“It wasn’t that I wanted to give up ballet,” she stresses. For – spoiler alert – Cuthbertson did not ‘surrender’ at all but is firmly back en pointe.
She has just come from a morning rehearsal for Giselle, the role that will officially mark her return to the stage after the birth of her first child, Peggy, in January. The Royal Ballet principal is sitting before me, backstage at the Opera House, her legs stretched at impossible angles across the table and chair next to her. “It got to a point where I just thought that’s it, I surrender,” says Lauren Cuthbertson, throwing her hands up in mock defeat as she reminisces on the first stressful months of her pregnancy.
