The next day I climb four steep flights of stairs to arrive breathless at the London attic flat where he is staying. That’s good, she said, because Polunin hates talking about ballet. She asked if we could meet because the dancer “is looking to explain his recent activity on social media”. Last week, I received an email from Tatiana Tokareva, Polunin’s manager. This is the man who walked out of the Royal Ballet eight years ago, aged only 21, when he was already being compared to Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. It was a supreme act of self-sabotage – but by no means his first. The bad boy of ballet lost virtually everything – acting and modelling jobs, a Ted talk, sponsorship. In January, the Paris Opera Ballet announced it had fired the Ukrainian, just after announcing it had hired him to play the lead in Swan Lake. When the Royal Ballet’s youngest ever principal dancer praised Vladimir Putin and showed off his chest tattoo of the Russian president, told his male colleagues that they’d better man up and suggested that fat people needed a slap, he pretty much alienated the whole world. It is four months since Sergei Polunin used Instagram to destroy his career. In an exclusive interview, he talks about the joy of self-sabotage – and his Vladimir Putin tattoo He was sacked from the Paris Opera Ballet after homophobic and sexist online rants.
