Even a career as great as Darcey Bussell's is littered with 'what ifs'.

Darcey Bussell and Roberto Bolle in Winter Dreams, part of Darcey Bussell - Farewell. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Darcey Bussell's prodigious talent has fuelled her through an extraordinary career - but so much within the ballet profession is circumstantial, so much depends on the input of other people, that it's impossible not to speculate how different her career might have been had a few key elements been otherwise.

What if, for instance, Bussell had found a partner as fierily, inspirationally her opposite as Nureyev proved to be for Fonteyn? Bussell's height always made her pool of potential partners relatively small and it specifically forestalled the intriguing, if possibly combustive, partnership that she might have had with Irek Mukhamedov.

Looking back at the chemistry those two achieved in the single ballet associated with them, Kenneth MacMillan's Winter Dreams, it's tantalising to wonder what would have happened to Bussell's very English temperament and very English technique if she had shared the stage with someone more overtly emotional and exotic than the two men who ended up as her regular guest partners. Igor Zelensky and Roberto Bolle are both fine technicians but neither of them are particularly exciting actors. Meanwhile Jonathan Cope, who matured so fabulously into his talent, was largely whipped out of Bussell's arena by the canny Sylvie Guillem.

The other big what if: what if there had been a choreographer around in The Royal to co-opt Bussell as his or her muse, as Frederick Ashton once used Fonteyn? MacMillan did of course choreograph two ballets for Bussell, but it was probably Christopher Wheeldon who got the best measure of her talent in the roles he created for her in Tryst and DGV. Who knows what would have happened had Wheeldon stayed in London and the two of them had made a whole sequence of ballets together, tailor made to Bussell's body and gifts?

But Wheeldon went to New York and although there are some who believe that Bussell might have flourished even more remarkably had she gone too, I think she was wise to stay. The Balanchine repertory at New York City Ballet would obviously have been a fabulous frame for her, but the full stylistic and emotional range of The Royal's repertory has been even better. Bussell in Sleeping Beauty is surely one of the great ballet memories of the last two decades.

Darcey quits Covent Garden with MacMillan's Song of the Earth, but the really earthy stuff is to be found in Sadler's Wells

Royal Ballet
Covent Garden, London WC2

Phoenix Dance
Theatre Sadler's Wells, London EC1

On Friday, Darcey Bussell bade farewell to classical ballet and to the Royal Opera House audience who have loved her so faithfully. It was in a Kenneth MacMillan work, Prince of the Pagodas, that the 20-year-old Bussell danced her first starring role; 18 years later, it was in MacMillan's Song of the Earth that she appeared here for the last time. There was no special planning in this: the piece was scheduled some time before she announced her departure.

That said, it's hard to imagine a more elegiac swan song than Mahler's tender meditation on love and mortality. The principal roles comprise a trio: the Man (Gary Avis), the Woman (Bussell) and the Messenger (Carlos Acosta). The latter, a shadowy presence throughout the ballet, is an envoy of Death. He is also a companion and guide, however, and while composer and choreographer express the inevitability of his embrace, both also promise renewal. Death, the ballet tells us, is not an end, nor is it to be feared.

Bussell is beautiful in the piece, as she always has been, carried weightlessly on the music's austere symphonic currents and inscribing MacMillan's steps with serene gravity. The role, a perfect synthesis of line and emotion, was originally created on Stuttgart ballet's Marcia Haydee. It's softer and quieter on Bussell, but no less poignant; you can see why she became such an important late-life muse to the choreographer. One moment in particular strikes straight to the heart: Bussell's character thinks she is dancing alone and gives us soaring flashes of her 20-year-old self. But behind her, inexorably mirroring her every move, is the black-clad figure of Acosta's Messenger. Even for Bussell, the bell tolls. At the curtain call, the audience didn't want to let her go, cheering and calling her name in an outpouring of affection until, still girlish in her white tunic, she just slipped away.

If Song of the Earth was MacMillan's masterpiece, Symphonic Variations, which preceded it, was Frederick Ashton's. Created in 1946, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, this abstract piece has a elusive subtext. During the war years, Ashton had sought refuge from the grimness of service life in the writing of Christian mystics and in Cesar Franck's score, he found an echo of what St John of the Cross called the 'inward peace' of the soul. The ballet's backcloth, by Sophie Fedorovitch, evokes the luminous green of the English countryside in spring, while the costumes recall a lost Arcadia.

