Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. Oh, The My castaway this week is the ballerina, writer and broadcaster Deborah Bull.

The Royal Ballet where she was a principal dancer for almost two decades owes a debt of gratitude to the Janice

Sutton School of Dance in Skegness. It was there aged seven, two floors above a fish and

chip shop in a row of amusement arcadesades and having practiced good toes, bad toes,

that she discovered precisely what she wanted to do with her life.

After many years of success at the top of her profession, she said goodbye to her childhood dream and jetted

into her life's next act for a time serving as creative director of the Royal Opera House,

and more recently working far beyond Covent Garden, promoting creativity and cultural partnerships across Britain.

She says, I always thought I'd feel a passionate sense of loss when I stopped dancing.

What was absolutely wonderful was as the

volume turned up on the new career the volume turned down on the old one. So

debable by your own admission ballet leaves an indelible profound mark on a professional

dancer.

I wonder what market's left on you?

I think the market's left is a strong sense of values, values which are derived from repeatedly working on yourself,

on your profession, the sense of discipline, the sense of teamwork, the sense of playing the long game, the sense of learning from failure,

and that constant pushing the boundaries forward whilst respecting the past.

I'm afraid to say that I was a little broad brush in the introduction about the name for what it is you do now.

So you're going to have to enlighten me?

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