Born in Milan in 1963, Alessandra Ferri was a principal with the Royal Ballet at 19, and two years later was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to join American Ballet Theatre. After a glittering career, she retired in 2007 before returning in 2013. She is now in the rare position of being a leading dancer performing internationally at the age of nearly 60. From next week she is at the Royal Opera House in a revival of Woolf Works, a ballet about the life and writing of Virginia Woolf, created for her in 2015 by Wayne McGregor.
Did you ever expect to still be dancing 10 years after you came back to the stage?
This whole 10 years of afterlife has surprised me. I didn’t plan it and I still don’t know what I’m going to do even six months from now.