To these elements, in which the religious and the pastoral come to a very English accommodation, Ashton applied choreography of, at first glance, great simplicity. In fact, its high, clear lifts, piercing stillnesses and lyrical circlets of jetes are the result of intense distillation. Each phrase succeeds the last with quiet inevitability, as if it could be no other way, and both we and the dancers know it. The atmosphere is extraordinarily potent - within minutes, audience members were reaching for the handkerchiefs they'd brought for Bussell - but it depends on the dancers getting the tone exactly right. The piece is one of the hardest and most exposing in the repertoire and for its 20-minute duration, its six-strong cast are rarely still and never off stage.

Of the first nighters, Federico Bonelli is his handsome and chivalrous self, Roberta Marquez has a subtly over-sweet edge and Steven McRae's competitiveness looks a whisker off-message. Best is Belinda Hatley, whose delicate upper-body work and precisely pitched romanticism have long identified her as one of the company's prime Ashton stylists. This is Hatley's final season with the Royal Ballet and here, in the greatest Ashton work of them all, she dances straight from the heart, her performance an uncontained rush of joy.

A smaller masterpiece was brought to Sadler's Wells by Phoenix Dance Theatre, in its first London season under new director Javier de Frutos. Harmonica Breakdown, a three-and-a-half-minute solo to blues music by Sonny Terry, was choreographed in 1938 by Jane Dudley. The piece portrays the struggle of the sharecroppers of the Depression, but it's much wiser and funnier than that suggests, its keynote being a smooth, indomitable, front-projected trudge that's halfway to a Michael Jackson moonwalk.

Dudley, who was white, made the piece for herself, but the breakdown was a late 19th-century African-American dance, and by mounting it on Kialea-Nadine Williams, who's black, de Frutos ties the piece to Phoenix's origins in black community dance, and reminds us just how far this Leeds-based ensemble has come.

Harmonica was prefaced by Henri Oguike's Signal. Tribal in mood, it presents the dancers as a series of individuals united by ritual. From the opening passage featuring Lisa Welham, one of the most powerful dancers on the British contemporary scene today, to its hypnotic ending, this is pure Phoenix.

Paseillo is pure de Frutos. Set to a scratchy record of Mozart intercut with A Hawaiian Farewell, this takes the form of a battle of the sexes. The men seem to be dressed as Sufi princes, the women as governesses. The exchanges are elaborate, fragrant and homoerotic, with the men tongue-kissing each other even as they hoist the women into the air above them. In de Frutos's work, men are impelled by deep forces and women fit in where they can. Los Picadores, another de Frutos piece, is Fight Club set to a tortured version of Stravinsky's Les Noces, and macho to the point of absurdity. Fans of prison-rape movies may enjoy the blood-caked Y-fronts, but others will wish they'd called it a night with Paseillo.

Darcey Bussell's composure deserted her on her final moments on stage, but only after a magnificent, harrowing performance reminded us what we are losing.

Darcey Bussell's final farewell. Photograph: MJ Kim/Getty Images

Darcey Bussell may have taken on more than she realised, when she chose to dance her final performance, live on television, in MacMillan's Song of the Earth. The ballet was a perfectly chosen farewell role, with its choreography a superb showcase for Bussell's technique, and its gravity a testimony to the seriousness of her artistry. But the emotional charge of the work, as the ballerina undergoes a series of partings, each a kind of death, before dancing hesitantly towards an unknown future proved on Friday night to have been too harrowing for Bussell to bear.

As a packed theatre, and a few million television viewers saw, the moment the performance was over she was so overwhelmed by emotion that that she was not only unable to make any kind of speech, her legs were barely able to support her. Weeping, clutching herself, Bussell had to be held by her partners Carlos Acosta and Garry Avis, as flowers rained down on her from the Opera House boxes, and bouquets were brought on stage by those who had been most important in her professional life, Anthony Dowell, Jonathan Cope, her coach Donald MacLeary, and seemingly by most of the men in the company. By the end of the ovations the stage was completely covered in flowers. "Were there," one man wondered, "any flowers left in London?"

