In 2018, Rojo endured a brief but volatile media storm alleging a culture of verbal abuse and a hostile working environment amidst claims that ENB had lost a third of its dancers in two years. Media criticism also focused on her relationship with Hernández raising accusations of a conflict of interests.

Although deeply upset at the time, Rojo has clearly adjusted her mindset to the realities of such criticism. “It goes with the territory. If you are going to stand up and be a leader you have got to take this kind of stuff. What I can say is that I will leave ENB with a tremendous array of talented dancers who seem very happy in their work and with their future. I’m always willing to be criticised for my work; that is right and fair, especially in any organisation that enjoys public funding. But I don’t agree when it becomes personal and journalists comment about my age and whether it is appropriate or not that I should date someone younger.

When it becomes personal it affects you at a different level but that’s the world in which we live right now. There are no limits (she thinks carefully about what words to use) and so it’s not easy…I certainly don’t enjoy it. It affected me and the people close to me. The worst thing is that such personal scrutiny can make good people – especially women – decide that they don’t want that level of interference, or it prevents them from being outspoken. They don’t want to fight for certain issues because part of the British press will attack you with whatever excuse they can find. And not necessarily because of the issue that they are portraying but because they want to undermine your role or shut you down completely so that, for example, you don’t continue to lobby for public funding of the arts, against the effects of Brexit or whatever. So, I’m perfectly aware that if you put your head above the parapet people might shoot at you but I worry that this will deter other people from becoming leaders in our sector.”

The experience appears to have made Rojo more resilient and she has defiantly kept her personal life separate from her public persona. “As a leader I don’t want to be tougher. I want to be open to people’s opinions and to be able to share my thoughts without being terrified of them being taken out of context so that they become the last public sentence I will ever utter. We’re in the territory now where we see that happening. People share an opinion about a current subject, whatever that might be, and suddenly their entire careers are in jeopardy and that’s an issue we need to consider carefully if we are not going to lose fantastic people.”

We have known Rojo the dancer for 25 years and Rojo the director for a decade but Rojo the choreographer is a new phenomenon. I asked why she waited so long. “My priority was always to enable other people to have opportunities to create dance fit for the 21st Century.

I always saw my role as an enabler but when I decided to commission a new interpretation of Raymonda I found it difficult to recruit a suitable choreographer. And then somebody suggested that my ideas about what I wanted were so clear that perhaps I should do it myself. At that time I had been in the company for over seven years and so I felt that maybe I could take on this new challenge.”

Raymonda premiered in January 2022 and led to a second commission, to make a new Cinderella for Royal Swedish Ballet. Rojo had known the company’s director, Nicolas Le Riche, a former étoile at the Paris Opera Ballet, since she was sixteen. “He came to my company in Madrid, and I had the privilege of pressing play and stop on the cassette during his rehearsals,” she recalled with a laugh. Le Riche asked if she could recommend someone to choreograph this new Cinderella. “He was particularly looking for a woman who could choreograph in the classical language and I sent him a list. Then Nicolas discovered that I was making Raymonda and he said ‘but you are a choreographer ’ and I replied ‘not yet, I’m only talking about it.’” However, Le Riche was keen and Rojo realised that it was an incredible opportunity to refine her craft. “It was also an opportunity to give ENB a break from me and it felt like it could be beneficial to experience what it would be like to work in another organisation and understand how their creative process happens. And, so I said yes before I could think about it.” Rojo’s second full-length ballet inside five months opened at the Royal Swedish Opera House on 25th May 2022.

Rojo is uncertain about whether she will continue as a choreographer in San Francisco. “I have a lot of learning to do first. To really get to know an organisation you need time inside it and that will be my first priority: understanding it properly, developing my vision about what I believe ballet can be by diversifying the voices and the stories that we tell and the way that they are told; and inviting different audiences into our art form. I need to understand how my ideas fit in a different culture on a different continent. And that is going to take time.”