Age: 37.
Nationality: Spanish, but she was born in Montreal, Canada, and has lived and worked in the UK for 18 years.
Occupation: She is between jobs at the moment.
Is that a euphemism for "unemployed"? Hardly. Rojo is a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, but she has just been appointed artistic director of English National Ballet, a post she will assume later in the year.
Packing in the dancing, is she? Not really. Rojo is considered to be the best female dancer in Britain, still very much in her prime, and will continue to perform with ENB. But she is looking toward the future.
And what does the future hold? Slimmed-down budgets and fattened-up dancers.
Oooh. Tell me more. Well, ENB has had its funding cut by 15% over three years and, as a touring company with 65 performers, it already operates at a massive loss. One of the immediate challenges facing the new …
Boring. I meant about the fat dancers. Oh, right. Rojo has recently spoken out about the ballet world's unhealthy obsession with bodyshape. "I have preached and I will continue to preach," she said. "I have never been thin and I want for myself and for others to have long and healthy careers."
She's not exactly obese, I can't help noticing. These things are relative. By ballet's standards she is quite well-upholstered. The constant pressure to be obscenely skinny, critics maintain, puts dancers' well-being at risk, leading to eating disorders and injury.
Where does this pressure come from? Punters? Not according to Rojo. Audiences, she says, "really do not want to see thin ballerinas". She believes the pressure comes from fashion and from within ballet itself.
She sounds as though she knows how to look after herself. Sort of. She did once dance the Nutcracker with a burst appendix and was told to take six weeks off. She took two.
Do say: "Bravo! Such beauty! Such grace! Such a healthy BMI!"
Don't say: "Boo! What did that swan just die of? Diabetes?"