As Monica Mason rightly said, in her own emotional speech, it took courage for Bussell to retire this way, making such an absolute break with her career. But it was also a gift to the public. Most of us who've watched Bussell over the last 20 years will feel some sort of bereavement - never to see those extraordinary legs and feet again, which have shaped so much choreography with such power and scale.

But the drama, and symbolism of the evening were some compensation. It was such an eloquent statement of the fact that dance's power lies so uniquely in the physical present, its beauties impossible to preserve because they rest on what is most vulnerable and perishable - the human body. Bussell knew that her own body was on the cusp of its powers. And she decided to leave before its decline was evident to anyone else.

Lowry, Salford

It takes courage to bow out at the peak of one's career. It takes a strange kind of foolhardiness to step straight back in again as a rank beginner in a range of unfamiliar genres. But such is Darcey Bussell's addiction for the stage that barely six months after taking her final leave of the Covent Garden stage she's on a month-long tour; hoofing, strutting and, wait for it - singing.

And if that were not strange enough, Bussell has teamed up with Katherine Jenkins - the world's biggest selling mezzo soprano and official Welsh rugby team cheerleader, who has spent the past few months learning to tap dance.

During one of a number of rather stilted on-stage chats, Bussell produces a top hat which her father bought on the Portobello Road and reminisces about "the fab Hollywood routines I used to do in my bedroom"; yet while most girls manage to leave them there, she and Jenkins have opted to re-enact their fantasies in the nation's arenas.

Directed and choreographed by Kim Gavin, whose credits include producing Take That's reunion extravaganzas, the show begins with the girls bursting out of a giant television set and develops into a camp tribute to anyone who ever wore more diamonds and fur than strictly necessary, alighting in no particular order on the careers of Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, Cyd Charisse and Madonna.

As grand theatrical charades go, it's hardly on a par with Rufus Wainwright's even more preposterous wish-fulfilment exercise, in which he booked out the London Palladium for a note-for-note reconstruction of Judy Garland's legendary Carnegie Hall programme. Yet Bussell always seems to have understood it to be part of her job description as Britain's most popular ballerina never to take herself too seriously.

Yet it's this same approachability which seems to preclude her entering the mindset of the Hollywood monsters she admires. It's the absolute lack of diva-ish attributes which makes her seem benign to the point of blandness. And though her every gesture is pure poetry, slinkiness is the one quality which evades her.

Yet she portrays Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes with infinitely more conviction than Jenkins does Maria Callas in the Barber of Seville. It has to be said that hers is a voice better suited to belting out Land of My Fathers at the Millennium Stadium than skipping through the perilous coloratura of Rosina's skittish cavatina.

· Until Sat and then touring. Ticket hotline: 0871 2200 260

· This article was amended on Monday December 3 2007. Moira Shearer appeared in The Red Shoes, rather than Chicago, where an editing slip placed her. This has been corrected.

Rating: 3/5

Its Nutcracker is a festive treat, but the Royal Ballet isn't just for Christmas. Sanjoy Roy celebrates a company for all seasons

Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn perform Kenneth MacMillan's version of Romeo and Juliet in 1966

In short

The Royal Ballet is a princess who was once a pauper. Born in lowly circumstances, without the aristocratic heritage of the Mariinsky or the Paris Opera Ballet, she earned her crown with a mix of dazzling work and wilfulness.

Backstory

Inspired by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Ninette de Valois founded the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1931 with the aim of establishing a ballet tradition in Britain. Although its resources were meagre, the company initially pulled in audiences through two former Ballets Russes stars, Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova. By the time they left in 1935, the Vic-Wells was already forging its own identity, with Constant Lambert as musical director, choreography by De Valois and Frederick Ashton, and a new generation of dancers including Robert Helpmann and Margot Fonteyn.

De Valois continued to follow her vision of establishing a core repertory of Russian classics and nurturing homegrown talent in choreography and dancing. The results were greater than she could have imagined: Ashton, who became resident choreographer in 1935, went on to become one of the century's greatest choreographers. Fonteyn won an equivalent reputation as a dancer, and the company itself is now regarded as one of the world's best.

