Ballet Beauty Secrets: Principal Lauren Cuthbertson Reveals All

On Tuesday afternoon Principal ballet dancer Lauren Cuthbertson experienced perhaps the most unique and memorable curtain call of her career. As the red fabric dropped on a school matinee performance of Swan Lake - her audience was mostly comprised of wide-eyed and adoring seven-to-eleven-year-olds - Cuthbertson looked to the wings and saw her one-year-old daughter Peggy being held by the show's director. She scooped her little girl into her arms and took her in font of the velvet to see her delighted audience. 'What a lucky girl to be so loved by her ballet family,' Cuthbertson wrote on Instagram.

At 37 Cutbertson lives on Portobello Road with her partner Matty and Peggy, and has an illustrious dancing career that spans nearly twenty years under her belt. Cuthbertson has assumed nearly every iconic ballet role going, from The Nutcracker's Sugar Plum Fairy, to Alice in Alice in Wonderland, Hermione in The Winter's Tale and Jaqueline du Pré in The Cellist, and she knows what it takes to get into character. Her secret weapon? Scent. So it's more than apt that Cutbertson has recently collaborated with renowned perfume house Creed and appears in the campaign for their brand new scent Wind Flowers Eau de Parfum.

On Her Earliest Memories Of Ballet

'I was three-years-old and my mum had heard of a strict ballet teacher who was famed for instilling discipline and good posture into their pupils. I was quite a happy-go-lucky child, and quite naughty and my mum thought it would be a good way for me start socialising before I went to school. I was captivated right away, my mum said it was like watching a duck take to water. I'm still so grateful for that moment. I've never looked back.'

On Forging A Career In Ballet

'When you ask a young girl who loves ballet what she wants to be when she's older, she says a ballerina, but you have no concept of what that really means at that age. I remember being around 12-years-old at the Royal Ballet School. I used to read about how Margot Fontaine was plucked from obscurity at the age of 13 to perform in Swan Lake, but I had no concept of what training entailed, the endless discipline required of a professional ballet dancer. Despite that, though, I wanted it. I really wanted it.'

On The Realities Of Training

'It's relentless but that's the nature of the job. You know that if you don't do it, for even a few days, you'll be rusty. It's a high maintenance career, you can never take your foot off the pedal. In the lead-up to a big show, for example, I'm thinking about it every single minute of every day. I'll be listening to the music, darning my shoes on the tube, at the studio for some conditioning, before ballet classes start at 10.30 AM every day. Peak rehearsal time follows at 12. You rehearse for around an hour and a half, to two hours and a half. Training is a 9 to 5 job, minimum.'

On Getting Into Character

'Tactics differ from ballet dancer to ballet dancer, but I've always used scent to get into character. As ballet dancers we use our body to express a character that transcends words, and scent does the same thing. Scent conjures up memories in me, nostalgia, different moods - it's why the collaboration with Creed was so apt, and so authentic for me. Scent is something that's helped me a lot in my career in the last decade. Everything comes together, the costume, the make-up, the music, the scent I've chosen. You feel like you're wearing a different personality.'

On Her Favourite Ballet Roles To Date

'I'll always love The Nutcracker, the Tchaikovsky score is insane. Every year it comes around and each time it feels even more magical. It never feels like a chore, despite the fact we perform it so often. It's beautiful, and incredibly tough stamina wise. I love the challenge of it, I aim each year to make it look easier and easier. I love how the role has grown with me over the years too. And then on another note, there's something like The Cellist, we premiered it two years ago and it was the last ballet I performed before the pandemic. Hopefully we'll do it again soon. And I have to mention one more - Alice In Wonderland. That was magical.'

On Ballet Make-Up

'You're initially left to your own devices when it comes to make-up. I look back now at photos of me in make-up when I was younger and I think "wow, I had no idea what I was doing!". Nowadays I work closely with whoever's doing my hair and make-up, but I still try to have a go myself. I have a bit of a play and then they go in and really perfect it.'

On Go-To Ballet Beauty Buys

'Well, I don't know if this counts but we use haemorrhoid cream quite regularly, we apply it to corns on our feet and it numbs them. I'm a big fan of cleansing oil too, any oil really. I have a pot of the stuff and I use it to sweep away all that show make-up at the end of the day. My go-to at the moment is Votary's Cleansing Oil Rose Geranium & Apricot, £45.'

On Self-Care

'A good sleep, for a start. And then the rest of my self-care is quite high-maintenance. I need a massage, I need a lovely healthy home-cooked meal. Nowadays I feel so drained after a big show. You have this huge high during its run but afterwards the low is huge. It's not something that I can sugarcoat. Self-care at that stage is essential. I do things like giving myself a facial in the bathroom in front of Peggy, my daughter. She loves to see it, she gets so enthusiastic about it. I hope when she's older she'll still be so fascinated by it that she'll want to give me facials.'

Main image credit: Instagram @londonballerina

Shop: Creed Wind Flowers Eau de Parfum