Ep. 44: Zenaida Yanowsky

*All Talking Classical podcasts formerly on SoundCloud redirected to Anchor.* Welcome back to another episode of the Talking Classical Podcast! We're slightly moving away from the classical music world and exploring the wonderful world of dance and ballet, as in today's podcast, we'll be "zooming in" with former Principal Dancer of The Royal Ballet, Zenaida Yanowsky. Zenaida enjoyed a distinguished career for over twenty years as a dancer with London's Royal Ballet Company. She performed iconic roles such as Odette/Odile (Swan Lake), Manon and her infamous, "viral" creation as the Queen of Hearts in Christopher Wheeldon's modern classic 'Alice in Wonderland' (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), premiered at London's Royal Opera House in 2011. Retiring in 2017, Zenaida now teaches and coaches dancers around the world. During this summer, I had the pleasure of talking to her partner on the podcast, renowned British baritone Sir Simon Keenlyside (https://soundcloud.com/talkingclassicalpodcast/ep-35-sir-simon-keenlyside) so I thought that it would be interesting to hear from his other half, as two performers at the highest level in the classical arts. In this podcast, we talk about Zenaida’s journey into dance and ballet, her career highlights in The Royal Ballet, including the creation of new characters/works, the relationship between dancers, conductors and live musicians, and the situation of the arts in the current coronavirus pandemic. Many thanks to Zenaida for taking the time out of her busy schedule to talk to me! Interview recorded 8 September 2020; podcast published 7 December 2020. Zenaida's bio: http://www.roh.org.uk/people/zenaida-yanowsky. Music used in this podcast: Music by audionautix.com. "Alla What (parody)," Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com. Used in full and edited forms for the podcast. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake (Op. 20), Introduction to Act 1. Jules Massenet, Don Quichotte, Introduction to Act One. Both extracts sourced from the European Archive via Musopen (tracks licensed under the Creative Common License Public Domain Mark 1.0). Link to the discussion with Sir David Bintley I referred to in this podcast: Off Pointe (Birmingham Royal Ballet's podcast), Episode 1 - David Bintley and the Will Mossops of Hobson's Choice. https://pod.co/brb-off-pointe/episode-1-david-bintley-and-the-will-mossops-of-hobsons-choice.