Despite the privations of the second world war (during which it was almost trapped by the German invasion of Holland), the company – which changed its name to the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1941 – went from strength to strength. In 1946, it moved to the Opera House in Covent Garden and set up a smaller touring group based at Sadler's Wells. Ten years later, the company was granted a royal charter, and gained its current name. The 1960s and 1970s were a golden age, with Frederick Ashton as director, Kenneth MacMillan as chief choreographer (then director), and a stellar lead couple in Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

The Royal's fortunes faltered in the late 1970s under the directorship of Norman Morrice but rallied again in the 1980s under Anthony Dowell. It also hit a wobbly patch under Ross Stretton in 2001, but with Monica Mason at the helm since 2002, it is once again on the ascendant.

Watching the Royal Ballet

The Royal Ballet built a reputation for a particular lyrical-dramatic style – a fluid way of dancing combined with an expressive style of acting. Classics are at the core of its repertoire, along with 20th-century works by its two world-renowned choreographers, Frederick Ashton (more lyrical) and Kenneth MacMillan (more dramatic).

Who's who

The current artistic director is Monica Mason. Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan were the two choreographic masters of the company. The Royal's two best-known dancers were undoubtedly Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. Other stars have included Lynn Seymour, Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell from the 1970s, and more recently Sylvie Guillem, Carlos Acosta and Darcey Bussell.

Fact

Freddie Mercury danced for the Royal Ballet. He performed in specially choreographed versions of Bohemian Rhapsody and Crazy Little Thing Called Love at a charity gala in 1979. A few years later, as a kind of cultural exchange, the Royal Ballet danced for Freddie Mercury, in the video for Queen's I Want to Break Free.

In their own words

"People didn't believe there could be a British company, they thought the British didn't have the temperament."
Dancer Beryl Grey, remembering De Valois's determination. (The Royal Ballet: the First 75 Years by Zoe Anderson, 2006)

"[Ashton's] steps do not look like school steps (though they are as a matter of fact correct); they are like discoveries, with the deceptive air of being incorrect and accidental that romantic poetry has."
Edwin Denby, Modern Music, 1939

"Kenneth [MacMillan] pushed ballet so far forward in his time that he frightened the living daylights out of some people."
Lady Deborah MacMillan on her late husband. (Interview with Ismene Brown, Telegraph, 2002)

In other words

"One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing."
Clive Barnes, New York Times, 1966

"The Royal didn't just continue dancing through the war years - it heroically danced for Britain."
Judith Mackrell, Guardian, 2007

"The Fonteyn-Nureyev phenomenon was a major contributor to the 'dance boom' of the 1960s and 70s. They made the art more popular than it had ever been."
Joan Acocella, The New Yorker 2007

"People have called Bussell's style 'un-English' because of its apparent unrestraint, but nothing could be more English than the yearning that it expresses. People love Bussell because she dances what they feel. And for this, as they did Diana, they will forgive any amount of Sloaney daftness."
Luke Jennings on Darcey Bussell, Observer, 2007

Do say

"The Royal Ballet must remain the guardian of two major artistic legacies: Frederick Ashton's and Kenneth MacMillan's."

Don't say

Surnames. If you want to sound like a proper Royal Ballet watcher, use first names only when referring to the company: Carlos, Marianela, Edward, Alina etc. The same applies to stars from the past: Darcey, Sylvie, Irek, Antoinette and Anthony, Margot and Rudi. Partial exceptions: Frederick Ashton is "Sir Fred", Ninette de Valois is "Madam".

See also

Birmingham Royal Ballet

English National Ballet

Now watch this

Rare footage from 1939: The Sleeping Princess with June Brae and Margot Fonteyn

Monica Mason, Lynne Seymour and corps in Giselle (1979)

A 1982 production of Ninette de Valois's The Rake's Progress (1935)

A 2007 production of Symphonic Variations (1946), one of Frederick Ashton's masterpieces

A modern twist: Infra (2008) by newly appointed resident choreographer Wayne McGregor

Where to see them next

The Nutcracker, Royal Opera House, London, until 10 January

She was the darling of the Royal Ballet – now Darcey Bussell is recapturing the magic of dance in a series of children's books. She talks to Chris Wiegand

For 12 months, the woman still known as Britain's ballerina hasn't done the very thing with which she is synonymous: Darcey Bussell hasn't danced. That was the plan, of course, when she announced her departure from the Royal Ballet two years ago. But Bussell never quite managed to quit. Her long goodbye to the dance scene in 2007 took in several nights of Ashton, Forsythe and Wheeldon at Sadler's Wells and a final farewell to Covent Garden with her mentor Kenneth MacMillan's Song of the Earth. Then, within months, Bussell was back in the spotlight for a razzle-dazzle double act, Viva la Diva, with Welsh opera bombshell Katherine Jenkins.

