Leanne Benjamin grew up in rural Australia but became one of the brightest stars of the Royal Ballet. She tells Gillian Spickernell about her stellar career
Leanne Benjamin may not be a household name like Darcey Bussell or a judge on Strictly like fellow Australian, Craig Revel-Horwood, but just like them, she has had a stellar dance career.
A principal dancer with the Royal Ballet for 20 years, Benjamin came from Australia to Britain at the tender age of 16 and, as she puts it in typically blunt terms, was ‘like a horse at the gate before the race, desperate to begin my dancing career’.
Now, at 57, she has written her autobiography, Built for Ballet, in collaboration with writer, theatre critic and broadcaster Sarah Crompton. It’s a highly readable account of the supreme talent and drive which catapulted her from the small city of Rockhampton in Queensland to London and one of the most highly-regarded dance companies in the world.
Her book starts in the present, with Benjamin stepping through the stage door of the Royal Opera House to coach a new generation of dancers. It then springs back to her sun-soaked childhood of riding bikes, jumping on pogo sticks, running on the beach and generally having fun.
One of four siblings, Benjamin’s grandad nicknamed her ‘Mischief’. She credits her love of dance to her family’s love of music, as well as her mother’s ‘fantastic rhythm’, which she inherited.
The transition to the damp and dreary British climate was not easy. ‘I didn’t like London at all,’ she confesses. But she knew that ballet was what she wanted to do.
Benjamin won two prestigious international ballet competitions – the Adeline Genée Gold Medal at 16 and the Prix de Lausanne a year later. She joined Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and was promoted to principal in 1987. Then there were stints with the London Festival Ballet and the Deutsche Oper Ballet. After 10 whirlwind years she returned to the Royal Ballet for what turned out to be another 20 years. Her athletic performances wowed audiences and garnered many fans.
Benjamin sits between two eras of dance history. She is from a generation with direct links to the founder of the Royal Ballet, Dame Ninette de Valois, the director Sir Frederick Ashton and legendary dancers Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. But in the latter half of her career she worked with a new generation of choreographers that included Wayne MacGregor and William Forsythe, a challenge she clearly relished.
She also brought a typically Australian freshness and honesty to an industry that can be notoriously traditional and hidebound. She talks about the ‘pink tights syndrome’ of the ballet world – where polite, quiet dancers simply perform the steps a choreographer or teacher prescribes.
‘Everybody has more agency now,’ she enthuses. A new generation is encouraged to speak up and get involved with the whole creative process – not simply to discuss tempo with the conductor.
The choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan also made a great impression on her. ‘Being in the dance studio with him was so different from being an interpreter of dance. He would ask how I felt, and we would try things – it was just such an interesting process. He allowed me to have a voice.’
It was while performing one of MacMillan’s ballets, The Judas Tree, that she met her husband, Tobias.
She was in New York for a shoot with the dance photographer Roy Round. There was a male assistant in the studio who Benjamin, feeling self-conscious in her skimpy leotard, peremptorily asked to leave. In fact, he was the son of Round and the ballerina Georgina Parkinson.
Months later, after the photos were published, they went out to dinner and got on like a house on fire. They got
married in 2001. Approaching her late-30s Benjamin took stock and thought about other ambitions – motherhood was still an option. She suffered the torment of a miscarriage – ‘one of the worst things to happen psychologically’ – before finally giving birth to her son, Thomas, who is now 18 and studying at London University.
She looks back on her younger self leaving Australia with just a suitcase and compares it with her son recently leaving home. ‘The day he left I was literally on the pavement crying, and he was only going down the road!’ she laughs.
Benjamin’s final performance at the Royal Opera House was as Mary Vetsera in Mayerling in 2013, reprising her first role with the company. She was 49 – old in dance terms – but she knew it was time to quit.
Does she miss being on stage and putting on pointe shoes? ‘I dropped the mic as soon as I finished my last show. That was literally the last time I had a pair of ballet shoes on,’ she says with candour.
She turned to coaching a younger generation, which she loves. One thing she instils in her students is that it can be better to embrace the dance and enjoy it, rather than endlessly picking at details. ‘I’ve realised that perfection is often overrated,’ she says.
Benjamin has no desire to feature on the plethora of reality shows that attract millions of dance fans and would no doubt lead to more fame and fortune. Since retiring she has studied architectural design and is vice-chair of the governors of the Royal Ballet, as well as a patron of the Tate Memorial Trust. She was awarded an OBE in 2005 and appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2015.
Life, she says, has always been about more than tutus and adulation.
‘I always thought my personality was too big for ballet,’ she confesses, bursting into hoots of laughter.
Leanne Benjamin's autobiography Leanne Benjamin: Built For Ballet, published by Melbourne Books, is on sale now, price £35.
