Benjamin Ella

So my name is Benjamin Ella. I work in the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London. I'm a soloist dancer and I'm in my 17th season with the company.

I spend most of my time dancing!

I spend a lot of my time at work either on stage performing at the, well, it used to be called the Royal Opera House. Now it's the Royal Ballet and Opera in Covent Garden.

We do about 160 shows a year. So most of my time is either on stage dancing in a performance or in the studio rehearsing, which that's probably actually more hours that we spend in the studio rehearsing lots of different ballets.

We do about 12 different programs a year and some of those programs might have multiple ballets. So most of my time is spent either on stage, in the studio, sometimes as well in the physio department or in the gym.

That's where I spend most of my time at work.

The typical day will look like, you know, coming into work around let's say 10 and class would be 10.30 till 11.45. Depending on how tired you are, you might do a full class, you might not do all of the class. And then you have a 15 minute break until midday.

Rehearsals will start at midday. And then it might look something like 12 till 2 would be the first rehearsals, then a lunch break, 2 till 3.

And then from about 3 you'd probably continue rehearsals until about 5.30 p.m. And they could be either big rehearsals or they could even be short, shorter chunks of rehearsals.

And then from 5.30, you'd have a break until 7.30 which is when the show would be in the evening. And so in that break, you're putting your legs up for a moment, you're having some food, you're maybe going over some of the choreography, maybe a little quick nap if you can.

And then of course getting ready for the show, putting makeup on and everything, getting changed, getting warmed up again. And then the show would go from about 7.30 to 10.30. And so it's quite intense.

Obviously it's not every day. If we don't have a show in the evening, we would finish at 6.30. But that's kind of what the average day looks like.

So we work a lot with other dancers. That's probably the main people that we work with in the company.

We also have repetiteurs that will teach us, correct us, train us, maybe encourage us sometimes as well. So we work with a lot of repetiteurs.

We work with choreographers who, you know, were dancers before and now are choreographing ballets. I also choreograph but that's kind of a separate thing.

And who else? We work with pianists, musicians, we work with conductors, we work with choreologists and people that basically will notate the choreography onto paper and they may teach everything in a bit more of a methodical way, whereas the choreographer may be a bit more free in the way they do things.

Of course, we're working with management as well. We're working with, you know, stage crew backstage doing all the things behind the scenes.

But the Opera House in general is a very interesting place where there's so many different things happening but sometimes we don't really cross paths with everyone. But there's a lot of different people that we work with.

And we also have to work with ourselves as well.

The best thing about my job is probably that incredibly magical feeling of, you know, the combination of the story maybe we're telling on the stage, the music with the full orchestra, the kind of tension of the audience there out front, 2,300 people watching.

The lights, the lights, you know, heating you up and there's kind of a pressure but also a beautiful synergy of so many things coming together. You know, you kind of maybe have that nervous, excited feeling and you get to tell stories and move people by your dance really.

And so that's why I fell in love with ballet. That's what I would say is the most incredible part about our job, just the magic of theatre really and storytelling. And of course that exhilarating feeling of dancing.

And we do so many different types of dance, contemporary and classical. So you can have many different experiences on stage.

That's what I would say is that the most incredible thing is just all the different experiences that you can have in that moment of really there's a lot of people watching you and a lot of things happening, a lot of moving parts but it's definitely a magical moment.

The hardest part of our job is all the discipline and training and quite literally blood, sweat and tears that has to go into creating top world-class productions.

There's a lot of injuries and I actually started my career with a serious injury that kept coming back over the first few years. I had to get an operation, had two titanium pins put into my navicular bone in my right foot, to get bone marrow from my hip and put it in there.

So I think the difficulty with that as well is that your identity can get locked up in being a dancer.

And even though probably most dancers will say, you're kind of always a dancer at the same time if you only take your value as who you are as a dancer and then you get injured and then you kind of think, who am I now?

You know, it's tough at the time, although I think it's a good lesson. For me, it was an important lesson to learn that my value is not just who I am as a dancer but that can be a difficult part of being a ballet dancer.

But I think it's really the same with anything. You know, if you want to give your whole heart, it can be difficult not to lose yourself sometimes physically and mentally.

So I think that's probably the hardest part really is it's a kind of, you can't really do it halfway, especially at this level. Yeah, that's probably the hardest thing I'd say.

So I found my way into ballet because, well, funnily enough, my parents were actually ballet dancers themselves. Although they didn't push me into ballet, I wanted to be a tennis player when I was young.

It was actually, when I was a kid I thought, ballet's for girls. I don't want to do that. But funnily enough, I fell in love with it.

And when it was actually because they needed me to do a walking-on role in their production, my parents' production. And I just fell in love with that magical experience of the theatre, the lights, camera, action, music and everything.

And so I slowly started ballet, hesitantly, although I absolutely fell in love with it, especially watching a lot of just role models, really videos of all these incredible male dancers and just seeing how they could do all these virtuoso movements, jumps and tricks.

And I just thought, wow, this is actually really cool. Maybe I'll give this a go. And I became obsessed with it.

So yeah, kind of through my parents, I was always surrounded by it. I think as well that the classical music was always something that really connected to my heart, even before I really wanted to be a ballet dancer.

But then, yeah, then once I got a taste of it, I was hooked.

It's funny education. Maybe it's an ongoing joke but education in the ballet world can be a challenge.

I think because ballet is so intense and it's so all encompassing that education or maybe general education, I would say kind of is put on the back pedal, if that makes sense.

And so I think to be honest, I almost wish I'd focused a bit more on school, but I was so obsessed with ballet that it kind of was in the back of my mind. Education, I think, is something that I'm interested in now, to be honest, in learning. It was definitely not the usual pathway, if that makes sense.

A moment in my career I'll never forget was probably... there's probably a few to be honest but I think a few of the different roles that I've done.

One of them was out playing Albrecht in Giselle, which is one of the top, kind of one of the big ballets. I did the main role. And it was a big deal for me and it was a lot of pressure.

I remember when I first got on the stage, I almost had a bit of stage fright actually. I was like, wow, this is a lot, I don't know what I'm doing. But then I got into it and I got better.

But that was an incredible experience, definitely a highlight for me, especially in the classical side of things.

There's been some other ballets I've done, some contemporary ballets, Solo Echo, which was by Crystal Pite, an incredible choreographer.

Even just working with Crystal Pite in general on Light of Passage as well, which was a ballet about the migrant crisis, like immigration crisis in the world in general and a refugee crisis to be more specific.

It was very touching and moving to be involved in that. And she's just an incredible choreographer.

I think some of those ballets, some of Wayne McGregor's ballets I've been in as well. Again, like that magical experience for me when the music and the movement and everything comes together.

It really just is an incredible experience and something that I'm going to miss actually as I'm about to retire from ballet in three weeks actually.

It's funny because I've been really reflecting on my career as I'm about to retire from ballet.

One of my maybe I could say regrets, but I know everything happened the way it had to happen, is I realised reflecting on my career, I realised that I gave into discouragement too easily.

And I think, you know, in life and in any career, there are always going to be setbacks, there are always going to be challenging moments, but those moments are actually there to help us to grow and there to help us to improve.

And it's not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, it may mean that things don't go the way you thought they were going to go. But ultimately, those setbacks are like a preparation to actually jump even further forward.

And so I think, you know, that's probably one of the things that I wish I didn't give into the discouragement too easily when I had setbacks, injuries, all these things, and almost give up a little bit in my heart, even though I didn't completely give up.

I think if I could give advice to my younger self, it would be: Okay, you're gonna have challenges, just keep going. Don't give up. This is part of the... you trust the process essentially. This is part of the process.