George-Murray Nightingale: 'Ballet was a calling, a passion'

When it comes to expressing our thoughts and feelings, sometimes words simply aren't enough.

That was certainly the case for George-Murray Nightingale, who as a child, discovered that ballet was the perfect way to communicate his emotions. Since then, he's travelled the globe, dancing on some of the world’s most famous stages, including the Sydney Opera House in Australia and London’s Royal Opera House.

From joining in at the window of his sister’s ballet classes as a child to starring in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, George has been on quite the journey. More than simply a career choice, George describes dance as being a calling for him.

BBC Bitesize sat down with him to discover where his passion for ballet came from, what it’s taken to pursue his dreams and what he feels are the biggest misconceptions about male dancers.

Finding himself in dance

As a child, George was quite shy and didn’t feel like he quite fit in. In dance, he found "a medium of expressing yourself without actually having to use your words, and that's a really unique feeling."

Growing up in Warrington, Cheshire, George didn’t have any expectations about building a career in dance as that wasn’t an industry he was familiar with. Performing was simply what he loved to do, and that led George to study tap, modern, jazz, musical theatre, singing and drama.

Ultimately though, it was the music of ballet that really drew him in. George describes how “there was just something about the music for me that just hit the soul. I used to always listen to ballet music and just feel the movement come out. It was a calling. It was a passion. I just was so drawn to it.”

Taking inspiration from his travels

It was that passion for ballet that drove George to leave home at the age of 11 and attend a performing arts boarding school, before then moving to London and the English National Ballet School when he was 15.

Since then, George has worked with the National Ballet of Romania, the Royal Ballet of Flanders in Belgium and more recently, The Australian Ballet. With so much travelling, he’s met “so many different creative people that have different flavours of this art form.”

George highlights how styles of ballet vary from country to country: “It’s amazing to learn how they interpret this incredible art form and how I can then use that to inform my own dancing, maybe create my own style?”.

Returning to the UK stage

George recently left the The Australian Ballet to return to the UK and join Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake for the 2024/25 UK tour. When it was first staged in 1995, this particular version of Swan Lake was considered to be unconventional, because it featured male dancers in traditionally female roles. You might recognise the music and costumes from the final scene of the film Billy Elliot, in which a grown-up Billy prepares to step on stage in the leading role of the Swan.

For George, having the opportunity to perform in what he describes as an “absolutely iconic work”, hasn’t quite sunk in yet: “When I’m in the iconic swan costume with the pants and the makeup, I think I’ll have a bit of a chill moment.”

It’s also something of a full-circle experience back to his childhood, as this was the first ballet George ever saw at The Lowry theatre, in Salford. Seeing so many male dancers in one space left an impression, so much so that he studied Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake for his dissertation at the English National Ballet School.

Having been overseas for 10 years, George is looking forward to returning to The Lowry in November to perform in front of a home crowd: “I think I have everybody who I know, like family and friends, they're all coming to watch. It's going to be amazing… I've been overseas, performing to 2,000 people, but I don't know any of them personally, so it's going to be a different feeling having a loved one there in the audience, rooting for me.”

The reality of being a male dancer

George believes that there is still a misconception that male ballet dancers are “just there to lift the female-presenting dancer, just there for support to make them look amazing, when there’s so much more to it than that.”

Diet is another topic that gets brought up a lot. He highlights how dancers are a type of athlete, and need to fuel themselves correctly to have the energy to do a ballet that’s several hours long.

Making sacrifices to pursue his dreams

Getting to this point in his career has required George to make sacrifices, such as missing out on sleepovers with friends as a child in order to attend ballet class. Having moved away from home at a young age, he didn’t have his family around him on a daily basis. That meant learning how to deal with a bad day at the studio, injury or fatigue on his own.

George says: “Even now, my husband [fellow dancer Lucien Xu] is still in Melbourne (Australia), so he’s at the other end of the world and I’m here, so I don’t have that daily reassurance to keep pushing and to keep achieving more in this career.

“But then again, he's also the most supportive person in my life. He’s the one that encouraged me to do this.”

'Retain the essence of what makes you individual’

Looking ahead, George has an idea of what he‘d still like to accomplish in his dance career: “I’m 28 now, so it depends how the body keeps going. It’s such a limited career as a dancer, you know your body can’t do it forever. Obviously I would love to keep continuing to dance for as long as I can and hopefully more productions in the UK."

He does have other options though. As a certified ballet teacher he's keen to pass on information and knowledge to the next generation of dancers, but would also love to still be involved in performances backstage, perhaps as director.

With those young dancers in mind, George offered his advice for anyone pursuing a career in the performing arts: “Study all forms of theatre, drama, dance, musical theatre, and go and see it all… because seeing a pro at what they do is how you develop your own stagecraft.

“And also, we rely so much on tutors and teachers to give us information, but don't lose yourself in trying to take on all of their knowledge. You still have to retain the essence of what makes you individual and you special as a dancer.”

This article was published in October 2024