Ballerina Viviana Durante recalls culture shock of Britain’s beans-on-toast diet

STANDING START I danced my first part when I was eight (in 1975), in a garage in Rome – it wouldn’t be allowed under health and safety regulations today. I was Coppélia, I had to stand on a stool for a long time and halfway through I felt sick because my mum had made the tutu too tight. So I got off to find her to fix it. Much later, I was told that my teacher had said, “If she goes back on, she’ll be a ballerina.”

SMALL BEGINNINGS Then I auditioned for the ballet school of the Rome Opera and, when I was 10, the Russian dancer Galina Samsova saw me dance. She advised my parents that I should go to White Lodge, the Royal Ballet School, in London. I never auditioned, they just looked at me, saw I was petite, that was it. I spoke no English, niente. I only started to speak much better English seven years ago, when I married Nigel (Cliff, the British journalist and author). He’d say, ‘What did you just say?’ Until then I spoke White-Lodge English.

CALL BACK I’d come from this Italian family, we were like (clasps hands tightly) one person. Going from that to English culture ... and the food! Cheese on toast, beans on toast ... My parents used to ring every night, I remember sitting outside the director’s office waiting for that call. I thought if I moved, I wouldn’t hear the phone ringing. I used that feeling later in Romeo and Juliet – in the third act, when she’s sitting on the bed, that stillness before she picks up her cape and runs off to meet Romeo.