So what made Bussell finally put her feet up? Speaking late at night from her new home in Sydney, with her daughters Phoebe and Zoe safely tucked up, she explains her dance-free year. "I'm still a dancer, and I suppose I'll never escape that," she says. "When I hear music I want to move. But I purposefully said that to clear my mind – and not have this chip on my shoulder that I stopped – I would not go into the studio or do any dance for a year." With those 12 months up, how does she feel? "I'm dying to take up salsa or flamenco," she laughs, adding that it would not be for the stage. "I'm all refreshed so I haven't got this thing about 'my profession'." She sounds a little relieved. "Because that's the only thing I've known. All of my confidence has come from my work. I still talk about Darcey Bussell as this other person – not me."

This "other" Darcey Bussell diligently spent her teenage years at the barre, becoming the Royal Ballet's youngest principal to date by the age of 20. She embodied the notion of ballerina-as-fairy-princess. Popping up as the game-for-a-laugh guest star on The Vicar of Dibley and slinking around the stage in Viva la Diva only helped to cement her status as a household name. Bussell still raves about the sheer enjoyment of the jukebox show with Jenkins: "It was the best thing I could have done, because it took out the shock of leaving the opera house and coming away from classical ballet – something that had been my passion and addiction for most of my life. Suddenly I was testing myself again."

Criss-crossing the country on a tour that took in venues as cavernous as London's O2 arena was also an opportunity to liberate dance from its stuffy, po-faced reputation, she says. "So many people said, 'Oh, we never came and saw you at the Royal Ballet and we so wanted to.' The idea of going into the opera house was too daunting for so many. I was really shocked."

The show found Bussell and Jenkins paying tribute to Cyd Charisse, Judy Garland and – most strikingly – Moira Shearer, star of The Red Shoes (1948), Powell and Pressburger's film about the rise and tragic fall of a ballerina in love with a composer yet under the thumb of a dance impresario. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's one of Bussell's favourite films; she remembers seeing it around the age of eight. "They created a total magic and a kind of mystery behind it which was incredibly special. Because it was Technicolor it was just so vibrant. I think they chose Moira Shearer not just for her brilliant dancing, but for her red hair. That must have been the first footage of ballet that I saw. It's a hard thing to capture that magic."

Bussell, who turned 40 earlier this month, has recently been busying herself with another pair of magic red shoes – those worn by Delphie and Rosa, the young heroes of a series of children's books she has developed for HarperCollins. (Bussell worked on the concept; the books were penned by a children's writer.) These particular scarlet slippers deliver their owners to faraway adventures that incorporate cameos from Cinderella, the Firebird and other staples of the Royal Ballet repertoire, including characters Bussell herself perfected at Covent Garden. Six of the books were published in October last year and have sold a quarter of a million copies; another half-dozen titles came out last month.

"The idea came from my daughters," she explains. "It was how they created the magic of the theatre in their minds. They believe that anything can happen on that stage."

For Bussell herself, it wasn't the magic that first attracted her to dance, but the discipline. "It was the steps. Perfecting the moves. And then, of course, you fall in love with the atmosphere that the theatre creates – the lighting and the orchestra and everything." It was her mum who first introduced her to dance, but she was reluctant to let Darcey study at the Royal Ballet school. "I forced my mother to get me an audition. She said: 'This is not for you, you won't enjoy it.' I was desperate to prove her wrong. My first year was very hard. You take a lot of criticism. It's always never good enough, so it's slightly demoralising ... I did a lot of crying. I'd missed two years, so I was very behind. I hadn't done ballet every day, I'd done it twice a week. They had been doing it every day for the last two years – six days a week, virtually. My first week there, it suddenly dawned on me how far behind I was, how terrified I was. I thought I'd made the biggest mistake." This month, the Royal Ballet school honoured her perseverance by naming a studio for Bussell at its redeveloped White Lodge site.

