It is a Monday morning in April, and the full dress rehearsal for The Winter’s Tale, the Royal Ballet’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play of love, loss, suspicion and dignity, is about to start. Principal dancer Lauren Cuthbertson, embodying the tragic but stately queen Hermione, is as poised as her alter ego, ethereal in a simple white dress under the soft blue lights of backstage.
"It’s unusual for us to do a dress rehearsal this early," she tells me. The ballet, by the company’s artistic associate Christopher Wheeldon – who originated the three-act narrative piece in 2014 – returns to the Royal Opera House main stage this month. Cuthbertson notes that typically a full-scale rehearsal of this nature (complete with orchestration) would take place the day before, but schedules did not permit.
"To prepare for this, I came in on Sunday, brought along my kids and, with Cesar Corrales (who plays King Leontes) we just ran the whole score in the studio. It wasn’t even a question of if we would," she says, nonplussed. "We didn’t even think of it as a sacrifice. It’s just what you do."
It is this stalwart work ethic that has served Cuthbertson well through a two-decades plus long career, one fraught with injury, chronic illness and a pandemic. She recently proved the dogged determination she has for her craft, getting back on stage following two pregnancies and earning some of the finest reviews of her career. The physical toll ballet takes on a dancer makes her continued resilience and dedication that much more remarkable. Does she not, like so many of us, feel the desire some days to sleep in and not bother?
"Of course!" she says, with a laugh – though one struggles to imagine her coasting at anything. "But the fact is, if you procrastinate doing something in this job, it isn’t actually enjoyable. You have to always give it your all." She compares dancing without this stringent commitment to trying to send an email without internet connection: simply impossible. As for her unwavering psychological motivation, she says that is bolstered by developing a strong connection to whatever character she is playing, and being pulled into an almost total immersion in the world of the ballet she is inhabiting.
"You benefit from attaching a role to reality, so that it takes on a life of its own," she says. "There becomes almost a treadmill that keeps you going until opening night. It becomes so imperative that the idea of getting off that treadmill doesn’t feel right."
Hermione is a particular favourite character of Cuthbertson's. She originated the role with Wheeldon back in 2014 and therefore has a special fondness for it. Contrary to some of the other roles she has initiated, such as the titular Alice in Wheeldon’s Alice in Wonderland, Hermione is not an ingenue but a queen. "It is not a part you can really grow out of," she says. Motherhood is an essential component of Hermione’s story, but having had two daughters since she first inhabited the role has, she says, not altered her interpretation.
"I think everyone is probably hoping I will say that motherhood has fundamentally changed my Hermione, but it really hasn’t," she says, smiling. "I think I have always had a maternal streak, and certainly when I first rehearsed the role, I was spending hours in the studio with a nine-year-old boy playing my son and I just naturally felt very protective of him."
Her connection to Hermione feels, instead, a very instinctual and admiring one. "I think of her as quite a turning point in my career and one of the more inspiring characters I have played," she says. "She is honourable, full of forgiveness and understanding. She is a much more brilliant woman than I could ever aspire to be!"
The characters she plays leave an imprint on Cuthbertson, who admits she can sometimes take a while to disconnect from the worlds of each performance. But ballet itself, its rigour and punishing work schedule, has left the biggest imprint of all.
"Oh, I certainly take that into my everyday life," she agrees. "My boyfriend is always saying, 'You don’t have to run our Saturday like a ballet rehearsal', but I think that’s just how I’m wired. I have taken that work ethic into so many parts of my life."
If anything has changed about her way of working over the years, it is an inner sense of peace. She is one of the most lauded and beloved ballerinas of her generation and, though she is far too mired in humility to admit it, she knows she has nothing really left to prove. Though her pace and hunger for the stage shows no sign of relenting, there is a quiet confidence to her now, which makes that yearning less frantic, and more enjoyable.
"As an artist, I feel more patient; more able to listen to my inner calm and take comfort in everything I've learned through more than two decades of my career at The Royal Ballet," she muses. "It is actually a really interesting experience. I feel quite fulfilled, and therefore, contented. I am still striving; I just don’t hear any extra noise around it anymore."
One look at this titan of the ballet backstage and it is evident. There is no noise around her, only a steely determination that the show must go on. And lucky us that it will.
'The Winter's Tale' runs at The Royal Opera House until 1 June.
