Dancer

Tamara Rojo to appear on BBC Radio 3?s Private Passions

Ahead of Tamara Rojo’s appearance on BBC Radio 3′s Private Passions on Sunday 8 January at 12pm, we’ve put together a gallery of photos featuring the …

TVE2 – GOMAESPUMA ENTREVISTA A TAMARA

Tamara Rojo has been honoured with the “Outstanding Person in the category of Dance Award” by Expansion (Group Unidad Editorial).

MARGUERITE & ARMAND

Called to the barre

“Ballet Dancers don’t enjoy the pain. We’re not masochist”

TAMARA ROJO

Principal Ballerina with the Royal Ballet – Covent Garden since 2000; Laurence Olivier Award Winner (Best New Dance Production) in 2010; Internationally acclaimed dancer for her outstanding technique, captivating acting skills, and brilliant artistry in a broad spectrum of classical and contemporary roles.

TRAINING

Master of Scenic Arts and Bachelor of Dance graduate from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid, Tamara first trained at Victor Ullate’s School in Madrid, and then with David Howard, Renato Paroni, Alexander Agadzhanov, and Loipa Araujo.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

While training with Victor Ullate, Tamara performed with the Ballet de la Comunidad de Madrid excelling in a wide array of choreography that embodied her Spanish roots and showcased her impeccable classical technique.  Her extensive repertoire included many works specially choreographed for her by Mr. Ullate.  In 1994, she dazzled the ballet world by winning both a Gold Medal at the Paris International Dance Competition, and a Special Jury Award unanimously given by a judging panel whose members included Natalia Makarova, Vladimir Vassiliev, and Galina Samsova. Tamara left her native Spain on Dec. 1996 when Ms. Samsova invited her to join the Scottish National Ballet. With SNB, Tamara danced the principal roles in Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, La Sylphide, and Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet. Leaving SNB in 1997, she joined the English National Ballet and immediately began dancing the full range of principal roles for the company, including Swan Lake, Paquita, Coppelia, Glen Tetley’s The Sphinx and Voluntaries, and Michael Corder’s Cinderella.  ENB Artistic Director Derek Deane also created the roles of Juliet (Romeo and Juliet) and Clara (The Nutcracker) for Tamara.  Her performances as Clara broke attendance records at the London Coliseum and, in 1997, the London Times named Tamara “Dancer Revelation of the Year.” In 2000, Sir Anthony Dowell asked Tamara to dance Giselle with the Royal Ballet as a guest artist.  Shortly after her Covent Garden debut (well-received by both critics and audience) Sir Anthony invited Tamara to join the Royal Ballet as a principal dancer.

AWARDS

In 2010, Tamara received the Laurence Olivier “Best New Dance Production” award for her collaboration with choreographer Kim Brandstrup in “Goldberg:  The Brandstrup-Rojo Project.”  For her artistic excellence onstage, the awards Tamara has received include Spain’s two highest honours – The Prince of Asturias Arts Award (2005) and the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos (2002), Benois de la Danse Award (2008), Comunidad de Madrid’s International Medal of the Arts (2008), City of Madrid’s Interpretation Award (2007), Leonide Massine’s “Premio al Valore” (2004), London’s Critics’ Circle Dance Award (2002), Italian Critics’ Award (1996), and Paris International Dance Competition’s Gold Medal and Special Jury Award (1994).

GUEST APPEARANCES

Tamara has danced principal roles with The Mariinsky Ballet, La Scala Ballet, Tokyo Ballet, New National Tokyo Ballet, The Mikhailovsky Ballet, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Ballet Deustsche Opera Berlin, English National Ballet, National Ballet of Finland, National Ballet of China, Zurich Ballet, Lithuanian Ballet, and Balletto Argentino.  She has also performed at the prestigious World Ballet Festival in Tokyo (2003, 2006, 2009), Ballet Festival de Habana (2006, 2008, 2010), and many other galas throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas.  In 2005, first in Bilbao and then in Madrid, Tamara starred in the world premiere of Snow White (Blanca Nieves), created for her by choreographer Ricardo Cué with original musical score by famed Spanish conductor Emilio Aragón.

PERFORMANCES ON DVDs

Three of Tamara’s most highly-praised performances with the Royal Ballet have been released on DVDs:  Romeo and Juliet, La Bayadere and Manon.  In addition, recordings of her world premiere of Snow White (Blanca Nieves) and a Don Quixote pas de deux she performed in the Explosive Dance show at Royal Albert Hall are also available.

