A superhero in tights

5 April 2012

When the Royal Ballet launched a new marketing drive earlier this summer, principal dancer Edward Watson was on tour in Texas and had no inkling of the storm of controversy that was about to surround him. "I saw the photograph of my face that they wanted to use on the poster before I left London," he says, "and I thought, great, that's a nice picture. The next thing I know, I'm getting all these phone calls saying I've been branded 'tacky and appalling'! And then this almighty fuss breaks out ..."

It is not, of course, a "tacky" poster at all. The advert in question features Watson's delicately freckled face - his mouth slightly pouting and his eyes smouldering - next to the blurb: "Superhuman. Meet Ed. Fact: When he's dancing, pound for pound, he's stronger than a rhino. Superheroes really do wear tights."

The problem lay in that wording. For the first time, the Royal Ballet was promoting its new season not by stressing the artistry of a particular production or the beauty of an individual dancer (though there was a bit of that), but by emphasising, in defiantly populist terms, the athleticism and "sporting" prowess of a star.

In some senses it was a recruitment poster, too - a message to all those Billy Elliots out there who still find themselves stigmatised for wanting to dance to anything other than pop. Yet the use of layman's terms, the sexiness of the image and the reference to popular culture caused outrage within the snobbishly elite circles that still surround British ballet. And 31-year-old Watson, very much the face of the moment, was held somehow to blame for its "dumbing down".

"The weird thing is," he says now, "I've been photographed in much sexier poses - like, completely naked - and no one's raised an eyebrow. I think it's fine. I think it's a joke. It doesn't take itself too seriously and I really like that. I honestly don't know what all the palaver was about."

If anyone can reinvent ballet's stuffy, exclusive image, then perhaps it's Watson, the unconventional pin-up who stars in the RB's coming season as Romeo in Kenneth MacMillan's ballet of the Shakespeare play. Though I can't think of a dancer who looks less like a rhino. (And no one I ask at the Royal Ballet seems to have the slightest idea how that "fact" - "pound for pound, he's stronger than a rhino" - was worked out.)

"God, I don't know," admits Watson himself, and nods vigorously when I say that it sounds a bit implausible. Compared to, say, the robust, bullish Carlos Acosta, Watson looks positively puny. A redhead, he is all sinew and tight muscle, with precious little bulging brawn. Lifting his leading ladies was once a serious challenge.

"Yeah, that was definitely the last thing that came together for me. I'm a bit, erm, finer, I guess, than the other men - not so well built. A lot of it was to do with confidence, and I worked really hard at it. If you get it wrong, it looks like you're trying really hard and you never want to show that you're struggling. That doesn't work for the girl, clearly."

Watson is hot property partly because he does not fit the orthodox stereotype of a rippling male lead but mostly because of a string of hit performances that have dazzled the critics and confounded his doubters. Questions were asked earlier this year of his ability to play Crown Prince Rudolf in MacMillan's Mayerling, perhaps the most demanding male role in all classical ballet, requiring physical strength, immense stamina and serious acting skills. Yet Watson more than met the challenge in all departments, and in the process proved a range and versatility that, against the odds, has become a kind of calling card. "I feel a bit more confirmed after last season," he agrees. "You get to understand your place in the Royal Ballet a bit more. But I've always had massive doubts about my ability. I've never been one of these very confident people, and I've never been one to hide it. I don't have a poker face. If I'm upset I'll cry, and if I'm angry or scared I'll scream. That's just the way I am.

"Dancing is such a personal thing because people are judging you all the time - and if they don't like me, I find it very hard. Thankfully, they seemed to like me."

For Mayerling, he increased his gym sessions from two to three a week, but "just rehearsing that ballet every day is enough to get you fit - it's like running a marathon in terms of endurance". He does Pilates once a week and watches his diet only in terms of quantity. "I pretty much eat what I like but I don't have massive meals because I feel so lethargic afterwards. Every hour I'll have a snack of some sort. I like feeling that I've got something to burn off all the time. I have a picnic tray in my dressing room during a show, with fruit and sweets and stuff, which the girls always come and nick."

Watson was by no means born to ballet. He admits he must be the only person in the history of the Royal Ballet to a) have failed his Grade One ballet, and b) watched just one live classical ballet before entering the Royal Ballet school at the age of 11.

He grew up in Longfield, near Dartford in Kent, where his mum was a schoolteacher and his dad an architect. When his twin sister, Lizzie, decided, at the age of three, that she wanted ballet lessons at the local dance school across the road, Ed went with her. Initially it was the physical thrill of dancing that hooked him but he was never "desperate" to be a ballet dancer.

"My neighbours over the road took me and my sister to see something once - Giselle, I think - but my own parents weren't ballet-going people at all. They were the very reverse of pushy." He got so nervous during that first exam, at the age of eight, that he forgot what he was doing and fumbled the steps.

Yet just three years later - ironically, on the recommendation of a later examiner - Watson was admitted to the Royal Ballet school at White Lodge in Richmond Park. In those days, White Lodge was an unashamed hot-house and, for someone like Watson, a tough first lesson in the ultra-competitive world of professional dance. "I had no idea what it was going to be like and, actually, it made me very insecure all the time. You get an assessment every year and they can get rid of you whenever they want. It was very competitive, with everyone constantly looking around to see who was better than whom. You put a lot of pressure on yourself so we were all quite wired. It was tense."

Watson was one of only seven, out of 34 girls and boys, to graduate into the Royal Ballet itself; this year there were only two, and last year none at all.

In London, he quickly met Wayne MacGregor, now the RB's resident choreographer and the first to exploit his stand-out physical appearance. Watson-has danced in four MacGregor balletsand the pair work in close collaboration. "I never really know what he wants," he laughs, "but I've seen enough of his stuff to know what it shouldn't look like. He's very patient about making something work on your body; his movement can be very difficult, very articulated, all in the detail."

Watson was made a Royal Ballet principal - the absolute confirmation of talent and effort - in 2004, yet a ballet dancer has precious little real control over his career; and ambition, he says, is more likely to be quashed than fulfilled. "I know it sounds funny but I don't do ambition. I've always been aware that it's the sort of profession you can't plan for yourself because it's so dependent on other people's opinions of what you are and what you can do. You've literally got to wait to be picked. Even the megastars don't always get to dance the roles they really covet."

If the Royal Ballet seems bent on making Watson the public face of the company, he would much rather people knew him for his on-stage presence than his poster-boy looks. "I don't want to be someone who appears in the papers for anything other than my work," he says, looking appalled. "God, I'd hate to be that kind of celebrity slag!" He might be as strong as a rhino, but Watson's hide, like that of most highly-strung ballet dancers, is paper thin.

Royal Ballet's new season at Covent Garden (020 7304 4000) opens on 6 October; Edward Watson performs in Romeo and Juliet on 30 October and 8 & 17 November, and in Jewels later in the season. www.royalopera.org.

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