Darcey Bussell: A leap into the unknown

On a recent train journey, I overheard a family doing a crossword. "Famous ballerina" was the clue. "Darcey Bussell", they chorused. It took them much longer to think of Margot Fonteyn. Bussell is the outstanding British ballerina of her generation. When she was just 19, the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan chose her to star in The Prince of the Pagodas, his last full-length ballet. She guested at the Kirov in 1998 and, from 1993, with New York City Ballet - where a notoriously demanding public welcomed her as one of their own. Beyond ballet, she's appeared in fashion shoots for Vogue, in advertising campaigns for American Express and Mulberry. On stage, she has extraordinary radiance: her long limbs unfurl into effortlessly beautiful shapes, expansive and free. At 37, after two children, she still has a look of youth, of innocence.

When MacMillan chose her, she was a mould-breaking ballerina for the Royal Ballet. British ballerinas had tended to be small, with quick feet and a sense of drama. Bussell went against the grain: tall and athletic, with a bounding jump, more at home with movement than with acting. MacMillan's interest was surprising, too: that after a series of moodily neurotic works, he turned to such an open, sunny dancer. Until his death in 1992, he kept an eye on Bussell. "He'd ignore what the director wanted," says Bussell cheerfully, "saying, 'I want her to do this.' I don't think I would have done things as early as I did, without Kenneth. My fan! Even though he could be a torturing fan. He'd always quiz me on things - he was trying to see how much someone had lived, how much they'd experienced."

Throughout her career, Bussell has always been held in the highest regard by choreographers. Twyla Tharp exclaimed over her, while Christopher Wheeldon has put her at the centre of several ballets. In DGV (Danse à Grande Vitesse), his latest work for the Royal Ballet, he has her carried in on high, in a duet that celebrates her beauty of line. Bussell had told him she wished she could do more new work. "He said, 'Don't worry, Darce, I'll put you in mine,'" she remembers. That sounds casual, but his ballet clears a worshipful space around her.

Despite all this encouragement and attention, Bussell has sometimes seemed immature. Her dancing can be glorious - or unfocused, particularly in dramatic ballets. Given a mime scene, she can look like a good girl who has worked really hard on this. There are dance fans who will tell you, categorically, that Bussell cannot act. In fact, it seems to be a question of the right role. In Giselle, the most dramatic of the 19th-century ballets, she shows an extraordinary freshness of response, a close identification with her character. In Manon, she looks too straightforward, altogether too nice, for the girl who chooses diamonds over true love. Yet her death scene is terrific: this Manon fights against death, feverish and desperate.

Still, Bussell's exceptional quality is the sheer scale of her dancing. It's not just that her jump is high, that her body is flexible. There's a sumptuous warmth to the way she moves. At her best, she has the ease of a bird in flight: this most stylised art form looks effortlessly natural.

In person, Bussell is friendly and conscientious, thinking over the questions or exclaiming as she answers them. "I was, like, 'woah'," she will say, sounding like a teenager. But she's frank and serious in analysing her motives, ready to discuss the changes in her life. She married Angus Forbes, an Australian banker, in 1997. They have two daughters, Phoebe, born 2001, and Zoe, born in 2004. Last year, Bussell stepped down as a full-time member of the Royal Ballet. Though she still makes regular appearances with the company, she's planning her own shows. This month, she dances at Sadler's Wells, partnered by the Kirov star Igor Zelensky.

She became a guest artist, she says, "to free up my life, so I have some more control. It's my 20th year with the Royal Ballet. I wonder if I should have done this earlier - because I have children, this lets me direct things better. I still, often - it's my English upbringing - say, 'Of course I'll do it.' I'd never say, 'I don't want to' or 'No, I should be doing that role'. I'm not, sadly, strong enough in that way. And I felt honoured - it was my position to help the company. But suddenly you become a guest artist, and your position is to help yourself. But what gets tough is having my kids. They grow up so fast. It pulls at the heartstrings, if you can't be there, because you've got a rehearsal at 6.30pm. And you had a show the night before, so they haven't seen you."