<img src="http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1285000/images/_1285526_ballet300.jpg" alt="" />
<small>Alina Cojocaru</small>

Tiny steps and giant strides
Interview: Alina Cojocaru may be one of the Royal Ballet's smallest members but she is also the next big thing. Debra Craine meets the rising star for The Times.


YOU NEVER KNOW where it’s going to come from. That sudden explosion of talent, that spark that lights up an art form. In the case of British ballet, it came from Ceausescu’s Romania, one of the grimmest spots in the Eastern bloc. On the day in December 1989 when Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were put up against the wall and shot, an eight-year-old girl was outside Bucharest in a gymnastics training camp. Less than 12 years later, that girl was the toast of Covent Garden, freshly promoted to a principal with the Royal Ballet at the tender age of 19.
Alina Cojocaru’s life has been remarkable. From Bucharest to Kiev, where she trained at the state ballet school; then seesawing between Kiev and London until finally, in 1999, arriving in the corps de ballet at Covent Garden.

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<small>[ 03 June 2003, 11:49 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Swanderful . . .
At the age of 21, the Royal Ballet's Alina Cojocaru is already being called a once- in-a-lifetime ballerina. As she prepares to dance Swan Lake, she talks to Ismene Brown in The Daily Telegraph.

....it shocks the audience to find that this apparent child performs like a woman of immense experience. It has been faintly indecent to watch her in Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling in the past fortnight, playing a rampaging 17-year-old who makes a suicide pact with Crown Prince Rudolf, and dances some of the most lubricious-looking pas de deux ever created.

....How can she believe in a character as bad as Mary Vetsera, this empty-hearted schemer who will do anything for celebrity - even kill herself? "Well, I think she is obsessed with sex and she is obsessed with him," replies Cojocaru. She says Lynn Seymour, the great ballerina who originated the part in 1978, kept shouting, "Don't love him" as she rehearsed it.

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<small>[ 11-16-2002, 03:00: Message edited by: PressUK ]</small>

Lush and expansive, she dances by instinct
By Allen Robertson for The Times


THE Romanian Alina Cojocaru, 22, is the Royal Ballet’s youngest principal dancer, but she is already scaling the heights of the truly great.
Tiny and delicate, she is capable of dancing with a lush expansiveness. Earlier this month, when she made her debut in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, Debra Craine, The Times dance critic, wrote: “Cojocaru’s dancing is lovely around the edges and pure fire at the core.”

Her partner on that occasion was Johan Kobborg. “They take chances with their dancing,” said Craine, who described the energies of their partnership as “tremendously exciting . . . and daring to push the boundaries beyond safe limits.”

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Interesting - this article states that provided Cojocaru remains injury free....and she is in fact injured and will not be performing in Romeo and Juliet, which is a tragedy for her fans - if you select a Juliet, to find a different cast can be a huge disappointment. She will, however, be replaced by Mara Galeazzi and if she dances Juliet with the verve of Tatiana, we'e in for a treat.

I have heard rumours of how Ms Cojocaru became injured - accident on stage - but I do not know the official story - anyone?

I have seen Mara as Juliet and she gets a lot of emotion out of the role. Well worth seeing.

Emma-
Go to the UK Performance Thread - Royal Ballet Manon 2003 for the link to the Cojocaru injury. A really amazing story.