Bussell was 14 when she did her first student show, Sleeping Beauty, at the Royal Opera House. "I don't think I'll ever forget the adrenaline rush. Just having a dressing room was overwhelming." By the time she left, 24 years later, Bussell says the Royal Ballet was part of her identity. "Everything I worked on and created was inside that company. One of the stage crew said to me, 'Oh Darce, you can't leave, you're part of the brickwork.'" So when she finally cleared out her dressing room, was she tempted to carve her initials into the wall? "Oh no," she chuckles. "I hope I don't have to do that."

Bussell's Magic Ballerina books do a fine job of conjuring up the sparkle and romance of dancing, but her tone is serious – even solemn – when talking about how the art form can boost self-confidence. "If you ever see any child walk into a studio, they just want to fill that space straight away. Even the shyest child will get up there and do something.

"Children don't always have the words to say what they feel, but when they get to move, and express themselves that way, it lets down a lot of barriers." Britain's ballerina, who has spoken before about being bullied at school, pauses for thought: "Well, it helped me no end."

For two decades Darcey Bussell was Britain's greatest ballerina. So what's it going to be like for the Strictly Come Dancing contestants when she starts judging on the show next month? Here, she talks about her new life in Sydney, being an eco mum and the joy of bringing dance to the masses

I do a double-take when Darcey Bussell walks in. I was expecting the porcelain skin and sharp black bob which Britain's most feted ballerina sported in her later years, but her hair is now strawberry blonde and her face sun-kissed. It's been two years since Bussell gave up the limelight for a quiet life as a housewife in Australia. "I have relaxed," she says when we meet in Sydney. "My husband never thought it was possible. In London I would always get asked to do things, but here I can just be a mum – though I still can't say no to work."

The latest project Bussell failed to turn down is Strictly Come Dancing. She'll appear as a guest judge alongside the regular panel on the final three programmes of this year's series. She came to London to attend the show's first rounds back in September and watched the contestants going through their paces. "They were shaking so much on stage I tried to help them get over their nerves." She admits she's nervous at the thought of live TV herself, but isn't pleased by some of the other judges' suggestions that she'll be sweet to the contestants. "It's sooo irritating," she rolls her eyes. "I'm quite happy to be critical." In fact when she left the studios she made a list of who she thought would survive. "Things have been going the way I thought, although there are surprises. Phil Tufnell is something of a dark horse. I think he's suddenly realised he enjoys dancing. I really enjoy watching someone when they are a true performer. They don't have perfect technique, but they can sell it – it makes such a difference."

She also singles out The Bill actress Ali Bastian and athlete Jade Johnson for praise, though she isn't convinced about bookies' favourite Ricky Whittle. "He has a totally natural ability, is really musical and is a very confident guy. But I wouldn't say he's the best on the night. Maybe because he's a bit too good and you want to see improvement."

As Bussell is in Sydney, the BBC is sending her DVDs of the show so she can keep up with the weekly dramas. Her children are huge fans and she knows some of the contestants personally. Bussell even sheepishly admits to having taken the odd dance class recently so she still looks like a dancer when she appears on the show. She performed on Strictly in October 2008 with opera singer Katherine Jenkins when they were promoting their musical show Viva la Diva. Bussell sees her role on the show as "a natural transition from being a dancer to coaching and judging", though she's glad there'll only be a handful of celebrities left when she's on the panel. "It will be easier to be critical because they've had time to work on things. In the first weeks, how can you criticise anyone? They've just stepped into those heels and, for the guys, it's so difficult to judge a partner."

Judge Craig Revel Horwood was beside himself when he discovered Bussell was going to join the panel as guest judge. He first met her last year at the Royal Festival Hall when he choreographed a tango for the Ballet Boyz. "Darcey came up after the performance and said she'd loved it. I nearly lost my legs, darling. I was quite starstruck." Aside from her rigorous training as a prima ballerina, Revel Horwood says Darcey will know all about rhythm and movement and bring the perspective of artistry to the panel. "She'll be able to talk about the choreography – whether that flows, whether that works. It's not as if she hasn't done a pas de deux in her life." He's also pleased she'll arrive with a fresh eye as the show's four-month run enters its final phase. "The other judges have been through the emotional journey with the contestants. It's lovely for Darcey to come in with an absolutely fresh approach and notice all the flaws we may have missed."

Bussell loves the Strictly phenomenon and the way it brings dance to the masses. "Viewers think, 'If you can do it, I can do it.' For the celebs it's amazing to come on a show, to get paid. OK, you're making a fool of yourself, but you're learning a craft. What a joy that is. It's so weird watching the dancing – I really want to join in."

