SERGEI POLUNIN RESIGNS FROM THE ROYAL BALET

It was with con­sid­er­able sur­prise that the bal­let world received the news of the depar­ture of 21-year-old Ukrain­ian Sergei Polunin from the Royal Bal­let. He was pro­moted to prin­cipal just two years ago, and was mak­ing leaps for­ward in his career with the com­pany, includ­ing the recent live relay of The Sleep­ing Beauty with his ‘part­ner’ Lauren Cuth­bertson.

Polunin was due to appear in The Dream next week and had given no indic­a­tion in rehears­als that any­thing was amiss, said The Tele­graph, but told Royal Bal­let dir­ector Dame Mon­ica Mason today of his decision to quit.

On his Twit­ter account, @sergei_polunin, he wrote,

Just have to go through one night!!! then will make my next moves.

Dame Mon­ica said,

This has obvi­ously come as a huge shock, Sergei is a won­der­ful dan­cer and I have enjoyed watch­ing him tre­mend­ously, both on stage and in the stu­dio, over the past few years. I wish him every suc­cess in the future.”

His pro­file on Twit­ter now announces “Prin­cipal Dan­cer of?”
Polunin stud­ied at the Royal Bal­let School from the age of 13. In 2007, he joined the Royal Bal­let and was pro­moted to prin­cipal at the end of the 2009-10 sea­son, aged 19.
On 31st Decem­ber he wrote on Twitter,

2012 it’s going to be controversial 🙂

Photo: Sergei Polunin in The Sleep­ing Beauty by Johan Persson