Cats star Francesca Hayward on fear, lockdown dancing and her return to the stage

The ballerina stars in a stylish short film made in isolation and is about to perform at the Royal Opera House after months away ‘Having an extended period off is incredibly valuable for longevity’ … Francesca Hayward. Photograph: Masatoshi Okauchi/Rex/Shutterstock She has become one of the UK’s best known ballerinas thanks to her roles with the Royal Ballet and as Victoria the white kitten in Tom Hooper’s Cats movie. But Francesca Hayward’s new performance, filmed in lockdown, is about how it has felt to not perform at all during the Covid-19 pandemic. Hayward is one of five dancers in a new short film, Where We Are, choreographed by and co-starring Rambert’s Hannah Rudd. The stylish black-and-white piece, released online on Thursday morning, “captures our thoughts and feelings at being unable to perform, unable to create”, says Hayward. “But also going deeper, for me, it allowed me to express my fears and concerns for my family and their health.” Hayward has already shared a number of short dance videos during lockdown in which she duets with her partner, Cesar Corrales – a first soloist at the Royal Ballet – so she is used to self-filming. Her contribution to Where We Are was recorded on her iPhone. The film was co-created by the producer-director Anthoula Syndica-Drummond and Royal Ballet dancer Alexander Campbell, who also appears alongside Clemmie Sveaas and Jeffrey Cirio. With the five dancers filming themselves at home, one of the major challenges was matching the lighting and frame sizes, says Campbell, who has known Rudd since they were at the Royal Ballet school. To match Rudd’s choreography, which he says has a “wonderful honesty and humanity”, an original music score was commissioned from composer Sophie Cotton and played by violinist Naomi Burrell.