San Francisco Ballet inventive director Tamara Rojo is understood for taking dangers. She says that, aside from Nutcracker, “each time you convey again the identical work, much less individuals will come. You might be cannibalizing your self. In order that’s not likely a long-term technique you can depend on.”
Karolina Kuras
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Karolina Kuras
One of many first issues Tamara Rojo did when she grew to become inventive director of the San Francisco Ballet in 2022 was to fee a serious new work on a highly regarded, very San Francisco matter: AI.
“I wished to be someplace the place the reply is, ‘Let’s attempt,’ relatively than, ‘We have by no means finished it this fashion,'” Rojo advised NPR about her resolution to maneuver to a metropolis identified globally for innovation. Rojo had spent a long time working in the UK, first as a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet and English Nationwide Ballet after which as inventive director and lead principal dancer with the English Nationwide Ballet.
The ballet she commissioned for San Francisco, Mere Mortals, was boundary-pushing on numerous fronts.
San Francisco Ballet’s new work about AI, Mere Mortals, presents a departure for the almost 100-year-old dance establishment.
Chris Hardy/San Francisco Ballet
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Chris Hardy/San Francisco Ballet
The jagged, earthbound motion, grainy electronic-driven soundtrack and pulsating AI-generated visuals of the hour-long ballet, offered a departure for the corporate programmatically. Additionally, Rojo’s choreographer choose, Aszure Barton, was the primary girl ever commissioned to create a full-length work within the San Francisco Ballet’s almost 100-year historical past – in an business the place most new dances are nonetheless created by males.
“What I like about Tamara is that she is defiant in what she believes in,” Barton mentioned on the San Francisco Ballet’s headquarters throughout a break from rehearsing Mere Mortals. “This was an enormous threat for her. It may have failed.”
Ballet generally is a fairly conservative artform, with many firms trundling out Swan Lakes, Nutcrackers, and Cinderellas yr after yr. Each every so often, although, somebody like Rojo comes alongside and really shakes issues up – even when that has meant ruffling tutus within the course of.
Transferring past limits
Rojo’s need to maneuver past accepted limits is a trademark of her profession. “She has extraordinary ambition,” dance author Rachel Howard mentioned.
Rojo was solely 19 when she volunteered to signify her small, Madrid-based dance faculty and firm on the prestigious Paris Worldwide Dance competitors in 1994.
Throughout her years as a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, Tamara Rojo danced many well-known roles together with Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Magnificence. On this 2006 gown rehearsal at The Royal Opera Home, the Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta partnered Rojo as Prince Florimund.
John D. McHugh/AFP/Getty Photographs
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John D. McHugh/AFP/Getty Photographs
“I do not know what occurred, however my hand went up,” Rojo mentioned. “I did not give it some thought. I simply went ‘me!'”
She gained gold, and shortly went on to bounce for the Scottish Nationwide Ballet, the English Nationwide Ballet, and, beginning in 2000, the Royal Ballet.
The ballerina grew to become identified for her consummate method in addition to her capacity to convey emotional depth to roles like Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Magnificence, and Giselle.
“Tragically sensual as one may need,” wrote New York Instances critic John Rockwell in a assessment of Rojo’s efficiency of a duet from Ondine on the Lincoln Heart Competition in 2004.
She additionally one way or the other discovered the time to earn a Ph.D. within the psychology of elite dancers from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid.
“She was really one of many nice worldwide ballet stars of the final 40 years, at the very least,” mentioned Howard.
Daring and success
Rojo has taken that very same boundless ambition from the stage to the inventive director’s chair — making strikes that match daring with success.
Because the English Nationwide Ballet’s inventive director and lead principal dancer from 2012 to 2022, she helped remodel the corporate into a global dance powerhouse, largely by her radical strategy to programming. Rojo’s efforts included bringing ballet to the Glastonbury Competition for the primary time within the occasion’s historical past, and commissioning an Indian Kathak dance-infused reimagining of the beloved basic Giselle from choreographer Akram Kahn.
She additionally managed to maintain the corporate financially afloat by providing up crowd-pleasing fare like The Nutcracker and a “swashbuckling romp” of a manufacturing of Le Corsaire, and oversaw its transfer from a cramped constructing within the “outdated cash” South Kensington neighborhood of London to sprawling new studios in hip Canning City.
Akram Khan and Tamara Rojo, pictured in London in 2013, have change into frequent collaborators.
Tim P. Whitby/Getty Photographs
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Tim P. Whitby/Getty Photographs
Sitting in her workplace on the San Francisco Ballet in dressy white sweatpants and an extravagantly ruffled blue shirt, the Spanish native, who turns 52 on Sunday, mentioned the survival of her artform relies upon, at the very least partially, on risk-taking.
