ART & CULTURE
Like many expats, Fernando Montaño came to the UK for work. Probably unlike many expats though, he was 14 years old and took a route from his home in Colombia to ballet school in Cuba with stops at the world-famous La Scala in Milan and a convent in Turin. Now he’s a high-profile soloist with the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden, a charity patron and an activist. As with any truly epic travel tale, it was quite an odyssey for a young man and one that took many twists and turns before he found himself settled and calling London home. Sitting opposite me relaying the story in a café on a wintry London morning in January, it’s hard to imagine the journey he’s been on but easy to understand the success he’s now enjoying. Montaño is chatty and open and seems to have all the time in the world for a leisurely breakfast.
In fact, it’s lucky to catch him in person at all as he’s on a sabbatical from the Royal Ballet for the 2018/2019 season and hav- ing time off to him seems to mean packing his schedule more than ever. Emails are ex- changed for a few months looking for a time to meet or even video call between his many projects around the world before an opportunity opens at short notice. A day after we meet he’s off to Los Angeles where a film about the story of his life is in production and after that Montaño heads to Colombia to dance in the Teatro Colón’s opera buffa production of Barroco Travel. “It’s a new opera, created in Italy, with the music of Vivaldi and oth- ers. It’s familiar music but a new story,” he explains. Te work and its tale of immigra- tion couldn’t be a timelier theme today, es- pecially for Montaño. “After Colombia, we’ll have a recording of the performance
and hope to bring it to other countries,” he says of his wish to bring the perform- ance to London. So how did London come to be home to this rising star of the ballet world? Montaño says he initially wanted to be a footballer but after seeing a ballet per- formance on TV he was captivated. At 14 he applied to, and was accepted by, the prestigious Cuban National Ballet School in Havana. “It was a very differ- ent way of living and even thinking. It was the time of the embargo and there were food shortages. I would find myself waiting for the bus for hours just to get to class,” he remembers. Te host family he was living with were welcoming ini- tially but while it soon turned difficult, Montaño didn’t dare tell his parents “be- cause they would’ve made me come home and I really didn’t want to leave
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FOCUS The Magazine 11
©ROH, 2013. Ph. Bill Cooper
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