Tamara Rojo

Spanish ballet star Tamara Rojo has enjoyed a 20 year stage career, in which she starred in all the greatest classical ballet roles to both critical and popular acclaim. She became artistic director of the English National Ballet, and recently made her debut as a choreographer with a new version of the 19th century ballet Raymonda. Now, after a decade running the ENB, she is preparing to take on a new job as artistic director of the San Francisco ballet, the first woman to hold the role.

She tells John Wilson about the chance introduction to a dance class at school, and her unexpected success winning the Paris International Dance competition in 1994 which led to a role at Scottish Ballet at the age of 17. She reveals how seeing Francis Bacon's studies of the Velazquez portrait of Pope Innocent X made her reassess approaches to classic works of art and inspired a desire to re imagine works from the classical ballet canon. She also explains why she loves the Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark and how Bjork's tour de force performance mirrors he own approach to inhabiting a role.

Producer: Edwina Pitman