Reece Clarke Leaps Ahead

When Reece Clarke took to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House this past June to dance the lead role of Aminta in Sylvia, his debut as a guest artist with American Ballet Theatre was much anticipated—and delayed. The Scottish dancer, a principal at London’s Royal Ballet since 2022, had been scheduled to perform with the company the previous fall in an excerpt from La Bayadère, but illness kept him confined to his hotel room for his entire trip to New York. Still, he more than made up for any lingering disappointment from his first visit this summer, performing two evenings alongside ABT’s Christine Shevchenko (and a third unscheduled night with Chloe Misseldine when her partner called in sick) with his trademark elegance, poise, and athleticism. “It was really everything I wanted it to be and more,” Clarke says. “It was an honor for me to be invited out there. They don’t have too many guest artists, so it was a real privilege to be working with them. It was always on my bucket list to go and dance with them.”

The version of Sylvia performed today was first presented in 1952 with choreography by Frederick Ashton, one of the founding choreographers of the Royal Ballet, and Clarke admits he felt some pressure dancing a British national treasure on an American stage. An evening-length classical work about the romance between the eponymous nymph and the hunter Aminta, Sylvia has a long history in London, although it is less commonly performed in the United States. The role of Aminta is of personal significance as well, as one of the early major opportunities from Clarke’s own career. “I was quite lucky where I got a lot of big three-act dramatic roles quite early on in my career, and Sylvia was one of them.” he says. “I must have been twenty-two when I had my debut. I had three shows and I was still in the corps de ballet at this point, so it was a big deal for me to step in and have a go at this tricky role.” He notes that Aminta’s entrance, a pique into an arabesque penché on an empty stage, is “probably one of the hardest male entrances for a principal I’ve found to date,” and he says he prizes the role for its “blend of heroism and lyricism.”

Clarke hadn’t danced Aminta since his debut, and he says that the opportunity to return to an early triumph helped him reflect on how he has changed as a dancer since he joined the Royal Ballet in the 2013-2014 season. “When I revisit roles now, it’s interesting,” he offers. “Back in the day, it was the physical challenge that drew me in the most. Now, I think I still need that physical challenge, but the dramatic side and more of the artistic vision are what I get the most out of personally as an artist. At this level, I feel like I trust myself enough on stage physically and with the choreography just to be present and in the moment.”

As the youngest of four brothers, Clarke was enrolled in dance classes as a young child along with his siblings after his parents exhausted the local sports classes and clubs in Airdrie, a small town just east of Glasgow. “Four boys in one house, it was a lot for my parents,” he laughs. All three of his older brothers eventually enrolled at the Royal Ballet School and, when Clarke joined them at the age of eleven, they made history as the first family of four brothers accepted to the prestigious academy. He knew early on he wanted to dance professionally, thanks largely to his brothers. “I just remember the physicality of it, watching their performances and that cliché moment of leaving the theaters, trying to do those big jumps I’d seen them do on stage,” he recalls. “My brothers were a real big motivation for me. I probably wouldn’t have admitted it to them at that point, but they really were. They forged a great path—to be accepted into the Royal Ballet School is already a huge achievement, and then to have nice dance careers. They were always a big inspiration to me.”

In his decade-plus at the Royal Ballet, Clarke has often found himself starring in evening-length works playing a prince or romantic hero, but his says he considers some of his greatest successes to be those that have pushed him outside of these traditional characters. “Symphonic Variations,“ his first principal role and another Ashton classic, is one of those. “To this day, it’s still one of the hardest ballets I’ve danced, even though it’s not super long. It’s seventeen minutes, but it’s notoriously difficult because you don’t leave the stage for those seventeen minutes,” he explains. “It’s physically one of the most exhausting—as soon as you start, you don’t stop. It’s running, jumping, turning, partnering, lifting, all while making it look super graceful. When I look back on the memories of it, it’s almost like you go into a trance-like state, a meditative state. Getting that opportunity very early on in my career, it was huge for me.”

After a childhood spent playing sports, it was only natural for Clarke to first be drawn to dance for the physical possibilities. “That’s why I was really interested,” he recalls. “How far can I push my body? It was, how high can I jump on stage, how many pirouettes can I do?” In time, he has matured into an artist who prizes the inner drama of his roles just as much, citing Des Grieux from Kenneth MacMillan’s tragic love story Manon or the titular role in John Cranko’s Onegin as particular favorites. “It’s a different kind of role for me, maybe not one that I might be expected to dance or expected to excel in,” he says of Eugene Onegin, who kills his friend in a duel after a misunderstanding and later is rejected when he declares his love to a princess. “It’s a bit darker, broodier, not so much of the nice guy, princely kind of role, and I love that. The first time I got to dance, I loved it. It was a change for me, something completely different. I didn’t see myself doing it maybe until I was much older, but I loved jumping into that story.”

Along with his performances with the Royal Ballet, Clarke has spent the last few years traveling the world performing as a guest in numerous galas and with various other companies. “Since I became principal, I’ve been pretty much going a hundred miles an hour nonstop, saying yes to every project that came in,” he laughs. Besides ABT in New York, he performed recently at La Scala in Milan and in Giselle with the Paris Opéra Ballet in October, as well as in the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens. He has been taking the opportunity to explore beyond the boundaries of ballet when possible as well. Last summer, he worked with the choreographer Russell Maliphant on a reimagining of Nijinsky’s iconic “Afternoon of a Faun” for the Charleston Festival, with costumes by Kim Jones, then the creative director of Dior Men. “It was quite contemporary, I was not just a classical dancer,” Clarke explains. “There were aspects of that, paying homage to my training, but then there was more of the contemporary, physical floor work as well and I really loved that. It’s something that was new for me. I was a bit hesitant, but Russell really was so keen to just explore together. That’s where the solo came from, us making material together in studio. I really love that idea of collaborating not only with other dancers, but across artistic careers, like working with other musicians, working with designers and other creatives. I feel like there’s a lot of ideas that I’d love to explore on that front as well.”

As Clarke has become one of the most celebrated male ballet dancers performing today, he has taken up a role in some ways as an ambassador for his art. Whether sitting front row at a Burberry fashion show or having his likeness painted recently on the Sky Arts competition series Portrait Artist of the Year, Clarke recognizes the position he holds in expanding interest in ballet amidst funding cuts and audiences whose attentions have been stretched thin. “Even though ballet is a centuries-old art form, a performance offers something irreplaceable,” he says. “For those few hours, it’s an audience, everyone backstage, and the dancers on stage sharing that moment in time and creating something so special that unless you were there in that moment, you might not experience it. Even though it’s centuries old, the themes that we explore—love, loss, joy, they’re timeless. We all experience them and can relate to them in our lives. I think it’s so important to have this space and this art form to continuously push it to current audiences and new audiences, especially in these difficult times everyone’s experiencing around the world, as a form of almost therapy. It’s kind of therapeutic; you can just go and sit in the theater and it can make you feel a certain way and it can make you reflect or think about things and put things into perspective for you.”

Reece performs on December 5 in The Nutcracker at the Royal Ballet, London.