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Ballet dancer, Sylvie Guillem

Sylvie Guillem has been principal dancer at most leading ballet establishments. She talks to Zeinab Badawi as she prepares for her last performance in a worldwide farewell tour.

For more than three decades the ballet dancer Sylvie Guillem has performed as principal dancer at most leading ballet establishments, redrawing the boundaries of the genre. But at the end of this year she will be giving her last performance in a worldwide farewell tour. She will undoubtedly go down in ballet history as one of the greatest dancers of all time - but she is famously been dubbed 'Mademoiselle Non' for being too assertive. Zeinab Badawi speaks to her about that as well as the poisonous rivalries in the world of ballet and her activism to save the planet.

(Photo: Prima ballet dancer Sylvie Guillem of France delivers a speech at a press conference in Tokyo. Credit: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images)

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23 minutes

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Wed 30 Dec 201521:06GMT
BBC World Service West and Central Africa

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    BBC World Service West and Central Africa

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