REPERTOIRE AND CRITICS’ COMMENTS

The Sleeping Beauty “Tamara Rojo, whose dancing poured light upon us all, first softly and dewily, and then with increasing brightness and grandeur. This is a true ballerina of exquisite mastery in all departments, who understands every demand not only for herself in meeting the role’s phenomenal limits, but the magical warmth that she must generate for the whole production. You could rhapsodise on about her time-stopping balances and spun gold of her pirouettes, but better to notice the wafting silk of her ports de bras, the generosity of the garlands she weaves with her arms around everyone on stage, from her parents to the wooing princes to the guests at her wedding.” – Ismene Brown (Arts Desk, November 2, 2009) “Rojo’s composure and command of the stage are complete, her dancing exceptionally creamy and precise, all of it beautifully unhurried and decorated with pleasing musical flourishes” – Debra Caine (Times, March 19, 2008) “Rojo’s reading of the role of Aurora is at once restrained and spectacular. She is so precisely centred that she seems supported on a current of air, and this gives her pirouettes and her ‘Rose Adagio’ balances an air of pensive rapture.” – Luke Jennings (Guardian, March 23, 2008) Jewels “On the opening night, Tamara Rojo, Leanne Benjamin, Valeri Hristov and Bennet Gartside as the leads gave a near-perfect rendition of this delicately romantic comedy of manners.” – Giannandrea Poesio (Spectator, June 17, 2009) “Yet if anyone can win me over to its poetry, it will be Tamara Rojo and Leanne Benjamin, who between them explore the gamut of the delicate shadings of “Emeralds” with a wondrous elegance and control.” – Jenny Gilbert (Independent, June 14, 2009) “There is a solo, all womanly nuance and wit, given to the leading ballerina and here taken with a sensuous charm by Tamara Rojo, who rivals the unerring musical sensibilities of Violette Verdy for whom it was first made.  It is the finest thing in the evening.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, November 26, 2007) “Tamara Rojo fills the work with a kind of rapture. Her arms float as if in a trance; she spins with the perfection of a ballerina on a jewellery box; she dances with Edward Watson like a sprite in a dream, full of aching grace. She loses herself in the world Balanchine has made, understanding each step . . .” – Sarah Crompton (Daily Telegraph, November 26, 2007) “On the opening night, the Emeralds cast was led by Tamara Rojo, as sleek and feline as a young Elizabeth Taylor. The Faure score has a dreamy, transparent quality and as Rojo spins in solitary rapture or weaves her arms in liquid port de bras, one can see the water nymph suggested in the incidental music of Pelleas and Melisande.” – Luke Jennings (Observer, December 2, 2007) Swan Lake “Tamara Rojo’s performance was the most breathtakingly beautiful I’d seen in years, her Odette every inch a swan. In fluid arm movements, she created a beak and wings; her fingers spread into feathers. Her turns were all cleanly finished, and her arabesque penchée leaned – rather than being forced – into a 180-degree vertical split.” – Ellen Dunkel (Philadelphia Enquirer, July 7, 2007) “Rojo presents Odette’s dances as if pouring thick cream in long streams of luscious movement. The impulse is strong, the muscular tone generous, the emotion – she is unrivalled in the Royal Ballet as a dance-actor – saturating the choreography, which speaks more eloquently than we have seen for years with Royal casts. She balances and turns with supernal ease, never hurrying save when the dance demands it, and favouring slowest tempi. Each position flowers in the air, as in our imagination, and lyric tragedy speaks.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, January 13, 2005) “Rojo is a dancer of enormous strength and proficiency, and she used her assets brilliantly in Act III’s famous seduction scene. Here, as the evil Odile, Rojo regaled Siegfried with an Olympian display of ballet technique – phenomenal balances, astonishing turns - virtually daring anyone to outdance her.” – Debra Craine (Times, December 27, 2004) La Bayadere “Tamara Rojo, as the eponymous temple dancer, was simply radiant, and proved to be one of today’s best interpreters of the role. I particularly liked the way she highlighted the choreographic contrast between the balletic adaptation of the pseudo-oriental dances in the first scenes and the purely classical lines in the ‘Kingdom of the Shades’.” – Giannandrea Poesio (Spectator, January 22, 2009) “Tamara Rojo gives a performance that glows with conviction and higher purpose, in death as in life. Her bayadère is pliant yet redoubtable, her dancing as a Shade blanched and remote, but no less technically superb.” – Jenny Gilbert (Independent, January 18, 2009) “Tamara