vallierojas: A working life: the ballet stage manager

Long before Black Swan made ballet cool, Johanna Adams Farley was sleeping on pavements to get into performances. Now she has a pivotal role at the Royal Ballet

It's a midweek lunchtime and dancers mill around the stage of the Royal Opera House stretching and chatting, a sea of leotards, hot-pink leggings and toned limbs. There can't be many grander stages in the world than Covent Garden, but, to the untrained eye, it looks more like a casting call for an episode of Fame than a rehearsal for the Royal Ballet's revival of Swan Lake.

The house lights dim, giving way to harsh lateral spotlights and the atmosphere changes abruptly. A segment of Tchaikovsky's haunting score tinkles from a hidden piano and a couple of dozen swan-maidens tiptoe from the wings, weaving elegantly back and forth before fanning out into rows at either side of the stage. From my vantage point there's no doubting the incredible strength and precision it takes the dancers to maintain their rigid poses, arms held aloft.

For positioning, they follow a strip of small lights concealed at the front of the stage. Laying out these "landing lights" is one of the smaller tasks on the daily ticklist of Johanna Adams Farley, the Royal Ballet's senior stage manager. Another is turning on the industrial-sized heaters at the back of the stage. "It sounds ridiculous but dancers feel the cold very easily," she says.

Often seen as an elite cultural pursuit, ballet is back in the public consciousness thanks in part to the success of the film Black Swan (for which director Darren Aronofsky and actor Natalie Portman both hope to win Oscars this weekend). But that's not to say there has been a lull in its popularity either; the Royal Ballet's mind- boggling schedule already encompasses about 130 performances of up to 12 productions every year.

In a nutshell ? or should that be a nutcracker? ? Adams Farley's job is to ensure they all run smoothly on the production side. When we meet, the company is rehearsing Swan Lake ? a revival of Anthony Dowell's 1987 production ? but is already midway through a run of Giselle, and is gearing up for a brand new production of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I am trying my best to keep up with her as she zips back and forth between the layers of scenery, but it's easier said than done. Dressed from head to toe in black and wearing a wireless headset, she darts around like a theatrical ninja, occasionally spottable by flashing glimpses of her bright red lipstick.

First rehearsals can often be fraught but, to her evident surprise, the preparations for Swan Lake seem to be going smoothly. "I feel like a bit of a fraud, to be honest," she says, apologetically, as we swerve around several of the corps de ballet stretching their hamstrings on the floor. "It's usually chaos."

Running several productions simultaneously requires a constant rotation of casts and scenery, which, I suggest, must present quite a logistical challenge. "There are so many different things to keep an eye on, and different temperaments to deal with," she agrees. "You need to be very quick-thinking. Things can go wrong and you have to be able to act fast."

One of her most basic duties is to ensure dancers are in the wings in good time, and on stage at the right moment, a job she and her team perform from a cubbyhole called "prompt corner" (though more colloquially known as "bastard corner" which, she assures me, is due to its unconventional positioning to the right of stage and is definitely not named after its occupants).

"My parents were both actors and I always wanted to act," she admits candidly, as we grab a coffee in the staff canteen, directly beneath the stage. Sadly, though, it was an ambition cut short at the age of 15 when she broke her arm in a riding accident, an event that shattered her confidence in front of the curtain.

However, it did little to douse the young Adams Farley's enthusiasm for a career in theatre generally, and ballet in particular, thanks, in no small part, to the persistence of her godfather. "He had always taken me to see everything from an early age, ballet, cinema, theatre ?" she recalls, "but when I was 15 he took me to see Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in Romeo and Juliet. I was just completely hooked." There is a dreamy look in her eyes as she recalls the moment as if it were yesterday.

Her A-level years in the mid-1970s were a blur, notable mainly for the long hours she spent hanging around the opera house in Covent Garden, "sleeping on the pavement and queueing for tickets". An unconditional offer from drama school hardly helped her academic focus. "It was disastrous!" she says with a grin. "After that, I just spent my whole time here in the audience."

After college she worked briefly with Sir Ian McKellen's Actors' Company, before landing what seemed like a dream job at the BBC. "It was outdoor stage management and I thought it would be quite fun but I absolutely loathed it," she says with sudden and surprising vigour. "It was like going to a factory churning out programmes. I didn't find it creative at all."

