Instead of the circus, Peter Wright ran away to join the ballet. At 16, he was a student at Bedales boarding school in Hampshire, but was desperate to train to be a dancer, something his disapproving father had no truck with. Wright and a friend absconded to chase their dreams. Their great escape ended in a police cell after they slept in a field for two nights, but the breakout was enough to show Wright’s father just how serious he was about wanting to dance: within the year he was apprenticed to the choreographer Kurt Jooss and at the beginning of an illustrious career.
Now 98, he has been a dancer, company director and choreographer, and there are few people who have seen the ins and outs of British ballet up close for as long as Sir Peter has, and who are still playing a part in it. His productions of the major ballet classics – Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Coppélia – are still regularly staged around the world, especially his Nutcracker, which Birmingham Royal Ballet, the company he established in 1990, is dancing this Christmas.
