon works. I talked to her before her opening night.

Fool’s Paradise was created for Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company in the company’s inaugural year, 2007, and it entered the repertoire of The Royal Ballet in 2012. Hamilton found herself in the same role that she dances now on opening night when she stepped in to dance with Edward Watson, replacing an injured dancer.

I was originally cast in the trio, but during the week of the opening night I jumped from the trio girl into the central part, which was a bit of a whirlwind. So it’s nice to be more embedded in the piece this time.

You’ve worked many times with Wheeldon over the years.

I’ve been really lucky to work with Chris throughout my whole career. A lot of my early opportunities came from his work – in my second season with the company I did his DGV: Danse à grande Vitesse in the role choreographed for Darcy Bussell. I know his work very well and he feels very much a part of the Royal Ballet family, even though he’s having incredible success all around the world. He’s very giving, he’s very concentrated. He’s focused on making sure everyone can deliver the choreography in an individual way that is best for them, giving individual feedback so the dancer looks the best they can, and not try and look like someone else.

Fool’s Paradise marks the first time that Wheeldon choreographed to music by Joby Talbot. It wasn’t written for dance however. Wheeldon heard a recording of Talbot’s 2002 film score for Evgenii Bauer’s 1917 film The Dying Swan, at the time a piano trio.

Yesterday was our first rehearsal with orchestra, and it’s just incredible how Joby’s music transforms when you hear it with full orchestra compared to when we rehearse it with a pianist. It evolves and develops… blossoms. It transforms into something magical.

It was the beginning of a highly successful collaboration between Wheeldon and Talbot that continued with commissioned full-length scores for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2011), The Winter’s Tale (2014), Like Water for Chocolate (2022), and last year’s Oscar.

It’s incredible. If that was the starting point, I think it just proves that it was a match made in heaven. It sets the tone for what was going to come with the two of them.

Although Fool’s Paradise is an abstract ballet, Wheeldon says that it suggests stories and, for him, has the atmosphere of the enchanted forest in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

With it being plotless, it’s like a blank canvas. When I come on with Reece, it’s very strong, kind of tempestuous and physical… it’s a bit cat and mouse. If we’re going on the lines A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it would be the Oberon and Titania power play. It’s fun. A bit cheeky.

Your partner is Reece Clarke.

Whenever I’m on stage with Reece, I’m really confident. I know that he’s always fully there and so I’m very trusting of him. I can risk a little bit and know that he’ll come with me.

I feel so little and delicate next to him because of his stature [189cm – 6ft 3in], which is really nice, so I have to step up to him to be at the same level if we’re going with the power play angle. It’s fun. I always laugh a lot in the studio with Reece, so it’s been great to put this together again after all these years in a more solid way than last time, when I stepped in last minute.

I asked Reece Clarke about working with Melissa Hamilton:

“Working with Melissa is always a pleasure. We’ve worked on several productions over the last ten years, and I’ve come to realise that we have a similar work ethic – we both like to explore and constantly find deeper layers of movement or interpretation. It’s led to many fulfilling performances together.

“Also, Melissa has a wonderful sense of humour, and I deeply appreciate this quality in a partner. Since Melissa became a principal dancer, her passion and professionalism for our art form has only increased, which is hugely admirable.”

In conversation, Hamilton conveys her passion and humour in a voice that is lower than I was expecting. I imagined a more crystalline sound to match her pale complexion and blonde hair, but her slightly husky voice with tinges of her Irish accent is seductive.  

You have received much critical acclaim for contemporary pieces, but what are the repertoire pieces that you are most attracted to?

MacMillan’s ballets. It’s almost cathartic to dance his works because it requires so much of your own experience… delving into yourself to put that into a character can bring authenticity on stage. I love the juxtaposition of being someone else but also being completely honest with your own emotions. Being behind a veil of someone else is incredibly liberating, and I love having the opportunity to do that on stage.

So how does a little girl from Northern Ireland become a professional dancer?

It was an insane dream, I guess. Not holding back and going hell for leather against the odds. It’s definitely not your typical path.

My mum sent both my sister and me to ballet class after school as a hobby. I was four. A lot of little girls do their ballet class, and it never crossed my parents’ minds that this could be a career – no one considers it in Northern Ireland or Ireland because there wasn’t the outreach for it. We don’t have vocational schools, we don’t have full-time training. But I attended a summer school in Aberdeen when I was 13 and found out that people did vocational training with the aim of being professional dancers. I went home and I said to Mum and Dad that I wanted to train professionally.

So you went to Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham because there wasn’t an equivalent in Northern Ireland?

Yes, and there still isn’t. The only choice was to leave home. Up until 16, I was only doing one class a week… maybe two if I had a RAD [Royal Academy of Dance] exam coming up.

