Dancer's swansong: Star ballerina on heartache at end of career

For many professional ballet dancers, their journey begins early in childhood. So when Zenaida Yanowsky decided she wanted to become a professional at 14, her mother warned her that because of her age she faced an upward struggle. "She told me, 'You've got to work pretty hard because it's fairly late'."

But Yanowsky put in that hard work and went on to become a prize-winning dancer. She joined the Royal Ballet in 1994 and rose up through the ranks to become one of their Principals for 16 years, receiving a clutch of awards along the way.

Despite retiring in 2017, she was determined to recover from knee surgery and bow out with a final, iconic role. "I'm thinking of the long-term future for me – not only as a dancer, but as a person. I want a knee that can walk up the mountains and can cycle. But for now, in the short term, I want a knee that can perform in a couple of months."

Those performances mark the end of a long process of continual improvement for Yanowsky.

She says: "As a dancer you spend most of your career polishing this really rough stone. You've got this beautiful stone which flickers with the slightest of light. And then you throw it into the river and you walk away."

Yanowsky, who was raised in Spain, comes from a family of dancers. Her parents were professional dancers, as are two of her siblings.

Her mother, Carmen Robles, now runs a dance school in Gran Canaria. And it was that familiar support she sought in her battle to get back to peak fitness, as she had done previously following the birth of her children.

Yanowsky says they quickly slip back into an old pattern: "When I go back to her, I go back into that old stage – she's my teacher and I do whatever she says. She still pushes me to get better. And I'm thinking, 'Mum, I'm retiring!'

That's not to say Carmen's not proud of Yanowsky's many achievements. "She feels that I've gone beyond her achievements and expectations. A parent would like their son or daughter to stand on their shoulders and go further."

The decision to end this acclaimed career has been a tough one, Yanowsky admits. "I think what I'm going to miss is interpreting other people's lives. I will forever now be me, playing me, and not having a break from me."

But she says the physical demands of the professional dancer are harder to meet as you grow older. "It's quite hard to keep up with how you were in your thirties. It's such a hard time because you have so much more knowledge, yet your body cannot perform how you would like it to any more."

How did Yanowsky come to the conclusion to retire? "For me it wasn't just one moment, it was a sequence of moments. There were times when, after a performance, I wasn't that fulfilled any more. The balance between my job and my personal life wasn't quite right and I wasn't enjoying one because the other wasn't in the right place.

"I was, at points, very concerned that I wasn't being a good mother, that I wasn't present enough. I was very concerned in the future they would say, 'You never cared, your job always came first'."

For Zenaida there was really only one choice of dance to bow out with: "I think it's pretty appropriate to finish with something that is called The Dying Swan. It's a very, very small piece and to me it's like the end of a journey.

"It's a metaphor for death and end of something that is quite beautiful and ethereal and make-believe. It's the ideal end for someone's career, whose career has been to make-believe."