Rojo is perfection, a creation of purity, lustrously beautiful in her bare-midriff temple costumes. She expresses melancholy, pathos, love, ardour, tragedy in her entrancing countenance, her supple body, the arching of her back and arms. In the classical vision scene, the Kingdom of the Shades, she is the ballerina par excellence, an idealised figure in Solor’s hallucination, dreamlike in fluency. She can take up and hold a balance in arabesque on pointe so easily and securely, it seems miraculously fixed in time and space. It could, you feel, go on forever — except that what she never holds up, with instinctive judgment, is the flow of the music. Hers was the unalloyed triumph of this performance.” – David Dougill (Sunday Times, January 18, 2009) “Rojo is all grace as Nikiya, her dramatic assurance, the technical bravura she commands with her uncanny brilliancy in turning steps and unwavering poses drawing a portrait of rare distinction.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, January 15, 2009) “There’s an emotional graveness and otherworldly delicacy in Tamara Rojo that makes her at her best when cast as someone who is either doomed (Juliet) or unreal (the Sylphide).  And, in Bayadère, in which she dies but returns as a spirit, she’s both.  Her brilliance lay in the spiritual grace with which she caressed the air in the very first scene; her ability to radiate undying love from a single arabesque; the forlorn precision with which she lowered herself from pointe to the flat.” – Mark Monahan (Telegraph, October 8, 2007) Romeo and Juliet “But Tamara Rojo’s is better. Dancing two days earlier, she shows that her Method-like empathy with this part is, if anything, growing with the years. She is less coquettish than Cojocaru during her first encounter with Paris, her body-language – in particular, those gorgeous, hesitant little turns of her head – conveying nervousness and self-consciousness, but also sexual curiosity and a youthful urge to please. Thirty-six this year, the Spaniard simply is the 14-year-old Italian. The narrative arc on which she subsequently takes Juilet is a shade more vivid and dramatic than Cojocaru’s. There is nothing to choose between them in the romantic encounters – both are dazzling – but she also brings touches of brilliance to later, superficially un-spectacular moments, that are astonishing.” – Mark Monahan (Telegraph, January 18, 2010) “At the heart of the evening, Tamara Rojo is MacMillan’s Juliet in all her impulsive sensuality and stubborn defiance, and – no less significant – in the ravishing outlines of the dance, curling and flowering within the musical phrase. Beautiful the way Rojo displays an unfailing sense of rubato, so that a step, a gesture, gains in emotional significance from the minutest variation in shaping.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, January 15, 2010) “Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet gives its ballerina an extreme dramatic journey – provided she is willing to take it.  And Tamara Rojo is. Her Juliet enters as an adored, ­adorable child, but by act three she has aged a lifetime. Haggard, ­stumbling, slack with fear and rage, she is a woman peering into the abyss, and all the violence in ­Shakespeare’s tragedy is focused in her body.  It is an exceptional performance, and what makes its conclusion ­harrowing is that Rojo takes us there in ­convincing stages.” – Judith Mackrell (Guardian, January 14, 2010) “Tamara Rojo, whom we already know as a superlative Juliet, with her new Romeo, Carlos Acosta, in his Royal Ballet debut in this part.  After their recent magnetic partnership in Giselle, this was a hot ticket.  When the dark-haired Rojo first bursts onto the scene, fluttering and flickering in childish games with her doll and her Nurse, she reminds me so much of Fonteyn.” – David Dougill (Sunday Times, November 19, 2006) Ondine “Tamara Rojo is the dreamiest of Ondines – lush, lyrical and quixotic. She has a softer quality than Fonteyn, but the shadow-dance, with its low-skimming jumps, flickering gazes and darting changes of direction, suits her perfectly. Most importantly, she understands Ashtonian nuance: how desire streams through the upper body to find expression as épaulement, and fluttering footwork suggests the erotically racing heart.” – Luke Jennings (Observer, December 7, 2008) “On the opening night of this revival, Tamara Rojo and Edward Watson didn’t let him down. They delivered some terrific work when apart: his little solo after his would-be bride turns her nose up at his advances radiated disappointment and solitude in a way that perfectly explained his receptiveness to Ondine; and her longer set-piece upon falling to earth was an extraordinary miniature voyage of self-discovery, tentative at first, but concluding with her luxuriating in her body as if it were new-minted.” – Mark Monahan (Telegraph – December 1, 2008) “I often watched Fonteyn in the role and adored her. But Rojo’s reading, so fluent, so easy, so musical and so lustrously drawn in dance, gives the role something even more compelling than did Fonteyn. She recalls – how mysterious – Pavlova, whose image haunted Ashton’s writing for women.”  – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, April 21, 2005) “(As) Ondine, Tamara Rojo is in her element. The role was fashioned for Margot Fonteyn, and Rojo conveys a similar sense of wonder at the world humans inhabit.  Like Fonteyn, she’s both sprite and siren, innocently seductive.” – Jann Parry (Observer, April 24, 2005) Rite of Spring “Tamara Rojo is compelling, with a rare gift for internalising the essence of each ballet. Her performance of The Chosen Maiden registers all the horror and heroism of her sacrificial role.” – Judith Mackrell (Guardian, February 4, 2008) “As the chosen maiden, Tamara Rojo freights each step with meaning, fists railing against her fate. Her grave eyes shine through her mask-like make-up, conveying fear and pride in equal measure; her terrified exhalations of breath, her rapid runs around the stage, the very way she pounds her feet and raises her arms, all reveal the weight of what has befallen her, as the swaying, stamping crowd raises her aloft like a petrified animal.  It is a remarkable performance in a remarkable piece, one that seems as fresh and powerful as the day it was made.”  – Sarah Crompton (Telegraph, April 2, 2008) Manon “But, by any measure, the cast led by Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta was solidly top-flight. As Manon, Rojo captivated from her entrance, with those dark, expressive Audrey Hepburn eyes. A waif of a dancer, she has a certain majesty about her, in her bearing, in the way she swept the Parisian setting with an awed gaze that told us she was not at all ready for the convent her brother, Lescaut, meant to put her in. With her extremely pliant feet — curved like feather quills, a lyrical statement in themselves — and delicate build, she is a bit reminiscent of Gelsey Kirkland. But her physical and technical gifts aside, she was meltingly, touchingly human.” – Sarah Kaufman (Washington Post, June 27, 2009) “As Manon, Tamara Rojo has charisma and superb skills. She has a signature step as the girlish Manon, delicately rising up en pointe and advancing downstage almost in a mince.” – Sally Cragin (Boston Globe, June 16, 2006) “Tamara Rojo puts not a foot wrong, nor a curve of her delicious torso, nor a decorative arabesque of her hands. (How enchantingly these can end a phrase.) She steps from the coach and we are beguiled.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, February 23, 2005) Giselle “She is technically superb, musical, dramatic. Her mad scene achieved a thrilling quality of suspense; her second act was exquisitely fragile, her arabesques showing the pitched forward torso that characterize period lithographs of the ballet.” – Roslyn Sulcas (New York Times, April 29, 2009) “Leading the opening night cast, Rojo sparkled in Act I, her Giselle anxious to be wooed but skittish all the same. Her dancing was a display of classical quality backed by fabulous strength, while her mad scene was a knockout, full-bodied drama from a flesh-and-blood woman.” – Debra Craine (Times, January 13, 2006) Cinderella “Tamara Rojo is playing the heroine with grace, delicious musicality and sweetest technique. Every second shines, lifts the heart, goes to the heart. It is a ravishing interpretation, and reminds us of the beauties of classic dance.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, December 23, 2004) Mayerling “Rojo is an avid, lavish Mary, with a sweeping quality of movement.  In their first pas de deux, she makes straight for the gun on the desk, knowing that this will make her irresistible.” – Zoe Anderson (Independent, March 19, 2004) Goldberg – the Brandstrup-Rojo Project “. . . the performances are riveting – especially that of Rojo, who is as luminous and committed when sitting on the sidelines as she is dancing.” – Judith Mackrell (Guardian, September 23, 2009) “At Goldberg’s heart Rojo is explosively beautiful and utterly compelling with each ravishing step, each deep, striking gesture.” – Debra Craine (Times, September 23, 2009) “Tamara Rojo is a dancer with a unique ability to make the liquid art of movement look like sculpted air. Her arms seem to ripple in response to the music, her legs and highly-arched feet carve the space around them, her body falls perfectly into each changing pose.  