100 stories: Christopher Saunders
As part of our centenary year, we are featuring 100 stories that make up The Royal Ballet School’s past, present and future. Today, we share the story of alum, Rehearsal Director and Principal Character Artist of The Royal Ballet Christopher Saunders.
Christopher joined White Lodge in 1975 at the age of 11 and joined The Royal Ballet in 1983. He celebrated 40 years with the Company in February 2023, a rare and remarkable achievement that only his fellow Principal Character Artist and alum Elizabeth McGorian shares. Christopher recently reflected on his journey with us to mark the School’s centenary year, fondly recalling memories from White Lodge, notable mentors and long-lasting relationships.
First steps
The performing arts run in Christopher’s family, but his first love was musical theatre. His uncle, the late Ben Stevenson OBE, planted the ballet seed in his head from a young age.
My uncle was a dancer in The Royal Ballet back in the 1950s, so I knew much about the Company and the School. I started off loving musical theatre, and I was in Gypsy when I was nine. When we went on holiday afterwards, my uncle said, ‘What do you want to do for a career?’ And I said musicals, because I didn’t really like ballet. He wasn’t very happy with that answer, and he said that if I really wanted to be good in musical theatre, I needed a good, strong ballet technique.
He was very good friends with Barbara Fewster, then Principal of the School, and I don’t know what kind of letter he wrote her, but when we got back from holiday in the beginning of July, there was a letter from Barbara at home asking, ‘Would Christopher like to come up to White Lodge and spend the day with the boys in Year 7?’
So, at the end of that week, I spent the day at White Lodge. It was Jonathan Cope’s year and the last week of the term. They were doing ballet class and little academic work since everything was winding down. When my parents came to pick me up, the School said they had a spare place available for September and asked, ‘Would Christopher like to join?’ Me being me, I just said, ‘Okay, yeah!’ Because it was actually lovely to be in an environment for that one day, with everyone loving the same thing. They were there because they enjoyed dancing. It was also more than the classes; it was being together out of the class that I thought was great.
Life at the Lodge
I loved the fact that we were four young boys in one room and the other five in the other room. I loved that family feeling. It was like being brothers. We joked about the same things, and we got up to mischief, but we had great house mistresses. We would have midnight feasts, and the headmistress would bring a bag of goodies for us to enjoy, so they did allow us to grow up. We were naughty as well. I mean, we got told off often for things we shouldn’t do, but that’s what kids do. It’s part of growing up. You’ve got to learn what you should and shouldn’t do.
I even feel that working in the Company now, when those kids from the School join the Company – I’m old enough to be their grandfather, but there’s a connection. I know White Lodge is very different now, but I’ve been where they’ve been.
Notable teachers
We had Nancy Kilgour at the beginning of our training at White Lodge, and she was just brilliant. Richard Glasstone was our Year 9, 10 and 11 teacher, and I clicked with him. I was on his wavelength. I thought at the time that it was really silly, but I understood how he was trying to make movement natural. He’d get us to run across the room and spin around towards the floor. You’d think I want to learn how to jump and turn, but he was getting us to do it naturally, to run with coordination. Nancy and her husband, Murray Kilgour, later joined as Upper School teachers, and they were amazing there as well.
I also loved our Morris dance teachers, Bob and Ron. Even when we were in the Company, we all got back together and redid the Morris dancing. We called ourselves the Bow Street Rappers and even got on The Generation Game. So that was another connection with all these different age groups.
Transitioning to Upper School and Company life
I didn’t even think of not getting to Upper School – of course, I should have, but then I did get into Upper School. And then, at Upper School, it’s not that I thought I would get a job with The Royal Ballet, but I just enjoyed going in every day and doing everything. Then, I joined the Company halfway through my graduation year. I was called into the office, and they asked, ‘Would you like to join The Royal Ballet? The Company would like you to, but it means you have to join on Monday and you won’t have a graduation performance.’
So, I said, ‘Fine!’ The previous year, I danced Act II of Swan Lake with my now wife, Tracy. My 1st Year performance was La Fille mal gardée and Erik Bruhn’s Here We Come. So I wasn’t worried about the big graduation. I already had some good school performances. And to be honest, I thought, ‘I’ll be earning money!’
Hard work and lots of luck
Christopher acknowledges that he was very lucky to have gone through White Lodge and Upper School and received an early start with the Company, but he worked hard to prove himself and set the foundation for a long career.
Barbara said, ‘Christopher’s going to be very tall. He’s got hyperextended legs, he’s got knock knees – it’s going to be very difficult. But he clearly loves to dance.’ I guess that love shone through. I worked hard, and then I got to a stage in my last couple of years at White Lodge where I thought, okay, if I’m going to do this, I’ve got to do it while I’m young because I can tap and sing into my 60s, 70s, 80s.
Because of my height, I used to go into classes in the year above as well. I doubled my pas de deux classes, so I became a good partner. And then even at Upper School, I used to double up classes because there were never enough guys for the ladies. That’s been my career in the Company as well. I’ve been very good with partnering.
He also said that being quick and soaking in as much choreography as possible helped pave the way for his future career as a Rehearsal Director but that it was also just fun to recreate ballets with his classmates at White Lodge.
I knew everyone else’s parts as a kid. At White Lodge, we were the last year to do Rudolf Nureyev’s The Nutcracker. As kids, we knew everyone’s parts, and I’m sure current students still do. We knew what Merle Park and Rudolf were doing, we knew what Clara was doing, what the Nephew was doing so we would go back to White Lodge in the evening after the performance, put the music on and dance everyone else’s parts as well. Now, I look back and I think maybe that’s why I do the job I do now, because I remembered everyone’s steps.
I’ve been incredibly lucky. I thought I’d only be in the Company for a little while and then go and do something else. Then, I started doing Soloist roles, things changed, and Ross Stretton, who was Director for just one season, asked if I wanted to be Ballet Master. So, I, again, just said, ‘Yeah!’
The only thing I said was that I still wanted to perform. I was a Principal Character Artist, but I was winding down. When Dame Monica Mason took over the Company as Director, I was lucky that I could retire from dancing in a really nice way. I could come out of a role one season at a time. The more I started rehearsing entire ballets, like Romeo and Juliet, it became very hard then to still be dancing or performing Paris, Tybalt and Lord Capulet.
I started off rehearsing the principals, then the corps de ballet. I got involved with Christopher Wheeldon and George Balanchine ballets, then Monica took me under her wing and involved me in Kenneth MacMillan ballets.
Life partnerships
Throughout his illustrious career, it was meeting his wife, Tracy Brown Saunders, in Year 9 that has made Christopher’s journey through The Royal Ballet School and Company even more special.
We both say that when we first met each other, we knew that was it. We were 13! We were boyfriend and girlfriend for a while in Year 11, then we came to Upper School and didn’t really talk. Then, we danced Odette and Siegfried together in Swan Lake for the School performance, and I bought her red roses.
I joined the Company, and thank goodness Tracy also joined later that year. Then, I just thought, oh, this is ridiculous. I asked her out, and that was it. The rest is history.
They went back to where it all began at White Lodge this year for the annual Summer Fair, 50 years after they first met.
We often go and walk around Richmond Park, and we took our three boys when they were smaller and said, ‘This is where mum and dad went to school, in this beautiful building.’ We’re lucky that it hold very happy memories for the pair of us.
Catja Christensen is the Marketing and Communications Executive at The Royal Ballet School and joined the School in 2025. She enjoys interviewing students, staff and guest artists for news stories and crafting eye-catching newsletters.
