not doable for so many of us," did you agree, and do you believe that your own company, the english national ballett is not a requirement that we will ask of our dancers at english national ballet. and i have never asked. and it's actually a very modern look, it's this one that comes from the �*60s and �*70s and the very particular choreographers and directors, and it was their own personal preference. and it's not based, like i said, in anything that is really true to the art form... because so much of what i have read in the past from dancers involves — i'm going to be honest about it — involves pain. you know, the very, very painful experience of keeping your body in the condition that allows it to do the amazing things that you and so many other brilliant dancers do. you in the past have been open about the fact you once danced with a ruptured appendix, which seems almost beyond belief to me. but you stayed on stage and then you came back two weeks after having an operation on that appendix, which sounds like it was a mistake, cos it did damage to your body. you've also talked about dancing wit

i would prefer to discuss the impact this has in english national ballet, for sure, or in performing let dancers, which has been, without a doubt, the biggest challenge we've ever faced. and, i mean, when we started in march, we went to a lockdown. we lost all our performances. we were one week away from premiering a new creation by akram khan. we sent everybody home. we started to share classes online, from my kitchen, to just keep the dancers working and training. and then what was surprising is, because we did so freely, we had four million views of those classes, and then we started to share our archive performances. and that also reached one million views. but, for english national ballet, our business model is one that is very much based on performing. only a third of our income comes from public subsidy, and the other two thirds is its own income from performing, from partnerships, corporate. it needs action. it needs performing to exist. so how close to going bust are you at the english national ballet? well, we took all the measures that were possible throughout the year and,