07/11/2025
In last weeks Sunday Times, dancer Alessandra Ferri credits Iyengar Yoga with helping her to return to her profession after retirement ….
Let's DANCE!
At 52, the ballerina Alessandra Ferri is still performing. She tells Jasmine Gardner how she does it…
Alessandra Ferri believes that we’ve all been sold a myth — that once we are past a certain age. our body just can't do the things it used to.
"We all believe this," says Ferri, a star ballerina who at the age of 52 is still dancing. Having returned to the stage in 2013 after six years in retirement. "We let our mind control our lives in negative ways. Your mind goes, "You're 45. You can't
dance. You're too old." But the truth is that when your body responds to your soul, it can do anything"
Ferri is reclining on a sofa in a hallway of the Royal Opera House, dressed in black, with heavy boots that are a bulky contrast to her slim legs. She's still incredibly slight, with her signature long black hair and wide eyes, she has just performed in Cheri - a work combining dance and theatre, about an age gap love affair.
I love playing Lea in Cheri because she is a woman of my age who fell in love with a younger man, and she loves her life," she says. "When a man is in his fifties and he has a 20 year-old girlfriend, everybody says. 'Oh, he's so cool." For a woman, It's
"Oh, look at her!” You know what? Good for her!"
It was for this role in Cheri that Ferri ended her retirement in 2013. The Italian dancer began her professional career at the Royal Ballet in 1990, and only three years later, at the age of 19, she was promoted to principal, the highest position in the company. It was a testament to her talent, which also led to her being poached by American Ballet Theatre In 1985. She has lived in New York ever since. She has two daughters, aged 14 and 18, and split from their father, the photographer Fabrizio Ferri, three years ago.
She explains why, she first retired from dancing "Inside me was stale, For a couple of years I did nothing. I almost couldn't even watch dance"
Quitting hurt - literally. The first few months, It was very painful," she says. "I heard that is quite normal. The muscles that are used to being warm atrophy and freeze up.”
That wasn't the only problem. Retirement, she says, was somehow empty. The core of who l am was asleep. The fact that my body was inactive was making me feel lacking in eneryy and enthusiasm for things. Dancing is not like going to the gym. It's a language of the soul, and I needed to say something was sutfocating.
This feeling led her to begin moving again. She took up lyengar yoga, went back to ballet class and discovered she could, still dance, and brilliantly. In May she performed In the much lauded Woolf Works at the Royal Opera House - a sellout new ballet by Wayne McGregor based on the life and works of Vinginia Woolf. Next June, she will reprise one of her best-known roles in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet at the Met in New York
There are a lew things she won't do. Big jumps - that wouid probably be too violent on the body:" And these days she rehearses for few hours because “there’s no point exhausting
yourself" Maintenance takes longer, so I do more preparation in Pilates and in class. You also noed more time to recuperate. " But she still pushes herself. “Normal people go to the gym, get on the treadmill and go, "Oh, my calf hurts, I'm not going to do that any more" Then you get nowhere. As a dancer you have a bad calf every day, and we learn that the more you push, the less It hurts bouse you conquer and break the pain barrier . There's a big, amount of willpower involved , where you say, "Am I going to stop my soul from feeling alive because my back hurts? No, I'll take a pankiller."
ALESSANDRA'S WAY
Do yoga - Iyengar yoga, not yoga for older poople. Don't buy into that, it only makes you feel older. Your mind will go, “I’m basically halfway to dying," and then your body gives up.
