“I was just lucky that I met Sir Peter Wright!” says a very modest Miyako Yoshida, artistic director of the National Ballet of Japan (NBJ), referring to the start of her career. She is fondly remembered by UK audiences for her performances with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet) and The Royal Ballet. Enjoying a swift rise to principal status, Yoshida sustained a long and successful career for more than 25 years.
When we speak by video call, Yoshida is preparing to bring the company to London’s Royal Opera House for the first time in its history, with her own production of Giselle – a ballet that is very close to her heart. “Giselle is the very first role that I was chosen to perform as the lead dancer,” she explains. “This ballet is a treasure for me, and also had a lot of emotional impact. Three years ago, for the 25th anniversary of NBJ, I chose to stage Giselle, and now I’m bringing this production to the UK because it means so much to me. Part of its importance is to show my gratitude to Sir Peter.”
I recall Yoshida saying at a press conference earlier this year that she wasn’t initially confident about dancing the role of Giselle. “Now that I am an artistic director, it seems almost unbelievable that Sir Peter decided to cast me. I was very naïve and very young, and to cast me as Giselle, was incredible.” She continues, “I was a different type of a dancer, not the type that would naturally be cast as Giselle. So for me, it was a big challenge. It was Sir Peter who was actually with me in all the rehearsals, who guided me, supported me and encouraged me through it, so that I learned how to act, to tell the story.”
“If I was able to do that, it’s only because through the decades I learnt how to inhabit the role, how to perform the character of Giselle,” Yoshida goes on to say. “It was very intimidating at the beginning: I sort of forced myself through it, and that was the way I performed. But through the course of all the performances, I was finally able to grasp the emotions and her inner life.”
I tell her I’ve been watching a video clip of her rehearsing it with Ayako Ono and Yudai Fukuoka, and I am absolutely fascinated with the amount of detail that she brings to it. “Yes,” she says, “to be able to deliver or pass on what I have learned to the next generation is a great joy and privilege. But also, at the same time, I am not trying to force them to inhabit one way of doing things. What I tell them is the intention of what the performance should be, and from that intention, I would like them to find their own way of interpreting it.”
She explains to her dancers “how I felt at the time, the sensation that I experienced, and if it’s useful to them, that’s great. But whether it suits them or not is different, because they’re different individuals from me. But to be able to pass on the tradition of this ballet is really thrilling.
“Recently, we were able to perform Fokine’s Firebird. Margot Fonteyn learned it from Tamara Karsavina and then Fonteyn passed it down to Monica Mason, and now Monica has passed it on to the National Ballet of Japan. I was really delighted that we were able to do that.”
I wonder about other people who have made a huge impact on how she works. She tells me, “Since I started as an artistic director myself I think of all the directors that guided me through my career. When I faced challenges, who and what was it that supported me? Anthony Dowell and Monica Mason took my rehearsals and it meant I was being coached directly by the people who had danced the roles themselves. I was coached by Lesley Collier a lot in Nutcracker, La Fille mal gardée and Cinderella and it's so, so nice that she has been through all that, and I’m experiencing this process now. In The Dream, some of the rehearsals I was learning from Dowell and Antoinette Sibley, the original cast, which was so special. Sir Peter used to bring those coaches in for us.”
I’m interested to know how Yoshida is feeling about coming to London and the discerning Covent Garden audiences. “Because it’s London and we're bringing it to the Royal Opera House, there was anxiousness,” she admits, “but we actually staged it at the New National Theatre, Tokyo in the spring. It’s our big theatre and when I saw the production, I thought it was going to be great. Not just the dancing and the performance, but also the set design, costumes and lighting. It’s all beautiful, sublime. And I am very confident now. I mean, my anxiousness is fading away! I want to show off the corps de ballet because it's so special.”
“There are a lot of ballet companies from around the world who tour to Japan to put on their productions,” Yoshida continues. “Looking at those ballet companies, I am happy to say that at the National Ballet of Japan, our corps de ballet is world class, if not the number one! And Alastair Marriott has choreographed some really demanding scenes for them in Act 2.”
Yoshida is credited with paving the way for many Japanese dancers to come to the UK and helping a lot of careers to flourish. “Obviously, when I joined the [Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet] company, there were no other Japanese dancers back then,” she tells me. “It was a very special thing and very different, and for me, very difficult to actually get used to. In that sense, the hurdle was high. But now over the generations, watching the current Japanese dancers, I feel that it’s more normal. I don’t feel strongly that because they are Japanese, they are this or that. As a Japanese dancer, I know that they are going through their own hardships, but I don’t think it is so much about whether they’re Japanese or not these days.”
The National Ballet of Japan is becoming known for doing classical ballets very well indeed. I want to know if the repertoire is going broaden – the company recently mounted a Forsythe piece. She looks slightly crestfallen and says, “I would love to, but there are artistic choices and conditions from the theatre that I have to think about. I cannot always make decisions from an artistic point of view. Of course I have to think about the challenges we give to the dancers to help them grow.”
“I really admire companies like The Royal Ballet for providing liveable salaries. Here at the National Ballet of Japan we do pay very basic salaries but most of the payment they receive is from the shows that they perform. In order to make sure that they have a good livelihood, it’s inevitable that I choose the big ballets. That’s a balance that I’m struggling with. We’re still behind. That’s why I wanted to become artistic director because I wanted to change that. They do have a yearly salary but it depends how many shows they do. If we do full-length ballets, we can do more shows. The dancers get paid more. If we do a triple bill with lesser known works, we do fewer shows. It’s a dilemma for me, always.”
She concedes, “We have some very generous sponsors but the dancers aren’t really employed as such. To be correct, they have a yearly contract with a small salary but they are not supported socially, it’s not a part of it yet. Because I danced in the UK I thought that the support systems, social security, that the dancers had, would apply in Japan too. When I came back to Japan I was really shocked at the environment that the dancers were living in, in order to survive, to be a professional ballet dancer. So that’s one of the main reasons I wanted to take on the role. And that’s why all the good dancers wanted to go abroad.”
Finally, I ask her if she’s ever had a moment when she felt she’d got it all completely right. She ponders, laughs and answers candidly: “No! I don’t think I ever felt it was correct or went really well. I did have the feeling that I had found a way to express what I wanted to do, but that was very late in my career. Looking back, I was always in some sort of state of anxiety. I would do one thing, then the next task came and then the next. I was always running towards the next goal. When I think back, I wish I could have enjoyed it more – that amazing stage.”