Bussell's enthusiasm for dance and her efforts to bring it to a wider audience made her an enormously popular performer. Although she's enchanted ballet fans since the age of 19, when she starred in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's The Prince of the Pagodas, she has also reached audiences who wouldn't normally see classical dance, with appearances on TV shows such as The Vicar of Dibley and French and Saunders.

Her appeal was such that, when she announced her retirement, fans sent angry letters; even the Queen voiced disbelief that she was leaving the Royal Ballet when she presented Bussell with a CBE in 2006. Her swansong at the Royal Opera House saw Bussell surrounded by a sea of bouquets. The performance was televised on BBC2. "I can't watch it," she admits. "It felt like an out-of-body experience. Each wing was full and that was extraordinary because everyone wanted to be there to support me. That was really touching and hard to take." As the standing ovations reached fever pitch, Bussell broke down in tears. She surprised herself – "horribly. I wasn't expecting that. I am usually quite cool."

It was her mother, Andrea, who also trained for a few years at the Royal Ballet School, who insisted her daughter go to ballet classes because of her "knock knees". At the relatively late age of 13, Bussell joined the Royal Ballet, going to White Lodge in Richmond Park. Her first year was excruciating. Far behind all the other girls, Bussell was humiliated in class. By the age of 15 she caught up – "I was very stubborn" – and then came to the attention of choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who wrote a number of parts for her. "He was the main source of why I made it. Kenneth gave me that courage from the beginning. He believed in me and a lot of people didn't." At 20, Bussell became the youngest principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, receiving an OBE six years later in 1995.

Bussell married in 1997 and returned to the barre after the birth of her children, but eventually found the pace too much. "I was always running out of the house, running to rehearsals, running home to see the girls before bedtime. My husband and I were desperate to slow down. I prefer this change of pace. I'm saner here than in London."

With her Australian husband Angus Forbes, and their two daughters, Phoebe, 8, and Zoe, 5, Bussell moved to Sydney in January 2008. Forbes, a banker, has since set up his own green investment company, and home is now in Vaucluse, one of Sydney's most affluent suburbs. Despite claims before she left Britain that she would reduce the family's carbon footprint by 90%, adapting to her new Aussie eco-existence has been a steep learning curve. "We've had lots of good intentions, but they all seem to be falling down. We've kept trying to get solar panels on the roof, but it's facing the wrong way or the pitch is too steep," she sighs. "And the other day I realised we were growing a family of redbacks in the worm farm." (Redbacks are one of Australia's most dangerous spiders.) Her veggie patch has failed and her new trees keep dying. The latest idea is a chook pen. "Apparently, chickens attract rats," she looks downcast. "Do you know about that?"

Bussell has always had strong links to Australia. Not only did she live there for a time as a child but it's her husband's homeland and her stepfather and biological father's, too. She credits her upbringing for helping her keep life in perspective – her parents made sure she was very grounded. She grew up in London's Notting Hill Gate, and her mother, Andrea Williams, a former model and actress, has "always been a massive influence". She wears her mother's dress and feathered bolero jacket for our shoot. But she won't talk about her biological father, the late John Crittle, a charismatic Australian who was a fixture in boho London in the swinging 60s. He left the family when Darcey was three.

When I ask about him, Bussell clams up. "I never knew the guy. I have no recollections of him." Her mother re-married Philip Bussell, an Australian dentist living in London, when Darcey was six, and they had two more children, James and Zaylie. "I always call Philip my dad – he is my dad," she says. "I never refer to him as my stepfather."

In every way that Philip Bussell was loving and secure, John Crittle was reckless and unreliable. "He was a totally irreverent character. Errol Flynnish in his behaviour. He never thought about tomorrow," says Phillip Donoghue, 67, an old friend of Crittle, who was with him in 1966 when John opened the über-cool Dandy Fashions boutique with Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, on the King's Road. John's designs were worn by the Beatles and the Stones, Princess Margaret and Zsa Zsa Gabor. John Lennon was a good friend. His older brother, Mark, recalls once coming to Dandy's to find the shop door open and a trail of clothes leading to the Chelsea churchyard. "There was all this moaning. John, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones were on acid up a tree, convinced that there were spiders everywhere. They had all stripped off to their underpants. That was the 60s."

