Deborah Bull – principal dancer with The Royal Ballet between 1992 and 2001 – is a writer, presenter and broadcaster and the Creative Director of the Royal Opera House.
Since 1998, she has written and presented numerous programmes for television and radio – including the award-winning The Dancer's Body and Travels with my Tutu for BBC2 – and presented live from The Proms, the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells. Her work for BBC Radio 3 and 4 covers a range of diverse topics, from dance and the arts to law and the impact of ageing on women who've made a living from their looks.
She has written four books, with the latest – The Everyday Dancer – published in October 2011.
Following her appearance at the Oxford Union in 1996, she is frequently in demand as a speaker on the arts.
Born in Derby, and brought up in Kent and Lincolnshire, Deborah Bull studied dance from the age of seven, first locally, and then, on the recommendation of her teacher, at the Royal Ballet School. In 1980, she won the Prix de Lausanne, the prestigious international ballet competition.
She joined The Royal Ballet in 1981, after touring with the company as a student during the previous summer. She was promoted through the ranks and became a Principal in 1992, following her performance in the role of Gamzatti in La Bayadère at the company's opening night in Japan.
During her twenty years with The Royal Ballet, she danced a wide range of work throughout the repertoire and toured extensively: Japan, China, Korea, North America, Norway, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Australia, Canada and more. She danced the leading roles in many of the classics - Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and Kitri in Don Quixote - and created roles for Ashley Page, David Bintley, Michael Corder, Emma Diamond, Wayne McGregor, Glen Tetley and Twyla Tharp. She received particular praise for her performances in the works of George Balanchine and William Forsythe. In 1995 Forsythe staged for her the first performance in this country of his ballet Steptext, for which she earned a 1996 Olivier Award nomination in the 'Outstanding Achievement In Dance' Category. She was named as 1996 Dancer of the Year by both The Sunday Express and The Independent on Sunday, who praised her work both on and off the stage, saying 'here is a dancer whose intelligence and courage - for once - don't reside entirely in the tips of her toes'.
Away from The Royal Ballet, she toured Italy, North America and Canada with Wayne Eagling's group, Stars of The Royal Ballet, and was invited to join Irek Mukhamedov for the debut performances of his company Irek Mukhamedov and Friends in 1992. She danced at the 1993 and 1995 Harrogate International Festival, and in April 1996 was invited to perform in the first Diamonds of World Ballet Gala at the Kremlin Palace, Moscow. She has toured Japan with Tetsuya Kumakawa and in the summers of 1994 and 1995 she produced, staged and starred in An Evening of British Ballet at the Sintra Festival in Portugal. In March 2001, she was invited to star in the triple bill Nijinsky Ritrovato at the Rome Opera House, dancing the Chosen Maiden in Rite of Spring and alongside Carla Fracci in Jeux, a performance she repeated in 2003.
During her penultimate season with The Royal Ballet, in 1999, she founded the Artists' Development Initiative at the Royal Opera House, a programme designed to open up the resources and expertise within the theatre to small-scale companies and independent artists. Over its first two years, ADI worked with over 250 artists from outside the Royal Opera House and facilitated collaborations across art forms and between independent choreographers and classical dancers. ADI shared the 2001 Time Out Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance with Wayne McGregor for Symbiont(s), premiered in the Clore Studio Upstairs in June 2000.
She retired from The Royal Ballet in August 2001 to take up a new position at the Royal Opera House in January 2002, as Creative Director, ROH2, developing a range of small-scale and innovative artistic initiatives and overseeing the programme in the theatre's two smaller performance spaces. In 2004, her remit expanded to include the delivery of a strategy for the ROH's work away from the main stage, including the alternative performance programme, opera and dance development initiatives, Big Screen live relays from the main stage, an 'On the Road' programme and daytime activities in the building. In addition, her portfolio now includes executive responsibility for ROH Collections – the Royal Opera House's extensive archives – as well as leading on the Royal Opera House's Olympic planning and Audience Engagement strategies. In 2008, she was made Creative Director of the Royal Opera House.
In addition to her work as a dancer, she has regularly written and lectured on the arts. In January 1996 she debated at the Oxford Union, opposing the motion 'This house believes the National Lottery gives too much support to the elitist arts'. Her address was described by Lord Gowrie, her debating partner, as 'the best speech I have heard on the Arts in 30 years'. The motion was heavily defeated, a triumph which the Evening Standard attributed largely to 'the eloquence of a ballerina, unaccustomed to public speaking', describing her speech as 'cogently argued and delivered with generosity of spirit'.
In October 1996 she was invited by Lord Gowrie to deliver the third Arts Council Annual Lecture at the Royal Society for the Arts, From Private Patronage to Public Purse.
She has written articles for The Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, Classic FM Magazine, New Statesman, Red, Ritz and The Spectator, and reviewed for The Telegraph, The Literary Review and several dance magazines. From 1999-2001 she wrote a regular column, Private View, for The Telegraph.
Aside from the arts, she has a passionate interest in health and fitness, and has taught nutrition to the students of The Royal Ballet School as well as chairing the Prix de Lausanne's annual seminars on dance related health matters.
She has published four books. The Vitality Plan, (Dorling Kindersley, January 1998) was published simultaneously in the United States as Totally Fit, and has since been translated into seven different languages. Dancing Away (Methuen, October 1998) is a diary of The Royal Ballet's first year 'on the road', as the Royal Opera House underwent its extensive redevelopment in a climate of controversy and political change. To mark publication, Deborah was commissioned to read five extracts from the book on BBC Radio 4. Dancing Away was described by The Spectator as 'arguably the most amusing and fascinating dance book ever published'. The Faber Guide to Classical Ballets, jointly with Luke Jennings, was published in 2005. Her second book for Faber, The Everyday Dancer was published in October 2011. This vivid portrait of the dancer's every day reveals the arc of a dancing career, from first steps to final curtain.
Her first programme for television, Dance Ballerina, Dance, was screened at Christmas 1999 as part of BBC 2's Dance Night, an evening devoted entirely to dance which she co-presented along with the comedian Alexei Sayle. Travels With My Tutu – a four part BBC2 series in which she explored breakdance, jive, belly dance and tango – was screened over Christmas 2000 and attracted record audiences. She has presented live on BBC2 from the Royal Opera House (Coppelia and The Nutcracker) and from Sadler's Wells (Rambert Dance Company), as well as a live Proms performance on BBC1. In June 2001, she presented the Eurovision Young Dancer competition, broadcast live to 18 European nations as well as on BBC2. Her three part, award-winning series for BBC2 – The Dancer's Body – was screened in September and October 2002. She has made programmes for, and contributes regularly to, BBC Radio 4 including Breaking the Law and Law in Order, A Dance Through Time, Hothouse Kids and After I Was Gorgeous.
She was a member of the Arts Council of England from 1998-2005 and a Governor of the BBC from 2003-2006. Additionally, she is a patron of the National Osteoporosis Society, National Youth Ballet, Foundation for Community Dance and Escape Artists (a theatre company of paroled and ex-prisoners), sits on the artistic committee of the Prix de Lausanne and is Honorary President of Voices of British Ballet. She was a judge for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by Derby University (1998), Sheffield Hallam University (2001), the Open University (2005) and Kent University (2010) and was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours.