Francesca Hayward

Francesca Hayward is an English Principal of The Royal Ballet whose combination of lyrical refinement, dramatic intelligence and musical sensitivity has made her one of the company’s defining artists of her generation. The official Royal Ballet and Opera biography states that she trained at The Royal Ballet School, graduated into the Company during the 2010/11 Season, and was promoted quickly through the ranks to First Artist in 2013, Soloist in 2014, First Soloist in 2015 and Principal in 2016.

Born in Nairobi, Hayward trained first with Valerie LeServe in Sussex before entering The Royal Ballet School, where she studied from 2003 to 2011. Her student years were already marked by notable distinction: she won the 2009 Lynn Seymour Award for Expressive Dance, the 2010 Young British Dancer of the Year, and both the silver medal and Audience Choice Award at the 2010 Genée International Ballet Competition. Shortly after joining the Company, she also represented The Royal Ballet at the 2012 International Competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize.

Her repertory with The Royal Ballet shows unusual breadth, encompassing major classical heroines, deeply characterised dramatic roles and leading parts in contemporary work. The official biography includes Cinderella, Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy, Juliet, Manon, Giselle, Princess Aurora, Alice, Swanilda, Tatiana, Titania, Perdita, Mary Vetsera, Vera and other principal roles across both the nineteenth-century canon and modern repertory. It also records her creation of Tita in Like Water for Chocolate alongside roles in Prima, The Dante Project, Woolf Works, Morgen, Untouchable and Flight Pattern.

Hayward’s awards after joining the Company underline how quickly her artistic impact was recognised: she won Best Emerging Artist at the 2014 Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards and Best Female Dancer there in 2016 and again in 2019. Alongside her stage career she also reached a broader audience through film, but within the ballet world her reputation rests on a rare blend of softness, dramatic openness and technical control that allows her to move persuasively between story ballet and contemporary creation.