Dominic Antonucci

'I grew up in a really small town in Ohio,' remembers Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal Dominic Antonucci. 'My two sisters and my older brother were getting into trouble, and my mother wanted to give them something constructive to do. She enrolled them in dance lessons, and though I was fairly well behaved and active already, I followed them there. They did one lesson and I stayed. I was six years old, and I've been at it ever since.'

Having joined the Company in 1994 (in the final year of Sir Peter Wright's leadership) Dominic has risen to the position of Principal. He has performed most of the Company's repertory, creating numerous roles in new works and becoming what David Bintley describes as 'a hugely versatile performer', with a 'strong masculine presence'. But he still suffered from negative preconceptions when he first began his career.

'I think it was completely alien to any of the boys at my school – most couldn't fathom that you would do ballet, you wouldn't even think of it. I was fairly talented at baseball too, and I remember very vividly the argument that my mother and father had about which I was going to do.'

The fact that few people in the surrounding area knew anything about dance proved to be excatly its appeal, however. 'Like girls with ballet, every young American boy wants to play baseball, so I was a dime a dozen really,' Dominic explains, 'whereas there were no other boys dancing within several hundred miles where I grew up!'

There were still social difficulties to overcome, but Dominic describes them quite matter-of-factly. 'It was a complete shock to my classmates and everyone around me. I was alienated to a large degree and bullied and really segregated for a long time,' he says, 'until high school, when the kids were a little more mature and a lot more accepting. But I think it did give me strength and train me in taking what life throws at you.'

As well as dancing, he worked extensively for many years with the Birmingham Royal Ballet Department for Learning, helping to teach other young people at that same early stage in their career. He views this as an important stage in his professional development.

'In the last few years I've had to slow down my education work because I've started teaching class, and I've had fatherhood too so I've got more responsibilities,' he says, 'but also I wanted to step out of the way and give the younger people and the less experienced people an opportunity to do that kind of work. I never would have been able to teach the company or I never would have had the kind of insight that I have now into our work had I not done the education work myself.'

Like a number of dancers who undertake it, as well as the full-time Department staff, he takes the Company's education work very seriously. 'No matter what anybody tells you, it is tough,' he admits, 'and you do have to compromise in your performing somewhere when you do long-term projects. I was dancing in Ballet Hoo!, and I helped out, but if I had been as involved as Desmond and Marion, there's no way that I would have been able to get on as a dancer myself. We did Ballet Hoo! on the Thursday and then for the Saturday matinee the Company did Romeo and Juliet ourselves, and I danced Romeo, so it would have been a bit too difficult.'

While he still contributed occasionally, his performing became his first professional priority. 'It took me several years to find my stride within the Company.' He says openly. 'As a matter of fact I think I hold the record for the longest time spent as a soloist before being promoted. I was a soloist for nine years before I became Principal and usually you've kind of made it by then or you've moved on.'

'Without getting too personal about it, I realised that a career in dance is very short, and I saw my years passing me by. So I thought, well, I either leave this and go and do something else, or I absolutely go for gold, and my hunger came back to me even bigger than before, and I was motivated to dance more and more roles and move up through the company. I succeeded in doing that, and I've still kept the hunger to do more.'

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