Chatting to Limelight on the phone, the gently spoken Polunin, now 26, says that he has only watched Dancer once – “and I was tricked into it by David LaChapelle,” he adds with a little laugh. “They wanted to find out what I’m thinking about it so they were really clever how they managed it. Actually, I did watch it once before but then it wasn’t the full version.”

Asked if it captures an emotion he was feeling at the time, he says he “wasn’t really that connected with it. I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t really even listen to the song that much. I was ready to move on, you know. I wanted to become an actor, I wanted to go to acting school and I just wanted to be done with it [dance]. For me, the quicker [the better]. Let’s do it, my last dance. And I completely trusted to Jade and to David’s vision.” Millions have raved about it.
As for Polunin himself, he says: “I don’t like watching myself. I thought I could have done better. You watch it from a professional point of view. I think visually it was stunning. Dance-wise, I could do better.”

Osipova has been “a big part of me going on with dancing”, he says. “She keeps me in shape and keeps me dancing. Meeting Natalia [during Giselle] was the reason for me dancing. I was out of shape so I almost died then! But she kept me going because I was doing it for her.”

He admits that for a classical dancer, it has been hard to adjust to contemporary dance. “I feel it in my hips and back. I say to her at the beginning, ‘this is painful!’ but then you get used to it and it’s enjoyable. It took me a lot longer. A ballet I can learn in one day, two days, but contemporary I have to try and get used to the style so it’s more time. I was doing it for Natalia. Thanks to her experience in that world, I found out it’s a huge world, contemporary dance, that I didn’t know about before.”
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Asked if he’s open to doing more contemporary work, he says: “I wouldn’t mind to do a combination. Before, I would say ‘no’. I was very much classical but now I’m open to anything.”