Wayne didn’t get on with his stepfather and dance became his refuge.Īll these years on, he is visibly moved by the dancers on Big Ballet, and the thwarted dreams which so easily could have been his story. That sense of being an outsider was perpetuated by his lack of height. ‘My mother was protecting me,’ he says, such was the stigma attached to a child born out of wedlock.
When his mother married, Wayne was kept out of the wedding photographs. Sleep was the illegitimate son of a waitress, born in Plymouth, and moved with his family to Hartlepool when he was three. He is mentioned three times in the stage version of Billy Elliot as being the inspiration for the fictional Billy, a working-class boy from the North East. Hey chose contemporary dance for their performance to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, and they glided across the stageĮventually Ashton, choreographer Sir Kenneth Mac- Millan and Rudolph Nureyev all created roles for him. But then his talent was recognised by choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton. He had to study a year longer than everyone else because he could not get a place in a ballet company. He was there from the age of 12 and as everybody else carried on growing he came to a halt. Sleep was the shortest dancer to be admitted to the Royal Ballet School.
If you consider Sleep’s lack of height - he is 5ft 2in - you can understand why he identifies with his dancers’ struggle. Well, we can attempt it at least.īig Ballet is a surprisingly touching cross between reality show and documentary. Sleep is doing it again with a new Channel 4 show, Big Ballet, where he and dancer Monica Loughman take 16 big ladies and two men - ranging in size from 12 to 20 and in age from 19 to 52 - who couldn’t live out their dreams of becoming ballerinas or ballet dancers and show that no matter what your size, we are all capable of dancing gracefully.
The graceful princess had dreamed as a child of becoming a ballerina at the Royal Ballet
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