Even when the dust settled, the stories kept coming: the unconvinced profile pieces on the road to image rehabilitation, his choice to strike out on his own, and the subsequent critical panning of his independently produced performances.

Most recently a new kind of story has emerged, like this one from Dance Magazine, which queasily asks: “Can we please stop talking about Sergei Polunin?”

But here we are.

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When we meet Polunin, on holiday in Hollywood, Florida – just outside Miami – the sun is shining and the dancer seems happy and focused. He sits, relaxing at a picnic bench in the shade. He is in love (his partner is Russian Olympic figure skating champion Elena Ilinykh who, apparently, loves America), and working, and – while critics may disagree – feeling at the top of his game.

Polunin is slight, with wisps of prom-night facial hair clinging to his upper lip and chin. He is covered in tattoos – most noticeably, a combination of a heart and a dove on his forehead. The larger, more controversial tattoos are hidden beneath a long-sleeved shirt.

It is easy to see why so many column inches have been given over to Polunin. It’s not just the controversy he courts or the distressing things that come out of his mouth. He is a dream to interview, easy and effusive. He clearly relishes the attention, and, despite a career of loose lips and subsequent bad press, he doesn’t seem to have tolerated even a minute of public relations training. No questions are off limits, and he answers everything at length and thoughtfully. His answers are almost never what you might expect.

Take, for example, his answer to the obvious softball question: “What are you working on now?”

“I want to stop every war in the world,” he says, making sincere eye contact.

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Then in one breath: “And in my head, I think it’s possible. I had this thought many years ago. I thought: we have to go to space. As a human species, as a human race, we need to get out before we destroy ourselves.

“And we need to give ourselves as much time as possible, and so I thought, ‘What can I do to give time and culture to unite?’ And I thought the foundation is through art, through productions, through collaborations between governments. And I can actually pull the relationships of countries together.”

This declaration of unity and peace is surprising from somebody who today is mostly known for his divisiveness and capacity for self-destruction.

On this afternoon in the sun, Polunin is eager to point out that he has evolved. Now, at least, the dancer does say that he regrets “certain things”.

“I never want to hurt people,” he says. “On Instagram, I insulted pretty much everybody. It haunts me. It haunts me on stage when I perform.”

Still, don’t expect him to apologise. “I never apologise. I’m not the person who apologises, so I will never apologise.”

It’s that kind of emotional switcheroo that can be so jarring about interviewing Polunin. One moment he seems sincerely contrite about the pain that he’s caused, the next he is proudly refusing to apologise.

That kind of inconsistency is especially clear when he addresses his reputation as a homophobe. “Who am I to judge people?” he says in one moment. “Let’s say if you have a kid. You let your kid be whoever he wants.”

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Inevitably, Polunin says that he has gay friends. “Actually, one of my closest friends is gay. In ballet, when I was in school, it was many gays, many straights. So, I never had a problem with that.”

But in the next breath he is saying he’s afraid of humanity losing its core values.

“Certain values are certain values, because I think the best thing in the world is having a child. It’s amazing when a woman depends on a man and a man depends on a woman. I think there’s a danger a little bit that people start to lose where the ground is.”

The dance is a retelling of the death of the divisive Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin.

Polunin obviously sees a lot of himself in Rasputin who he sees as a charismatic and misunderstood figure with a great potential to change the world for the better, if he wasn’t so hated by those that did not understand him.

“In history, everybody made Rasputin as a bad guy, but Rasputin was the one who really protected Russian family. He really believed in the Russian Tsar, and he was healing their son. So, for the family, he was a very good person. He was a healer,” he says.

If the depiction of Rasputin is intended to provoke thought, it is the characterisation of Rasputin’s killer, Prince Felix Yusupov, that will more certainly rankle. Yasupov is the clear villain of the ballet, his malevolence represented by his propensity for wearing women’s clothes – a topic Polunin returns to again and again in our conversation.

“This guy was weird,” he says. “Really weird. He had weird paintings, dressed as a drag queen.”

Reviews of the production have so far been mixed, with critics hung up on the obvious parallels between Rasputin’s story and Polunin’s and fretting over his embrace of more theatrical crowd-pleasing dancing over the technical work of his youth.

The big question hanging over his career, and the many profiles it has inspired, is: has Polunin changed?

Perhaps not to the extent that his public relations team would like, but he is changing.

“I never wanted to grow up. That was my mission in life,” he says. “Until very recently, you could say I was a kid. And an artist, I think, shouldn’t stay a kid.”

And here, the more mystical Polunin steps back in.

“There’s always two directions to go. One is positive and one is negative. One way to go is to destroy all your life, destroy as much as possible in every way, create chaos. It’s to hurt as many people as you can and press a red button, so everything gets exploded,” he says. “But now the one I want to choose is the light side.”

Does that mean someday, in 10 years maybe, he might be ready to apologise?

“Yeah,” he says sincerely, and then for the first time looks away. “Sure.”