06 September 2008

Kristen McGarrity joined Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2005, having trained for eight years at the Royal Ballet School. Looking back at her decision to move down south from her native Glasgow, she reveals, 'being at such a young age, 11, you don't really realise the enormity of the decision that you've made. The move was massive for me I was really very, very homesick for three years at least.'

No-one else in her family had ever danced before, but her parents gave their backing to Kristen's decision. 'Allowing me to move away at the age of 11 can't have been easy,' she says, 'but they were very supportive. They drove down to London every single weekend for the first six weeks of my first term because I was just so homesick,' she recalls, now laughing at the memory. 'But you know on the plus side I did enjoy the regime and working hard, and obviously the training that you get there is excellent, there's such a high standard. So I don't have any regrets, and I think I've come out the other end a stronger person that's for sure!'

Her position with Birmingham Royal Ballet also reduces the distance between her and her family. 'Moving up to Birmingham means I'm just that little bit closer to home!' she agrees, 'And it's nice that we go biannually to Edinburgh.' Looking forward to this autumn's visit to the Festival Theatre, she smiles; 'I'm sure out front will be full of my family - a bus load through from Glasgow!'

Joining Birmingham Royal Ballet naturally brought with it the new challenges of life as a professional dancer. 'I suppose there were two things that hit me the most when I first joined', she considers. 'First was the pace of rehearsal time; at school rehearsing two or three pieces of rep might be a full year of work, but obviously here we're rehearsing up to two or three pieces of rep within two or three weeks. That was a huge adjustment to make.'

'Secondly just the number of performances. Performing at school, we were literally working up to a couple of shows at the end of year, so obviously you don't become accustomed to actually having such large amounts of time onstage. That was definitely a big adjustment, you know doing, what; six, seven, sometimes even 11 shows over a week, especially with Nutcracker, but I thoroughly enjoy being on stage and that's really where I get my adrenalin from - the thrill is definitely the performance!

The autumn season is a particularly busy one, with an opening fortnight in Birmingham before dates at six different tour venues. Like the rest of the dancers, Kristen is juggling rehearsals with the task of getting back into shape after the five-week summer break. She reveals the scale of the task:

'Especially if you take the full five weeks off, it can be a lot to recover from', she says. 'I always remember one of my teachers at school, Miss Linton, telling me that Margot Fonteyn always used to say that for every week you took off it took you two weeks to recover. I can understand where she was coming from because you're performing at such an elite level that as soon as you take any time off it's a huge leap to try and come back again. Obviously the muscle memory does come back swiftly, but that physical adjustment is quite a change.'

'There's the whole artist/athlete aspect to consider, because we do effectively train like athletes. It's a big bonus having the Jerwood Centre here because not every company has the facilities that we do.

'It's much harder going on tour, not having that base,' she admits. Touring also brings with is additional concerns, as Kristen reveals. 'You can be performing one week on a really hard stage, and the next on completely different surface,' she says, 'and the body has got to adjust a lot. But then because we are a touring company, I think that you do start to adjust to that regular change.'

The process of preparation is well under way, but even at this busy time Kristen incredibly still wants to be doing more.

'I have actually been thinking recently about studying something else on the side', she reveals. 'Obviously your brain's active picking up steps in the classroom and such, but I feel that having that academic focus is missing a bit in my life. I'm quite interested in sports psychology, and I might actually be taking psychology through OU this season. Sports Psychology interests me a lot and also physiotherapy, so those are two avenues that I think I would pursue.'

'It does seem a bit like: 'how can you fit something else into that time?!', but I think you can make the time if you want to', she says. 'I've found especially on tour, because we do go to the some now familiar places within the UK, you're not itching to go out and explore a new city every time. So you do have a few spare moments - even if it's just a half hour here and there between shows to pick up a magazine - and it would be nice to pick up a book and read something a bit more informative!'

ENDS