Ramrod straight, wrapped in a camel coat, with tumbling blonde hair, 26-year-old Melissa Hamilton, from Dromore in Co Down, once turned down by the Royal Ballet, is now one of its brightest stars. An acclaimed performer, her triumph over adversity and rise to fame once saw her dubbed "Charlize Theron in pointe shoes". She was in Belfast recently visiting an exhibition of Bolshoi costumes in Crumlin Road Gaol, which closed in 1996 and is now a visitor centre. Hamilton recently made her debut on the Bolshoi stage in Moscow, a high point in an already successful career.
The ballet world has elements of prison life, she comments with a wry smile when we meet in the old prison. “Within it you are pretty restricted to a certain kind of existence and you have to live a certain kind of life. It is a separate world entirely and difficult for an outsider to understand,” she says. She is known for her exceptional physical strength, and she is an extremely dedicated and determined dancer who, once, despite the excruciating pain of a snapped ligament, went ahead and performed a debut role after strapping up her ankle. So how did a young girl from Dromore make it to Covent Garden?
It all started with a summer ballet course in Aberdeen when she was 13, which opened her eyes for the first time to the possibilities of dance as a career. Her parents – Keith, a builders’ merchant, and Linda, a teacher – “still have no idea about the ballet world. It is not a culture that is understood or nurtured here [in Northern Ireland]. It is seen as a hobby”, says Hamilton. Although she was academically gifted, it wasn’t something she particularly enjoyed or wanted to pursue. Having finished her GCSEs, she won a scholarship to the Elmhurst School for Dance in Birmingham, but at the end of her first year was told to give it up and abandon her dreams.
It was at that point that two former Bolshoi stars, Irek and Masha Mukhamedov, joined the school as teachers and immediately identified Hamilton’s potential.
From then on, everything changed. Hamilton worked closely with them, even moving to Athens to continue training when they moved. “Because I was told I couldn’t do it, that became my driving force, my mission was to prove them wrong. Masha pushed me more than anyone else. Russians have a commitment to ballet as an art and lifestyle. They do not see it as a job but as a vocation. There is an honour in it and a privilege. She believed in me.”
After winning the Youth of America Grand Prix in 2007, Hamilton sent a DVD to then director of the Royal Ballet, Monica Mason, and won a place that year as an artist. Since then, through obsessive hard work, awards and some electrifying performances, she has risen quickly in the ranks and was appointed first soloist last year.
“Dance is physically and mentally gruelling and you are constantly faced with yourself – you stand in front of mirrors every day,” she says. “I know some people have been beaten by it, but it is down to personality and how you deal with it. It is still a performance art and incredibly competitive, and you are opening yourself up to criticism every time you are on stage.”
Ballet cliches
The film Black Swan "pinpointed all the cliches in the ballet world and blew them up. There's always some truth in cliches, but the truth is so much more interesting. You have to have the artistic temperament to survive, and of course there is stress and pressure. I would love to see a fly-on-the- wall documentary on the ballet world".
In her first six years at the Royal Ballet, she was obsessed with progress to the exclusion of everything else. “But I hit a brick wall and realised that how I was living was not acceptable any more. I was still in the same routine and just existing. I started to change myself outwardly – I dyed my hair brown because I was known as the blonde – instead of addressing myself inwardly. But now I can progress and live as I should.”
Turning point
The turning point was tackling the powerful female role of Manon in McMillan’s celebrated ballet of the same name in October. “It was the role I always wanted and that I fell in love with. As an artist and dancer, it was so satisfying to find myself in her character and to step on stage and show what she was. It surpassed everything and was so much more than ballet. It gave me the sense I could step on stage as myself. You get to know parts of yourself you didn’t know existed.”
As for her view of ballet in Ireland, she feels that we have not seen the full extent of what the ballet world can offer. “It stops at tutus and tiaras and is not seen as an art form that can grip people by the heart. I would love audiences to see McMillan ballets or contemporary choreographers like Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon.”
Her latest role is as a cultural and art ambassador with Allianz and she is planning a gala performance in Belfast, with excerpts from various pieces “to show that there is something in ballet for everyone. I find it exciting to give some little girl – or little boy – an easier journey than I had”.
Despite her unshakeable determination and ambition, she now feels more relaxed about her life and career, lives in Hampstead, finds swimming therapeutic and is discovering the pleasure of travel. “Dancing gives me happiness. I would not say I am always happy when I dance, but the ballet world brings me happiness. I challenge myself more than people know.
“We are using our bodies to speak and that is what I find so satisfying and why I feel a deep sense of connection with Manon as a role. I am complicated and misunderstood, but I am en route to finding self-discovery and learning to live.”
Bolshoi in Belfast: Costume drama in gaol
Fifty costumes from the Bolshoi Theatre and the Russian Museum of Ethnography – some of them never seen before outside Russia – are on display at Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast until December 13th. The gaol, which dates back to 1845 and housed murderers, suffragettes, loyalist and republican prisoners, closed in 1996 and is now a visitor centre. The costumes are exhibited in former cells and tell the story of the rise of the Bolshoi and how their designs trace their evolution to Russian peasant dress reimagined in famous 20th-century ballets and operas.
crumlinroadgaol.com