“Aside from Nutcracker — which is that this fabulous factor that retains us all alive — each time you convey again the identical work, much less individuals will come,” Rojo mentioned. “You might be cannibalizing your self. In order that’s not likely a long-term technique you can depend on.”
A threat pays off
The dangers Rojo has taken with Mere Mortals appear to be paying off.
The manufacturing was just lately remounted in San Francisco (it premiered in 2024), and also will be seen by audiences on the Edinburgh Worldwide Competition and Sadler’s Wells in London this summer season. In line with the corporate, it has introduced in tens of millions of {dollars} in ticket gross sales and drawn crowds of first-time ticket-buyers to the San Francisco Ballet.
A scene that includes dancer Wei Wang in San Francisco Ballet’s Mere Mortals.
Chris Hardy/San Francisco Ballet
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Chris Hardy/San Francisco Ballet
Lots of them have caught round for the post-performance DJ events. These are a part of Rojo’s ongoing need to open issues up by turning the corporate’s foyer right into a friendlier house involving collaborations with native cultural teams and artists.
“We now have this platform. We do not have to be a gatekeeper. That is really dangerous for the humanities,” Rojo mentioned. “And so who else can we invite to be a part of our actions?”
Maybe most significantly for the corporate, Mere Mortals impressed a whopping, $60 million reward from an nameless donor — one of many largest ever given to an American ballet firm. This windfall is especially earmarked to fund new work. Barton, the choreographer, mentioned she remembers when Rojo invited the donor into the rehearsal room.
“She’s very convincing when she believes in one thing,” Barton mentioned. “If I had the means, I’d give it to her too.”
A distinction of imaginative and prescient?
However not everyone seems to be on board with the modifications she’s made and her management type.
In 2018, throughout her time main the English Nationwide Ballet, the U.Okay. publication The Instances quoted a bunch of unnamed dancers who it mentioned had accused Rojo of perpetuating a tradition of intimidation and downplaying damage. These dancers additionally objected to her romantic relationship with one in every of her firm’s lead dancers, Isaac Hernandez, who moved along with her to the San Francisco Ballet. They’ve a son collectively, however have since separated. NPR has not independently confirmed the allegations.
Tamara Rojo and affiliate inventive director Antonio Castilla observing rehearsal for the San Francisco Ballet’s latest manufacturing of Don Quixote.
Lindsey Rallo/San Francisco Ballet
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Lindsey Rallo/San Francisco Ballet
In a 2018 assertion, English Nationwide Ballet mentioned the corporate had labored with Rojo “from the begin to implement enhancements throughout the corporate,” together with higher entry to medical care, extra coaching for managers and a brand new constructing. Arts Council England, which funds and helps the humanities throughout that nation, mentioned on the time it was happy with the brand new insurance policies and processes put into place; English Nationwide Ballet mentioned it labored with “unions and employees to make sure that suggestions was heard and considerations have been addressed. Requested concerning the allegations this week, the ballet advised NPR that “No formal grievances have been substantiated.”
Trying again, Rojo says that it was difficult to discover ways to be a supervisor whereas nonetheless dancing, and to make modifications in an business the place administration is so male-dominated. A 2025 report from the Dance Information Mission revealed of the 217 inventive administrators main classically based mostly dance firms within the U.S. and internationally, 30% are girls, whereas 70% are males.
“I got here in very robust and really quick,” Rojo mentioned. “And that, mixed with ‘Ladies that succeed should be put of their place,’ was very tough.”
Tamara Rojo and Isaac Hernandez in London, 2016.
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Chris Jackson/Getty Photographs
It is exhausting to say if comparable disagreements over management occurred when she took over San Francisco Ballet. A handful of high-profile firm members have left, together with Hernandez. The dancers declined to remark. San Francisco Ballet mentioned the variety of roster modifications is much like the quantity earlier than her tenure.
“Not all people’s going to agree with my imaginative and prescient,” Rojo mentioned.
Some San Francisco Ballet dancers concur.
“Like all management change, typically individuals really feel aligned with it and typically not,” mentioned principal dancer Sasha De Sola. “The function of an inventive director is to convey their inventive imaginative and prescient and proceed to construct.”
Cultivating dance leaders of the longer term
A part of Rojo’s inventive imaginative and prescient is an uncommon, new two-year program geared toward figuring out and coaching the subsequent era of dance leaders whereas they proceed to carry out on stage. De Sola is a participant.
“Many occasions you are required to nearly wait till the top of your [ballet] profession to have the ability to pursue this stuff,” De Sola mentioned. “And I really feel grateful that I have been capable of do these in tandem.”
Rojo mentioned she believes ballet dancers are able to being nice leaders in the event that they’re taught how one can do it. “You simply must have a imaginative and prescient that’s particular and related to the establishment that you simply need to direct and that’s financially sustainable,” she mentioned. “And also you additionally must make nice artwork.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for broadcast and internet.
