Philippa Gordon left Billericay at the tender age of 11 when she achieved every girls' dream and was awarded a place at the Royal Ballet School.

"It was a boarding school" she remembers. "Being away was really hard, but I came home every weekend."

That's not to say she didn't enjoy being at the school. "I knew it was where I wanted to be," she says firmly.

Philippa, 28, whose parents still live in the town in Mountnessing Road, was one of the talented few who stayed at the Royal Ballet throughout the lower and upper schools.

"By the end there were only three or four of us from the original intake of 25 or 30," she remembers. "They get rid of an awful lot. It can be for different reasons. At that age your body changes and some were too tall or too short, or their body shape was wrong." At just over 5ft 5ins tall Philippa is an average height for a ballerina.

Now she has moved away from the Royal Ballet, where she has danced in all the company's major productions for the past eight years, and joined Adventures in Motion Pictures, where choreographer Matthew Bourne has set the theatres alive with his radical reworking of classic ballets.

For re-working, read total change of story, contemporary ideas and astoundingly imaginative use of classical music.

"I've always been interested in Matthew's work," explains Philippa. "I had been at the Royal Ballet for seven years - I enjoyed it to the end - but could tell I would get no further.

"I could have had safe a job for my career but felt I'd rather leave while I'd got good memories."

She joined AMP for Cinderella last year, "Matthew set it in the Bitz", and is dancing this year in Swan Lake.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is not the tights and tutu version usually seen. In his, the swans are all danced by men. The story is modern, and some might say satirical, it is packed with wit and dynamic dancing as well as having a crystal-clear storyline that isn't lost in symbolism.

In the show Philippa plays three parts. She's a party girl in a sleazy night club where, believe it or not, they boogie to Tchikovsky. She's a German princess at the palace who, like every other woman there, falls for a tall dark and swan-like stranger and she is a moth maiden.

The moth appears in a ballet within the ballet, which is the only time you get a glimpse of a man in tights or a pair of beribboned legs.

The moth is Philippa's main role. "It's fantastic," she says of the hugely comic role.

"It is a parody of what I've done before, and there's a fine line between a send-up and just looking like you're dancing badly. It's quite hard.

"That's where Matthew is fantastic - he has great vision. He gives you the information you need for what he wants.

"It's great fun; I love making people laugh. There is an awful lot of humour in Swan Lake which draws people in.

"They don't feel they have to learn anything. Ballet is often thought of as elitist, which it shouldn't be."

Matthew Bourne's Swan lake has picked up the nick-name the Gay Swan Lake. How does Philippa, who will marry Robert Marsh in August, feel about that?

"I feel it's a soulmate thing," she says of the scene where the rejected, humiliated and suicidal prince meets the beautiful swan. "The prince is looking for a way out of a horrible situation. Everyone would like to make a connection like that.

"All the men who play the swan are straight anyway! It's not an overly camp show."

Philippa started dancing when she was three, with Mrs Melia in the community hall in South Green. From there she went to the Weston School of Dancing in Chelmsford, where she was recommended for private lessons with Elizabeth Twistington-Higgins, a talented dancer who caught polio at 18 leaving her paralysed from the neck down.

The lessons were conducted thorugh another dancer, part of a troupe which performed routines choreographed by the late Miss Twistington-Higgins.

It was Miss Twistington-Higgins who suggested that Philippa should audition for the junior associates of the Royal Ballet, from where she went on to audition for the Royal Ballet School.

"I really, really wanted to get in," remembers Philippa. "My parents were very supportive, the only pressure was from myself."

Every year at the Royal Ballet School the youngsters were assessed. "The only year we weren't assessed was the 4th year when we had GCSEs.

"As I got older I began to feel it. Towards the end I managed to convince my mum that I wouldn't get through. It takes its toll.

For now Philippa is very happy to stay with Adventures in Motion Pictures, where she is a dance captain, teaching classes and taking rehearsals.

"It's a smaller company," she explains. "There are 40 dancers, it's more personal. Physically the dancing is better for me, we don't have the kind of constraints I had before.

It's healthier, not forcing the body. It's kinder, more nuturing."

Swan Lake continues its run at the Dominion Theatre, London until March 11, then it heads off on a European tour from April until mid-July.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.