Sir Anthony Dowell
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.4 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 1998
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet, Sir Anthony Dowell. His future was determined as a child when he stood before Dame Ninette de Valois with his trousers rolled to the knee. It took only a short glance at his legs for her to accept him into the Royal Ballet School. As he grew and developed as a dancer, his talent was spotted and soon the great choreographers Kenneth Macmillan and Frederick Ashton began creating roles for him.
His outstanding technique and dramatic sense inspired generations of dancers. But now, as Director of the Royal Ballet, he fights to keep dance at the top of the arts agenda in the face of much criticism and controversy.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Eight English Dances by London Philharmonic Orchestra Book: Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Luxury: Sketch pad and paints
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:09.1 | The program was originally broadcast in 1998, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a dancer. He knew he wanted to be on the stage from the age of five |
| 0:36.5 | and realized it would be in ballet when he was 11 and stood in front of Ninette de Valwa, |
| 0:42.0 | the founder and director of the Royal Ballet School. |
| 0:44.8 | He became the finest English classical dancer of his generation, performing all the great roles |
| 0:50.1 | with all the great choreographers such as Frederick Ashton and Kenneth McMillan. |
| 0:54.7 | For the last ten years he's been in charge of the company of which he was such a star. |
| 0:59.6 | But in this role the Plaudits have been tempered by a good deal of adverse criticism. |
| 1:04.0 | He thinks it's unfair and shrugs it off. |
| 1:07.0 | We're establishment, he says. We're bound to be bashed. |
| 1:10.0 | He's the director of the Royal Ballet, Sir Anthony Dow. |
| 1:13.4 | It must nevertheless, Anthony, be a very strange experience looking back across your career. |
| 1:17.8 | You know, you have 20 years of being fated as a star and then 10 years of, well brickouts really does it feel like two |
| 1:24.9 | entirely different lives it does actually even when I walk on stage before a show |
| 1:28.9 | and see my own artist getting ready I think I can't I can't believe I did that but do you do you sit there now |
| 1:34.6 | watching your own company on the stage and just ache to be there to be up on the stage I |
| 1:39.5 | miss certain elements of it I don't miss the nerves and the tension I used to feel sick it was like |
| 1:45.7 | execution time yes that never went away it was always no it didn't I was |
| 1:50.8 | sort of given a rather blessed release from it when I had a long injury and I was away from the state for about a year. |
| 1:57.0 | But I knew I wanted to get back to the business, but the actual art performing of being just in charge of yourself and of course I can't get away |
| 2:06.5 | from it the adulation to that I received it's very nice yes well it's not surprising |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.