Viv Hardwick talks to Birmingham Royal Ballet first soloist Andrea Tredinnick about 20 years of stardom and a non-dancing role at Sunderland.

ANDREA Tredinnick is initially stunned when I ask her about her long association with Birmingham Royal Ballet, where she has been a soloist or first soloist almost since the company switched from being Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and moved to the UK’s second largest city in 1990.

“It’s so hard to discuss your life because you just go along and don’t really look back. It’s only when someone asks you what the past 20 years have been like that you really think about it. I’m always focusing on what is happening next and I’m looking to retire soon and what comes next. I’m not used to looking back at what has been, if that makes sense,” says the dancer, who, ironically, is performing a non-dancing role when BRB visits Sunderland Empire for a week of the everpopular The Sleeping Beauty.

The Tchaikovsky-Petipa classic was added to BRB’s formidable production list by Sir Peter Wright, the company’s first artistic director. Tredinnick has already earned accolades for the role of the do-gooding Lilac Fairy who ensures that Princess Aurora escapes the curse of wicked fairy Carabosse.

“In some ways it’s hard because you have to sustain something just with your presence really and the way you move around the stage, but then you haven’t got the technical difficulty of getting up and dancing. I really enjoy doing the character roles now and that’s been a change of focus and something I’ve really enjoyed and another dimension,” says Tredinnick, who has performed many of the other roles in Sleeping Beauty over the years.

“It’s always been good to look around and evaluate what other people are doing and how they are fine tuning a role to make it look good,” she adds.

On her many years with BRB, Tredinnick says: “I was with Sadler’s Wells beforehand and very young and in my third year.

The move to Birmingham gave the company the opportunity to flourish. I’ve been very happy working for the company and I’ve never wanted to move because I was getting parts to dance.

“There was a point in time when I thought of going abroad to dance and then for personal reasons I didn’t and I think I made the right decision. Peter Wright promoted me first of all and I’ve been pleased to maintain that progress under David Bintley (the current artistic director).”

Retirement will bring a fascinating challenge for the dancer because her aim is to become BRB’s first ever psychologist to work with the dance company.

“I’m studying part-time while I’m dancing and want to go into sports psychology and then work with people who perform and do some teaching as well,”

explains Tredinnick who has already gained an MA in Applied Dance thanks to BRB’s education programme.

“Being a dancer and seeing how people cope with injury and performance nerves is all tied up with the psychological area. I did suffer with nerves sometimes and it’s useful knowing how nerves can be good and not so good and finding that balance. When you’re young there are no expectations. You first get to do a solo and you were previously in the corps. If you do it well it’s ‘well that was really good’, but when you’re established you have to keep that level of dance in solos and that’s when the nerves are harder,” says Tredinnick who counts her performance in George Balachine’s Serenade as her best having featured in everything from The Nutcracker to Bintley’s The Shakespeare Suite.

“I hoping to learn some tried and tested tools to help others rather than just rely on my personal experience. Everybody is different so it would be wrong for me to start using the ‘in my day’ approach because things evolve and change,” says the ballerina who feels lucky to have gained some education support from the Dancers’ Career Development Fund.

“I think I’ll be freelance in a role like this but BRB doesn’t have a psychologist attached to the company. I think a job like this is relatively new but is becoming more widely recognised. Dance follows a little behind sport in that sense.

I think it would have been helpful to me in the past to talk things through with someone like this,” she says.

Her career won’t slumber after Sleeping Beauty. The mother-of-two is already cast as Lady Capulet and The Nurse in next season’s BRB tour of Romeo and Juliet. “But I’ve done both those roles before and I’m not thinking ‘oh I must dance that one before I go’. I’m glad to be going because my body is ready to retire.”

■ The Sleeping Beauty, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Wednesday-Saturday. Box Office: 0844-847-2499.