I used to be really apologetic, like, I’m sorry for breathing, for being here, shall I go in the corner … ” says Joseph Sissens, acting flustered and describing himself as a young dancer when he first joined the Royal Ballet. But over the last eight years, the change has been dramatic. Now, he says, “this weird animal has kind of come out on stage”.
He talks about creating Wayne McGregor’s piece Untitled 2023, being in “a state of complete and utter instinct. Weird stuff just comes out. I can be my oddness.” There was a duet with the dancer Leo Dixon, where Sissens was imagining what would happen if he were an alien falling in love with a human. “Leo’s arm was just there, and randomly in a rehearsal I just bit him,” he giggles and mimes nuzzling and chomping on a forearm. It was a move that made it into the final piece.
In this wide-smiling 26-year-old, sitting backstage at the Royal Opera House laughing and effusively telling stories with his whole body, there’s little trace of the shy boy Sissens describes to me, a child of few words who would watch his sister’s ballet class through the hatch from the kitchen of a church hall and dance along. The teacher soon clocked him and asked him to join them, and when he started dancing, he says, “the personality just fell out, and it was like: Well, this is Joe. Joe is a dancer.”
He certainly is and, newly promoted to principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, he’s one of the best in the country. Sissens is one of those performers who is very visible, always seeming to be chosen for new creations and by visiting choreographers – this season he’s in McGregor’s new piece MaddAddam, based on Margaret Atwood’s novels, and is a standout in Crystal Pite’s The Statement. He’s demonstrated his fine classical line and perfectly balletic feet as Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake and other leading roles, but is one of the most convincing dancers in more modern styles too, such as the hip-hop-influenced work of Joseph Toonga.
Sissens has also been visible as an articulate, switched-on person, gently pushing at, and overtly challenging, some of the underlying racism that has been long embedded in ballet culture and institutions. The reason we’re chatting today is because Sissens (whose heritage is Anglo-Jamaican) is co-creating an event called Legacy at the Royal Opera House in London, a gala performance “celebrating Black and Brown excellence”. He had the idea a few years back and took it to the Royal Ballet’s artistic director, Kevin O’Hare, and now here he is putting together the final programme with guests from major UK and international companies, including New York’s Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, all dancing excerpts from the classical rep plus two new short commissions.
“I call it a kaleidoscope of love,” says Sissens. He describes inviting the kind of dancers who, “when I’m having a hard day, are the people whose clips I go and watch to be inspired. If you have little microaggressions during the day and then you look at a clip of, say, Nikisha Fogo [from San Francisco Ballet] doing her absolute best, it reminds you: ‘OK, keep going. She can do this, I can do this.’”
In Legacy, Sissens wants to create an event where the dancers can come and put down “some of the baggage, some of the bricks they might be carrying, and just relax for a second and be themselves”. That means things like making sure there’s someone who can work with afro hair, for example, and who can braid and deal with dreadlocks. Historically, hair that doesn’t conform to slick/straight European norms has often been seen as “difficult” or “inappropriate” in ballet, but in recent years Sissens has been changing expectations, wearing his hair in braids or locs on stage. And when he danced the Prince in The Nutcracker, who always wears a silver wig, a wig was made for him with cornrows. It’s a small but seismic change. “I’m not, like, blowing up ballet,” he says. “I’m just saying you have to understand its roots” – in the 17th- and 18th-century European courts – “and what that means for the people within it now, in order to contextualise it.”
Sissens didn’t set out to be an activist but, as he puts it: “I’m one of six dancers of colour in the Royal Ballet. If no one else is going to do it, it has to be me.” When he came back to work after the Covid lockdowns, and after the murder of George Floyd, he was angry. “The anger was kind of consuming me,” he says, but that later turned into resolve, to speak out and to make change in his corner of the world. He’s spoken honestly in public discussions at the Royal Opera House (“I’ve definitely spilled my guts”) but with Legacy, he says, the tone is celebratory. “No trauma, yeah. My blackness isn’t just pain, it’s beauty.”
Especially now he’s a principal, he feels a responsibility to look out for younger dancers of colour coming up in the industry. There’s a moving moment in one of those public events, which you can watch online, where he addresses the young dancer Marianna Tsembenhoi: “You see someone with a similar experience and you take care of them” he tells her. “Our community is so beautiful. We got you.”
It can be a rarefied world, the upper echelons of an institution such as the Royal Ballet, but it’s clear Sissens hasn’t lived in a ballet bubble. “Dance is my safe place,” he says, discovered when he was living with his mum and four siblings in a village in Hertfordshire. At eight his talent was spotted and he was offered a scholarship to Tring Park performing arts school. He lived between two worlds. Home was a council house, while the school was based in a mansion formerly owned by the Rothschild banking family, which Sissens describes as like being at Hogwarts, complete with secret doors into the library.
“I’d be in this world of gross privilege, and then on a weekend I’d visit my brother in prison,” he says. “There was no middle ground: ultimate privilege or the hardships of real, real life, that being in the Harry Potter School of Dance can’t protect you from. I hadn’t got the adult brain yet in order to figure it out: ‘OK, now I’ve got a sniffer dog sniffing me. Tomorrow I’m going up to English National Ballet to be Fritz in The Nutcracker.’”
He mentions that, in the future, he’d like to do something to support vulnerable children, or perhaps start a foundation for victims of domestic violence, something that has touched his life. But his focus now is very firmly on dance, where he’s soaring. What kind of dancer does he think he is? “Sensitive,” he says straight away. “Very emotional. I find it hard not to give everything. I can feel everything – it’s annoying how much I can feel things.” He finds it hard to dance unless he truly believes in what he’s doing, but when he does: “I’m the type of dancer that loves to completely and utterly embody that for three hours on stage.”
And in terms of the roles he longs to dance: “I dream, dream, dream of being Romeo,” he says. You don’t doubt that wish will come true. His mum always told him he was headstrong, he tells me. If he got something in his head that he wanted, it would happen. This is a dancer who worked hard, but also knows how lucky he is to have landed here and he’s going to make the most of it. “I want to push my body as far as it goes,” he says. “I want to push my mind as far as it goes. I never want to feel like I didn’t absolutely exploit the hell out of it all,” he beams, ready to take a great big bite out of this dancing life.
Legacy is at the Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House, London, 29 to 31 October.