The era was also clouded by the death of her father, which, she says, had a profound effect on how she felt when walking into the building.

But it pushed her ever closer to the world of ballet and, when an acquaintance of her mother taught her to read a musical score with a view to prompting ballet, a job offer soon followed as a junior stage manager with the London Festival Ballet, now known as the English National Ballet.

There she stayed for 11 years, before leaving to stage manage the dancer Michael Clark's tour to Japan in 1990 ("A fabulous dancer, but wild," she adds cryptically). By then Peter Schaufuss, her former director at the ENB, had moved to the Berlin Deutsche Oper Ballet, also taking several dancers and backstage staff to Germany with him, and it wasn't long before her phone rang. With her husband and young son Tom, she moved to Berlin for three and a half years. "It was the year after the wall came down, a brilliant time to be there," she says fondly.

Yet she was also lucky to leave Germany alive after being hit by a car while crossing the road with Tom, then aged eight. "There was a huge road outside the theatre, six lanes, and I was going back to my rehearsal. And just as we walked into the road a wasp stung me," she says, waving an arm breezily, as if recalling some minor irritation, "and then I got hit."

Thankfully she managed to fling her son to safety, but in doing so suffered serious leg injuries that required a long period of rehabilitation. Her damaged knee has held out for nearly 20 years, but she is hoping to have it replaced later this year. "It's very boring," she says modestly. "The main problem is trying to fit the surgery in."

After returning to London and having problems resettling her family, she had almost given up on a backstage career and was looking at moving into arts management when the Royal Ballet called to ask if she could deputise for their stage manager, who was ill.

That was in 1994 and since then she hasn't looked back. "It was like coming back to where I belong, all the nights camping out on the pavement here, and so many nights here watching performances," she says, "and then to end up on the other side ..." The words tail away as if she still can't quite believe it.

Upstairs, she takes me on a brief tour of the rehearsal studios and "prop shops", where designers are sculpting oversized teacups out of plaster and polystyrene for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In one studio sits a giant mushroom-cum-slide, built for the scene where Alice meets the caterpillar. Making sure the sets actually work is a key concern, so she's a regular visitor to this production playground. "I love coming up here," she admits.

Another ? curiously Alice-like ? door bearing a sign stating "violators will be shot" leads to the armoury, a key department in the opera house's often military-heavy productions. Various theatrical guns, swords and items of weaponry line the narrow walls, and we stop to admire a craftsman carving intricate heart shapes into a steel pike.

For now, though, Adams Farley has plenty on her plate, not just with Swan Lake, Giselle and Alice but also a four-night run of Romeo and Juliet at the O2 in June, the first time the company has performed in a UK arena and another sign of ballet's burgeoning popularity.

Amid all the upheaval of the ever-changing schedules, I wonder how often she finds herself playing a pastoral role, as well as an organisational one.

"We do all of that, yes," she says, sighing slightly. "There are egos ? but, you know, we've all been together so long. Sometimes one can have a run-in with someone ... but that's really not very often. I think dancers are a special bunch of people, very undemanding in a way that actors can be."

And with that, she darts off again, back to her world of props and rehearsing swans.

Curriculum vitae

Pay According to Equity, annual salaries for stage managers working in large theatres start in the �31,000-�36,000 range. But these are basic rates and may differ.

Hours From about 9.30am to 7pm when there is no performance, but on show nights she could be there until after midnight.

Work-life balance "I'm not supposed to do it but it can sometimes be 14 days on the trot ? but I love it. My husband is an ex-principal dancer here. He's older than I am, but obviously he understands the life so he's incredibly supportive."

Highs "Over the years I've worked with the greatest designers and choreographers. And we don't do the same show every night, so every day is a challenge."

Lows "When something does go wrong which, touch wood, is not very often."

Overtime

Johanna is an armchair sports fanatic and stayed up into the night watching Ashes cricket and Australian Open tennis this winter. She's also a Chelsea season ticket holder. Johanna has a house in south-west France and last year bussed in some of the Royal Ballet company to put on a special performance for villagers: 'I'm supposedly trying to organise another one for this year, that's if I'm not watching cricket or tennis.' Johanna has recently taken up silversmithing: 'That's why I'm so fascinated by what they do in the armoury.'

Graham Snowdon

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