But all her physical beauty and skill is as nothing to the air of dramatic intelligence that accompanies her every time she walks onto a stage” – Sarah Crompton (Telegraph, September 22, 2009) Theme and Variations “Tamara Rojo . . . (was) radiant as the ballerina, the music revealed, illuminated in diamond-clear dance.” – Clement Crisp (Financial Times, October 21, 2010) “The evening reached a climax with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, performed in tribute to its originator, the great Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso, who is 90 this year. She was in the theatre to see Tamara Rojo bring a radiant grace and precision to her old role.” – Sarah Cromption (Daily Telegraph, October 21, 2010) “The evening ends with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, a glorious and very difficult tutu ballet. The Royal Ballet gave a handsome performance, led by Tamara Rojo grand and confident.” – Zoë Anderson (Independent, October 19, 2010) JMats Ek’s Carmen “Tamara Rojo’s Carmen is a force of nature, her sexy swagger and siren mystery touched with the innocent gravity of a child.” – Judith Mackrell (Guardian, May 7, 2010) “Rojo is perfect for Mats Ek’s Carmen – with humour and a spirited vigour, smoking a fat cigar, she enthrals and emasculates the men.”  – Gavin Roebuck (Stage, May 6, 2010) “Carmen is a perfect finish, its buffoonish choreography irreverent, unlyrical, but annoyingly effective. Tamara Rojo returns to the role like a little red bundle of sexual gelignite, puffing her big cigars like Kathryn Hunter playing Michael Grade, dominating the men with sheer chutzpah.” – Ismene Brown (The Arts Desk, May 6, 2010) Winter Dreams “Rojo’s superb portrayal as Masha– she inflects her every movement with meaning, and while she lacks Darcey Bussell’s Amazonian jump (which MacMillan exploited in his choreography for her), she surpasses the retired ballerina in dramatic intelligence.” – Gerald Dowler (Classical Source, October 23, 2010) Isadora (MacMillan) “Tamara Rojo as Isadora can finally demonstrate the depth of her dramatic talent: her pas de deux with Paris Singer (a deeply expressive Gary Avis) after the children’s drowning ranks among the most powerful that the choreographer created, a silent scream of grief from start to finish, bodies heavy with anguish, their souls emptied by the shock as they writhe in emotional agony.” – Gerald Dowler (Financial Times, March 13, 2009) “Tamara Rojo proved herself to be an exceptional artist . . . “ – Gavin Roebuck (Stage, March 13, 2009) “One great moment of theatre that survives is Rojo’s grief-blinded stare and crumpled body language after the death of her children. Another is her dancing of Isadora’s revolutionary Marseillaise solo in America.” – Judith Mackrell (Guardian, March 13, 2009) “Tamara Rojo manages to give the sense of her as someone who poured her heart into her body (in life as well as on the stage) and Rojo’s finest moment is Isadora’s worst – the funeral of her two children drowned in the Seine. Here Rojo stumbles off, utterly graceless and, suddenly, hideously old. It’s an outstanding performance.” – Debra Craine (Times, March 13, 2009) Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan (Ashton) “Tamara regaled the audience with a moment of lyricism and fluency, imbued with the spirit of Duncan, dressed just like her, including an echarpe just like the one that led to the death of the legendary dancer (1877-1927).” – Mireya Castañeda (Granma International, November 11, 2010) Asphodel Meadows “We had a superb first cast. Marianela Nunez and Rupert Pennefather, lusciously paired, led the airy, perky first movement; sensuous and passionate. In the slow movement, Tamara Rojo and Bennet Gartside have a fierce edge to their coupling, as if we catch them in the throes of an argument, but it ends in a melting embrace.” – David Dougill (Sunday Times – May 16, 2010) Dances at a Gathering “Tamara Rojo was physical and emotional poetry, seraphically beautiful.” – Mark Monahan (Telegraph, May 19, 2008) “Tamara Rojo and Federico Bonelli offered a blissful pairing.” – Debra Craine (Times, May 21, 2008) Don Quixote “Suffice it to cite the example of the Don Quixote performed by Tamara Rojo and Joel Carreño, to refer to the excellence attained in that exchange, whose best features were not its spectacular pirouettes and fouettés, but its care for style and the novelty which the artists injected into such a well-known piece.” – Roberto Mendez Martinez (Havana Times – August 6, 2009) Romance de Luna “Tamara Rojo brings her impeccable Royal Ballet credentials to Jose Antonio’s duet Romance de Luna, partnered by Corbacho.  Shrouded in white like a spectral bride, Rojo is sublime in her interpretation and adjusts her technique for the unaccustomed high-heeled Spanish dance shoes with professional discretion. It is a fierce and beautiful piece that includes at least one extraordinary lift and elements of Apache dance.” – Neil Norman (Daily Express, April 30, 2010)