I left home at 16 and joined Elmhurst. I was in class with dancers who had been in vocational training since they were 11. The difference of where I was at, and my understanding of the whole ballet world, was enormous. I did two years out of the three-year senior course, but instead of completing my third year I opted to train privately in Athens with my Elmhurst teacher Masha Mukhamedov who was leaving [her husband Irek Mukhamedov had been made director of the Greek National Opera Ballet]. The intensity of one-on-one attention was literally my only option if I wanted to have a career because I was so far behind. At 18 it was the only way… years of training squeezed into 10 months.

That is very late, especially for a girl. So how was that possible? Was your beautiful physique natural?

I think that was the thing that Masha saw when she taught me in my second year in Elmhurst. But it wasn’t totally natural. Everyone thinks I’m so flexible, but in my teens I couldn’t do the splits. It came through training my natural abilities and pushing my body past the boundaries I thought it had. There’s no denying that you’re born with pretty feet or a line that is naturally God-given, but everything else around it is definitely hard work.

Now this next part of your journey is right out of a film script – immediately after this crash course, you won the 2007 Youth American Grand Prix in New York.

Yes! And the Grand Prix came with a contract to join ABT2 [now the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company], but being British, my dream was to be a member of The Royal Ballet. It felt like now or never, so Masha contacted the then-director, Dame Monica Mason, who invited me to take company class that same week. I flew to London, took the class, and Monica offered me a corps de ballet contract straight away. In 2007 I became a member of The Royal Ballet.

Then this young whippersnapper, who no one had seen before, was chosen by Wayne McGregor to create a role in his new ballet, Infra in 2008.

I threw myself in front of Wayne, actually! I remember it so clearly. He was trying to find a stand-in for an injured dancer in Chroma, and I was outside the Ashton Studio with Steven McRae when Wayne came around the corner. Steven said, “Wayne, have you seen Melissa? She’s brand new to the company,” and I did one of the famous Chroma poses. Wayne being Wayne, asked me if I could invert it, and do it concave. A few months after that the casting came out for Infra and I was on it.

A corps de ballet girl among so many principal dancers!

I think there are moments when those 15 seconds of madness can pay off. It was an opportunity, but I was also in the right place at the right time. I think my career has a lot to do with that. Having luck on my side… meeting the right people. You can work as hard as you possibly can, but if you don’t have luck on your side, then lots of things can pass you by, so I am very aware and very grateful of the timing in my life.

Luck? I think you’re being unnecessarily modest. After all, McGregor has continued to ask you to create many roles over the years.

This is true, but there is always that catalyst. Obviously, if I didn’t prove myself then further opportunities wouldn’t have come.

You left Northern Ireland for Elmhurst… you threw yourself in front of Wayne McGregor… how much is determination part of your character?

Oh, I think that’s probably about 99 percent… 99.5? It always has been, even before I got into the ballet world. When I was little, I was really determined and independent. I think that is just me, my character. I adore setting myself challenges, and reaching those goals gives me such joy. I’m not scared of the paths that it might take me down.

You were quickly promoted – First Artist in 2009, Soloist in 2010, First Soloist in 2013, but then for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons you took leave of absence and danced with the Semperoper Ballett in Dresden. Did that bold decision come from your determined streak?

It was all about timing, again. I was in the 2014 Dance Open Gala in Saint Petersburg where Jiří Bubeníček was also dancing. We had never met each other or seen each other dance. The following season was going to be his retirement season, and he was to debut in Manon. He was aware of how much Macmillan I had done with The Royal Ballet and asked if I would come and be Manon for his retirement performances. When I talked to Aaron S. Watkin, the director at Dresden at that time, we were looking at other repertoire in the season, and there were a lot of roles I wanted to do in my career. That was the catalyst for my sabbatical. It was going to guarantee me an opportunity to dance those roles that I just had to experience before reaching retirement.

When you returned to London, you had to wait until last year, when you were 35, for your final promotion. For a long time, everyone was saying, “Why isn’t she a principal?”

I can only be grateful that I am now. I adore being a member of The Royal Ballet company, but it was always my dream to be a principal. All the dancers share that dream, but I think it seemed a little bit odd that I wasn’t because from my second season I was performing and creating principal roles.

Two days after we had completed the run of Wayne’s MADDADDAM I got called into [artistic director] Kevin O’Hare’s office and then the promotion happened in December – an exceptional Christmas present. It came at a point where I genuinely believed that ship had sailed, so it’s been a whirlwind of emotions for me.

At the beginning of 2024, Hamilton and her husband, Michael Christou, launched Hamilton Christou Productions.

It is a production company that Michael and I set up, which was Michael’s brainchild. He is a businessman and a director of 1.61 London [a luxury interior design studio and property developer] so he runs the business side of it. He had seen me dance in gala productions in different locations, and kind of got swept up in the whole experience of seeing different dancers coming together – he had seen what I do in my home company, but to see the galas with the collaborative feel was something that clicked with him. For many years, he said, “You do so many of these for so many people, don’t you want to do your own?” And I always replied, “No way. It’s too much work.”

