Dancers and singers are people who live, work and play in music. Music surrounds them, in rehearsal and on stage. It’s the sea in which they swim. 

Dance Gazette visits the Royal Opera House in London to ask a singer and a dancer about working with music. Ruzan Mantashyan, the Armenian soprano was singing Mimi in La Bohème while the Royal Ballet principal Anna Rose O’Sullivan was dancing in Manon and preparing for Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. (O’Sullivan previously won the RAD’s Phyllis Bedells Bursary and was a finalist in the Genée International Ballet Competition.)

We ask these two remarkable artists how they respond to music, how they take it inside themselves and what difference a conductor and orchestra can make to the way they perform.

Interview by David Jays and produced by Sarah Myles.