Ecosse: Billy the kids

“I don’t know why it happened. There were no ballet dancers in our family before,” says Ann, 45, daughter of a shop worker and painter/decorator, who first introduced three-year-old Ross to dance classes to encourage social skills. “They were just normal boys, climbing walls, playing football, same as everybody else — except they loved to dance.”

Robert, 48, is the son of a miner. He still can’t work out where it all went right. “I’m just waiting on some genetics company coming in and giving us a bit of sponsorship,” he jokes. “I used to play football, so I know about training regimes. But a day in the life of a classical ballet dancer is totally different. They’re using muscles I didn’t even know existed.”

The humour masks an arduous struggle. Where Billy Elliot danced against the backdrop of the miners’ strike, Ross Clarke — now 23 and working professionally for Ballet Arizona — got his first break in London just as Lanarkshire’s steel industry was imploding. His father, made redundant after 18 years as a production foreman at Airdrie’s Imperial Tube Works, was still getting used to a new job with Motorola when he was involved in a head-on car crash in 1999. Severe spinal injuries meant he’d never work again — even today he finds sustained walking difficult without painkillers. As his sons’ horizons expanded, Robert’s seemed to shrink.

“It was a long time ago and you can’t lie back and cry about it,” says Ann stoically, having scrimped and saved to help pay for London living expenses on top of her younger boys’ dance classes. “If you’ve got a family you’ve got to work together and make the most of what you’ve got.”

What they’ve got doesn’t amount to much in material terms: a cramped three-bedroom semi and a limited income from Robert’s disability benefits. But the London school offered full scholarships, and as each brother followed the trail blazed by Ross, neighbours and local businesses chipped in to help finance the overheads of tuition, travel and equipment. Even the home secretary got involved.

“The story of the Clarke brothers is a remarkable one,” says John Reid, the family’s MP, who oversees a trust fund for the boys and shares their working-class Lanarkshire roots. “There are only 12 places for entrants into the Royal Ballet school each year, so to have one son with the talent needed would be a rare feat — to have four is exceptional. We all take great pride in their achievements.”

One particularly proud onlooker is Janice Ridley, the teacher who nurtured their first faltering dance steps across the studio of her large Victorian house in nearby Coatbridge. “You wait a lifetime to get one pupil with this talent, but I’ve ended up with all of them,” she says, clearly delighted. “Often with boys it only takes some teasing at school and you lose them. But these boys have been encouraged to be a wee bit individual.”

Russell, currently embarking on his final year at the school, recalls that sporadic name-calling in the playground was more than outweighed by the hidden benefits of dance classes. “I was the only boy among lots of girls — it was like, take your pick!” says the 18-year-old, who is also a karate expert. “They should advertise it like that: put your son in dance class and get him a girlfriend.”

Like Ross, he spent five years at the Dance School of Scotland in Knightswood, Glasgow, before auditioning at the age of 16 for the Royal Ballet school. Now living with his girlfriend Claire (a ballerina) in London, he dances from 9am to 6pm in studios adjoining the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The coming year is a key opportunity for him to find work with a professional company.

Both older brothers dispense advice to their aspiring younger siblings at the lower school — housed in an 18th-century hunting lodge in Richmond Park. One year in, 12-year-old Ryan has already appeared at Buckingham Palace with members of the Royal Ballet Company and taken small roles in Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.

“Being on stage feels really good,” he says. “You just want to keep dancing all the time, you don’t want to go off. You’ve got to be flexible and strong. Boys tend to do the more powerful stuff such as jumping and spinning.”

Reece, the youngest at 11, will now join his brothers after undergoing his own Billy Elliot moment. “I was really nervous waiting for the letter,” he confesses. “I thought I did well in the two auditions, but I wasn’t sure. When it came I could hardly open the envelope.”

Ann admits to being relieved on several fronts. “Psychologically it must have been hard for Reece knowing his three brothers had gone through it,” she says. “I’m just glad it all worked out.”

The Royal Ballet school, which is determined to attract entrants from across society, was delighted to be able to complete a quartet of Clarke brothers. “They’re a very nice family, but we’d never have accepted Reece just because he was a Clarke,” says the marketing secretary, Anna Penton. “He was accepted on his merits.”

Gaining entrance is just the beginning of the hard work. Every year each student is reassessed to see if he still merits a place. Entry to the upper school is particularly difficult as the competition becomes global.

Robert and Ann have decided to travel down by sleeper each weekend to see their sons — courtesy of sponsorship from First ScotRail — but are determined to be supportive without being overprotective. “When you see your kids happy within a place, when they’ve worked their wee butts off to get there, then to me they’re living their dream. You can’t ask for anything else as a parent.”

In the meantime they will continue their immersion in the strange world of pliés, pirouettes and leotards, getting along to shows when they can afford it. “Basically we learnt about classical ballet from our kids,” says Robert. “It’s been a steep learning curve, but we’ve got better educated the more they got into it.”

Even more uninitiated is their first and eldest son, also called Robert — the only one who has followed a more familiar career path. “I’m quite happy to leave them to it,” says the 27-year-old former pub manager, who now works in management at an Airdrie call centre. “I don’t think ballet’s genetic — but I can see they love what they do. There’s not a lot of people have the chance to follow their dream.”

Halfway across the globe in Phoenix, Arizona, 23-year-old Ross is learning the principal roles for Swan Lake — and taking night classes in English and philosophy. Ballet dancers tend to pass their peak and retire by their mid-thirties — which gives him about 10 years to live his dream and work out what to do next. If all goes well for his younger brothers, he hopes they’ll dance together in a professional company one day. In the meantime he proudly trumpets his roots to anyone who will listen.

“I’m still working-class,” he says, in a break between rehearsals. “It’s unusual for a ballet dancer to come out of Airdrie, but the folk back home have been really supportive. This is a bit different from most working-class jobs, but it doesn’t pay any better.

“The best thing is you get to travel and live all over the world. And when you get on stage in front of an audience and the adrenaline starts hitting . . . that’s the reward for all the hard work.”

One particular audience appreciated the hard work more than most, when Ross went to the Edinburgh Festival to perform with Ballet West USA in 2004. “How did I feel?” says Robert Clarke Sr, pausing to relish the memory with a lump in his throat. “Well, you’re sitting there with the whole family watching your boy perform for the first time in the capital of Scotland. That was my cup final.”