Then again timing…. I was on tour with Wayne’s company, and I had a conversation with the head of the dance department within [the performing arts centre] Esplanade in Singapore, and Hamilton Christou Productions’ debut performance was there in March 2024.

Ultimately, I wanted to do more for dancers back home in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Michael’s ears are burning now because for years I’ve talked about how hard it is for dancers back home. I wouldn’t want a dancer to do the journey that I did in order to reach where I’ve reached, and I want to make sure no one has to. That has been my driving force to get more ballet productions back in Ireland. We had our first performances in the Grand Opera House in Belfast in October 2024, and we’re preparing for performances in Dublin in September.

At Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre the Melissa Hamilton’s Ballet Stars Gala can be seen on 17 and 18 September.

In Singapore, I was forced to put my name on the show. I didn’t like to push myself full front, but it happened.

Which brings me to Roberto Bolle and Friends.

I love being on stage with Roberto. Well, not just on stage, but being around him. If anyone meets him, they say exactly the same thing: he is one of the most amazing representations of work ethic and dedication to the art form that exists.

You have participated in his galas for many years.

Again, it was timing. Roberto was guesting at the Royal Opera House and I was on stage in rehearsal with Eric Underwood who Roberto knew from when they both danced with ABT. Roberto watched in the wings. Eric and I were doing a lot of work with Wayne, and we were also doing galas around the world as a couple. Roberto asked Eric if we would join the summer tour. Eric came running to tell me like a kid at Christmas. We danced McGregor’s Qualia and Wheeldon’s Tryst.

McGregor and Wheeldon have always been central to your career.

Yes!

Then, a couple of months later, Roberto was supposed to do Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s [Romeo and Juliet] balcony pas de deux with someone on the tour. Then they weren’t able to join the tour, so I got asked to be his Juliet. Dancing the balcony pas de deux in the Arena di Verona with Roberto will go down as one of the best stage experiences that I could ever have dreamt of. From there, it just kind of developed and continued, and we’ve danced many beautiful works since. I love the connection that we have on stage – I can be totally free, and he gives me the empowerment that I think every ballerina should have from their partner. I really love every experience I have with him.

Will you be joining Bolle again this year?

For the summer tour, yes.

I asked Roberto Bolle about dancing with Melissa Hamilton:

“Melissa is one of the first artists I always call for my galas. I really enjoy dancing with her, and we have danced in many wonderful places – Pompeii, the Arena di Verona, the Caracalla Baths, the ancient theatre of Taormina… truly extraordinary places in Italy and abroad.

“Melissa is a great artist with extraordinary physical qualities. Exceptional. But she’s also modest and supportive. She works so hard, pushing herself to the limit – I greatly admire an artist who constantly seeks to improve. That’s why I have continually invited her for my galas and TV programmes, and she’s loved by Italian audiences. She will also join me at Sadler’s Wells in November. It is special when I dance with Melissa as there is real chemistry between us that the audience senses and responds to enthusiastically.”

I know you have several ventures outside the Royal Opera House coming up.

There’s a fundraising performance for Darcey Bussell to raise money for the Royal Academy of Dance [on 16 June], which is poignant because RAD was my basis in Northern Ireland and is really the only form of training that they currently have. If we can further develop outreach for teachers and funding to build better foundations for teaching, I think that at the moment it’s the only option that dancers have in Northern Ireland. I’m also in the Gala de Danza [which comes to London on 25 and 26 June].

And let’s not forget the BBC documentary.

No! It’s about my career, life and promotion. They were filming Fool’s Paradise during yesterday’s stage rehearsal. They’ve been filming my work with Royal Ballet, my life with Michael and his company 1.61 London, Bolle and Friends at the Teatro Arcimboldi in Milan, and with Hamilton Christou Productions and our ballet masterclasses in Belfast and the Dublin gala preparations.

Are you hands-on with organising the Dublin gala?

I’m dabbling in admin. Michael laughs at my admin skills in comparison to his businessman standards, but I guess it’s cute, isn’t it? Ballerina goes business.

I don’t want to just bring dancers with me, but to collaborate with local artists – in Singapore we had the Singapore Ballet, in Dublin I’m hoping to have the Irish National Opera sing for a piece that Valentino Zucchetti premiered for Hamilton Christou Productions in Belfast. It’s impossible to have a full orchestra, but we want Irish musicians live on stage with us, and dancers from Ballet Ireland.

It’s refreshing that you wish to promote Irish artists and especially help young, aspiring Irish dancers.

I have to. I think collaboration is the only way to move forward with the funding constraints within the arts, and it’s just a nicer way to work. I know what it is to struggle to find your way, and I want to use my position to give a platform to someone who wouldn’t necessarily have one. I think that really means more to me in my career now than anything.

Melissa Hamilton performs in Ballet to Broadway – Wheeldon Works throughout May
www.rbo.org.uk

Melissa Hamilton’s Ballet Stars Gala 17 – 18 September, Dublin
Home – Bord Gáis Energy Theatre

Gramilano Editor

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 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.