Keep dancing: the ballet stars leaping through the age barrier

Their bodies hurt, the roles are drying up and everyone’s comparing them with their younger selves. So how do ballerinas maintain their careers after hitting 40? Wendy Whelan (48) and Alessandra Ferri (52) reveal all

“I felt I’d outgrown my shoes,” says Wendy Whelan. “My mind had expanded beyond what was being asked of me.” When Whelan retired from New York City Ballet last year, the art form lost one of its most incisive, poetic and adventurous ballerinas. Yet classical ballet’s loss has been contemporary dance’s gain. Far from retiring altogether, 48-year-old Whelan is simply moving on – to experiment with a new kind of language.

I'm not as I was at 28, except that I now have all this confidence, power and wisdom

The passion was so pure it gave me the strength to work through the physical difficulties and the pain

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