10 March 2008

'I was injured at the time,' says Anniek Soobroy, remembering her victory in the Royal Academy of Dance 2002 Young Dancer Awards. 'I had fractured my ankle in rehearsals, so there was a little uneasiness as to whether I was still going to do it or not.' Needless to say, she went ahead with the competition, taking the top prize.

'It was an amazing surprise as there were a lot of important people there, like David Bintley, and it really got me noticed, and I think helped me in auditioning with Birmingham Royal Ballet.'

Joining the Company had been a long-held ambition of Anniek's. Having enrolled at White Lodge - the lower school of the Royal Ballet School - at just ten years old, she immediately began to supplement her studies by enrolling in summer schools.

'I did every single summer school in Birmingham.' She remembers, 'and it was from doing those and working with the BRB dancers who created choreography for them that I really started to fall in love with the Company. And then I performed with them for Swan Lake and Nutcracker as a student, for about nine or ten weeks, and I really got to know the Company. It always had a name for being really friendly, really close-knitted, and I really liked the style and everything. And I just adored the rep – I immediately thought that for me and my body it really suits me.'

Of course, there was one other obvious factor that drew Anniek to Birmingham Royal Ballet.

'All my family are from the Solihull area,' she explains, 'which obviously affected my decision to come back here. I grew up really around Henley-on-Thames and then moved to London for my schooling, but I've always found round this way really friendly. London was driving me mad a little bit, with the city and everything, so it's been nice to come back to the place where I was born. And my family love it because they're all nearby so they can come to the Hippodrome and support me!'

But while the young dancer has roots in the Midlands, she explains that there was still an element of the unknown. 'When I first joined, it was all kind of new, because I'd been in London for eight years by then, so I knew London like the back of my hand, whereas it had all changed here so it wasn't necessarily that familiar.'

She is obviously glad of the support her family have been able to offer, commenting that 'it must be difficult for the international dancers who have come to the Company from abroad, I don't think I could do that.'

This is not to say that Anniek is shy of travelling, immediately citing recent touring activity as one of the highlights of her career with Birmingham Royal Ballet so far.

'The New York tour stands out, because there were just so many dancers around,' she enthuses, 'it's just like the ballet capital over there. And Japan was amazing, I loved Japan. The best thing was the audiences – standing ovations and people waiting outside for hours for autographs, that was incredible. It was obviously such a big deal to those audiences that we had travelled all the way over there, and there was such a sense of that tour being a really unique event for everyone.'

Closer to home, she has enjoyed the capacity to create new works, including Take Five, in which she is appearing on the current UK tour.

'The making of Take Five would be up there, and working with David so closely. I love the classics, but I love doing new works, and Birmingham Royal Ballet is great for that. That was another thing that brought me here – I wanted to be with a Company where they had a choreographer as a Director as well.

'I just find that all of David's work is so exciting to do on stage. I love the classics, but there's always something that you can find that lets you give that little bit extra with David's choreography. And the atmosphere on stage is always so intense with all his pieces.'

The fact that Take Five is a jazz piece also appealed to Anniek.

'I love the music,' she explains, 'and it's amazing to dance with the jazz band on stage. The orchestra are great too, but there's just something different, and it just brings back so much of what I used to do.'

'As a child, I initially did nearly everything dance-wise that I would possibly do, because I couldn't decide what I enjoyed the most. Ballet was eventually my ultimate favourite, but I also did awards in tap and jazz. I did modern dance, gymnastics and did all of my grades in Spanish – I loved the castanets and the flamenco style – but then had to drop it all to pursue ballet full-time when I went to White Lodge. It was weird, because I was always really into those things as well. But I think it always stays with you, and it's a good job I did all that before coming here considering some of the styles we do at Birmingham Royal Ballet!'

'As soon as I heard we were going to a jazz piece though, I was really excited because that's my thing!' she says. 'There's such a rhythmical beat. Often with an orchestral piece you don't always hear the beat so clearly, but with jazz it somehow goes right through your body.'

'There's just something about it,' she says with a shrug, before revealing she's not the only who feels the rhythm: 'You find that people waiting in the wings are already tapping their feet and bopping along to it, which you don't always find with the classics!'

ENDS