Marianela Núñez, ballerina

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Marianela Núñez is a Principal dancer of the Royal Ballet and Opera. Born in Argentina in 1982, Marianela knew she wanted to be a ballet dancer from the age of five and joined the Teatro Colón Ballet School in Buenos Aires when she was eight.

She dedicated herself to becoming a professional ballerina and had the full support of her parents despite having to leave home at fifteen to join the Royal Ballet in the UK. After spending a year at the Royal Ballet School and learning English from watching episodes of Friends, she joined the corps de ballet and worked her way up the company to become Principal Dancer. She has danced the lead roles in the ballet repertoire on the London stage and around the world as a guest artist. In 2018, she celebrated her 20th anniversary with the Royal Ballet with a performance of lead roles in Giselle, The Winter’s Tale, Manon, Marguerite and Armand, and Swan Lake in her anniversary year. Director of The Royal Ballet Kevin O’Hare called her “one of the greats of her generation”. Marianela has many awards for her dancing including the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance in 2013. She lives in London with her two cats.

DISC ONE: Adíos Nonino (“Goodbye Grandad”) - Astor Piazzolla DISC TWO: Hoy Puede Ser Un Gran Dia (“Today Could Be a Great Day”) - Joan Manuel Serrat DISC THREE: Dancing Queen - ABBA DISC FOUR: Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen DISC FIVE: Tchaikovsky: The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66, TH 13 / Act 1: 8a. Pas d'action: Introduction (Andante) - Adagio ("Rose Adagio") Performed by The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Mark Ermler DISC SIX: Adam: Giselle / Act 2: Lever du soleil et arrivée de la cour. Performed by The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Richard Bonynge DISC SEVEN: Count on Me - Bruno Mars DISC EIGHT: I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash

BOOK CHOICE: The Collected Works of Jorge Luis Borges LUXURY ITEM: A cashmere blanket CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Tchaikovsky: The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66, TH 13 / Act 1: 8a. Pas d'action: Introduction (Andante) - Adagio ("Rose Adagio") Performed by The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Mark Ermler

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I want to tell you why I love podcasting.
0:04.7	Hi, my name's Tommy Dixon, and I make podcasts for the BBC.
0:08.4	I'm a big fan of stories, always loved a good book.
0:11.4	But when I started commuting for my first job, I discovered podcasts.
0:15.4	I was blown away by how a creative idea and the right mixture of sounds could take you into
0:19.2	a whole new world full of incredible stories. You know, the type that make you go, wow. And that kind of inspired me to
0:25.2	give it a go myself, which, to cut a long story short, led to a BBC training scheme and a whole
0:30.0	new career giving other people that exact same feeling. So if you want to hear amazing stories
0:34.2	that make you go wow like I did, they're just a tap or click away on BBC Sounds.
0:40.8	BBC Sounds Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island
0:47.2	Discs podcast. Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want
0:52.8	to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:56.3	And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
1:01.0	I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the dancer Marianella Nunez.
1:27.3	One of the leading lights of her art form,
1:29.4	she is principal dancer at the Royal Ballet Company, with whom she's spent a remarkable 26 years.
1:35.6	She calls them her family. Her performances have earned her the nickname, the Queen of Covengarten.
1:41.4	She started dancing when she was still a toddler and by the age of five,
1:45.0	she'd set her heart on classical ballet. When she wasn't in the studio, she was watching VHS copies
1:50.5	of Royal Ballet performances and dreaming of her chance to join the company. She started dancing
1:56.3	at home in Argentina when she was still a toddler. At 15 years old, she moved to London on her own
2:02.0	to pursue that dream, and despite speaking no English, quickly rose through the ranks to become
	...

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