Mental Wealth Festival peeks at Royal Opera House (Live at Lunch, Royal Opera House, 15/10/2021)

Today's Live at Lunch performance was a special one - dedicated to the support of the Mental Wealth Festival, hosted by City Lit.

In the first half we saw a rehearsal of Giselle's "Mad scene", skilfully coached by Laura Morera (Royal Opera Ballet's Principal dancer). In accordance with the "mental health" topic, the chosen scene focused on the moment of Giselle's psychological transformation. Laura said she drew on her first-hand personal experience (with people having break-downs) in order to bring to this scene (which is happening more in dancer's mind then in physical performance) something unique and believable. She very sensibly focused on every detail when navigating the younger dancer through challenges & intensity of that particular scene. (Laura will be dancing this role at Royal Opera House in 27th of November and 3rd of December 2021).

The second half was a discussion about the Mental sanity of ballet dancers.

The panel consisted of Jaimie Persson (Organisational and Coaching Psychologist, working with the Royal Ballet and other dance companies, former Royal Ballet Principal), Zenaida Yanowsky (former Royal Ballet's Principal) and Tierney Heap, (Royal ballet's First soloist). The debate culminated around the dancers' identity, confidence, resilience and mental strength - especially in difficult moments of their careers (when they suffer a major injury, come back from the maternity leave or when they decide to finish their careers).

Tierney, who is currently recovering from an injury, was the first one to speak. She pointed out how fragile was the dancer's existence once the confidence or the physical strength was no longer there and gave some insight of coping with her injury, recovering and coming back.

Zenaida, explained how she copped with the loss of the "imminent emotional reward" (in her own words), which comes after the performance and the importance of acceptance of what comes after the end of this splendid, yet very focused and specialised career.

Jaimie, who focuses on ballet dancers' mental strength and well-being explained how important it is for dancer to develop a strategy for coping with the criticism, the pressure of performances and for managing and re-discovering the life outside the dancers' world.