The dancer everyone wants to see: Natalia Osipova

Natalia Osipova’s first year as the Royal Ballet’s star import has made the tiny Russian famed for her giant leaps the company’s hottest ticket. She talks to Lyndsey Winship about the passion of dancing, her ex, and how Carlos Acosta holds her
Raw emotion: Natalia Osipova in the Royal Ballet’s Connectome earlier this year
Lyndsey Winship17 October 2014

A year ago Natalia Osipova upped sticks from Moscow and moved to London to join the Royal Ballet. Lauded for her stellar technique and onstage intensity, Osipova instantly turns up the wattage in any production: she can have audiences gasping at her virtuosity and weeping at her vivid emotions within the space of one solo. The Russian might just be the most exciting dancer in the world today — and she’s right here, dancing for us.

“I love the energy of London; it’s my city,” says the tiny 28-year-old, famed for her giant leaps. “It’s taken a year for me to settle. I’m used to living with my parents; here I’m totally independent. For the first time I feel like I’m starting to live my own life.”

Chiming with her new-found independence, Osipova is keen to take on more mature roles. One of the draws of the Royal Ballet was the chance to dance the work of celebrated British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, known for his meaty psychological dramas.

Osipova currently stars as Manon — a gold-digging woman who betrays her true love and soon regrets it — as part of the show’s 40th-anniversary run.

Insiders hint that Osipova felt pressured after being parachuted in as a Principal dancer for the company with such fanfare last year. She insists it has been a smoother transition than she anticipated. Her English is improving, but she still chooses to speak through a translator, talking in fast phrases, her dainty features seemingly very serious then suddenly bursting into a gummy grin.

She has come straight from rehearsal when we meet, dressed in dancers’ layers — long lace sleeves, knitted jumpsuit, a silver crucifix around her neck. She lobs her leg up on the table and rubs her knee, wincing. Over the weekend she picked up a minor injury during a guest appearance at Milan’s La Scala but it’s all part of the job. (As is the constant international travel; she flies back to Milan for one performance this week.)

Her move to London took many by surprise, but she’s no stranger to bold moves. She and her then-partner Ivan Vasiliev caused a stir in 2011 when they left the Bolshoi Ballet for the

lesser-ranked Mikhailovsky. In Russia especially, the Bolshoi is virtually a divine institution.

The couple have since split, and Vasiliev has joined American Ballet Theatre, but it’s amicable and they recently danced together as guests at the Coliseum,

Covent Garden’s rival dance house, in a contemporary programme, Solo for Two. Osipova has only good things to say about her ex but admits she was upset by the coverage of the split. “It’s just gossip,” she says, exasperated. She no longer discusses her private life.

In person, she doesn’t carry the intensity she brings on stage. While it’s the big jumps that get jaws dropping, the thing that really makes Osipova stand out is her raw emotion. In Giselle she gave a haunting performance of a woman heartbroken to the point of madness, a thing possessed. In the ultra-modern Tetractys she gave a new dimension to Wayne McGregor’s

choreography, standing out as the one fiery, burning personality on a stage of coolly straight-faced dancers. (Perhaps too passionate, she got concussion in one performance clashing heads with another dancer.)

“On stage I have a lot of emotion,” she says. “I’m so strong and have so much energy that at times I start to shake. When I was younger I didn’t know what to do with it but I’ve learnt how to use it.” Maturity has mellowed her, she says. “My friends used to call me ‘crazy’ but now I’m calmer. Maybe because I don’t have anyone to be emotional with...” This is where I have to ask if she is talking about a boyfriend but her “no private life” policy holds firm.

So all that passion on stage, is it real or just great acting? “When I’m on stage, it’s real,” she says. “When I was learning Giselle it was a difficult time in my

private life and so the role became very personal,” she says, adding that it’s not one she wants to repeat for a while because, “I don’t have anything else to add.”

She believes that it’s in great partnerships that ballet reaches its most sublime. She raves about her Royal Ballet partners, especially Carlos Acosta, the one who makes her feel most secure — “it’s the way he holds you”. But she feels the closest affinity with shape-shifting English principal Edward Watson: “We are the same. He’s an emotional person too; he is ordinary but also extraordinary.”

She danced Sleeping Beauty with the Canadian Matthew Golding, who says Osipova is the hardest-working person in the building, busy in the studio even when everyone else has knocked off. Now she’s exploring contemporary dance. “I think it suits my body,” she says, but that doesn’t mean it comes easily. Working with Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin on Solo for Two, she thought his style of movement was going to “break my legs” but she was determined to master it.

Where does all that drive come from? “You have to begin when I was young,” she says. “I didn’t have the perfect body to be a dancer so I had to work twice as hard.” She drilled her “imperfect” body — meaning she’s 5ft 5in and her legs aren’t quite as long as the “ideal” and her turnout not quite as natural — and the habit continued.

Even when you’re one of the best in the world, it can still take time to tune in to new movement, especially coming from Russia and adjusting to the less bombastic English style. “I go into a rehearsal and I know people are looking at me thinking ‘Really? Her? She’s supposed to be …?’ Because it doesn’t look right.” But a couple of days’ hard graft and she knows she can nail it.

Osipova is enjoying British life, if not British food. “I don’t like the cuisine,” she says, bluntly. “What about a Sunday roast?” I ask, then hear the translator say the word “gravy” and they both erupt in giggles. Not fans, apparently. But she has found a place to buy her favourite comfort food, the Russian sausage kolbasa, so now London really feels like home.

Natalia Osipova performs in Manon at the Royal Opera House, WC2 (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk) on Oct 25.

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