Mark Crittle, now 69, was also there when John first met Andrea, and he remembers their relationship as being tumultuous. "In 1968 they broke up for six months and John met this girl and she fell pregnant," says Mark. "Andrea and John never talked about it, it was very difficult for her."

In 1968, the year that Andrea and John married in the Chelsea Register Office, things started to unravel and John had a nervous breakdown. A year later, Darcey was born as Marnie Mercedes Darcey Pemberton Crittle.

Unlike the press reports that claim John Crittle abandoned the family, Mark and his sister, Catherine, say John wanted Andrea and the baby to come back with him to Australia. She refused. "He wanted Andrea to be happy and thought Marnie – Darcey – would have a more stable upbringing with her," says Catherine. "I think John was very sad about it. He had photos of Darcey until she was three and carried them around with him." In 1998, John Crittle, by now suffering from terminal emphysema, went with Phillip Donoghue to see Bussell perform at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney. "After the show, John sent a message to the dressing room saying he was there," Donoghue recalls. "He got a reply: 'Ms Bussell has left the premises.' I don't blame her." Bussell refused to make contact with Crittle, who died in 2000. I ask Bussell if John was like a myth to her. Irritation darkens her face. Her hurt is evident. "I suppose like a myth," she says flatly. "He was never part of my life. I don't want to talk about him."

Aside from missing Marks & Spencer's comfort food and underwear, Bussell isn't especially homesick. "I will always see England as home, I was born and bred there. I am enjoying life though. It's like an adventure." An average day sees her take her daughters to school and walk their two spoodles – a cross between a poodle and spaniel – on the blustery cliffs above Bondi Beach, before going home to be a housewife. "The only thing I'm learning are computer skills," she says, and there's something endearing about the thought of Darcey Bussell mastering the keyboard at the age of 40. She's also turned her hand to a series of children's books, The Magic Ballerina, which she has just completed with a professional writer. She was recently appointed to the board of the Sydney Dance Company – we've met to talk in the company's boardroom – though she admits she still finds meetings here "really scary". Sitting on the board is a great way of learning something new, says Bussell. "I don't get involved in the financial things, my priority is the dancers – I get involved with their productions." She was instrumental in selecting the artistic director, Rafael Bonachela.

I ask if she's bored. "At the moment I am not. For me, it's just trying to know who I am now that I am not a dancer, because I have only known myself as a dancer. So being a mum really isn't such a bad thing. Everybody puts it down, but I am enjoying it." She gives a nervous laugh. "So far."

There was no defining moment when Bussell knew she was going to retire from ballet. She just wanted to quit while she was ahead. "It's not an easy life, not a normal one," she says. "I've always gone through life knowing that when it's been good there will be something bad. There is always somebody there to jump in your shoes, and you're always replaceable." She half-grimaces. "And don't you hate that?"

Bussell never wanted to be an older dancer. She particularly remembers performing A Month in the Country with Rupert Pennefather, who was 24, when she was 38. "There's a moment with Rupert when we hold hands, I am supposed to play the older woman, that is my role…" She trails off, looking down at her hands. "I thought: I am too old for this."

Wasn't it a huge letdown when it was over?

"Oh yes, but I was used to those, that's like after every performance. You always have those amazing highs and those were the hardest things. It would take me two hours or more to calm down from the buzz of doing a three-hour performance." These days, she says, it's the "small details" that give her a thrill. "I am probably quite a simple girl when it comes down to it. So many people I have admired get taken in by the fame and the buzz. I just knew that that wasn't normal. I love the glamour, but I would hate to think that that would last." She catches herself, laughing delightedly. "I sound really boring, don't I?"

For the photo shoot we move outside to photograph Bussell in front of the Sydney Opera House. She wears a dress by Australian designer Collette Dinnigan and a pair of her own shoes: outrageously tall gold stilettos. As a ballerina she could never wear heels. They are still painful. Bussell endured years of agonising joint pain, and had two ankle operations for bone spurs. As she poses with the graceful arches of the Opera House behind and the sun illuminating her features, Bussell looks remarkably Australian. She is self-conscious about her square upturned nose, which crinkles when she laughs. During the shoot she is surprised that the photographer doesn't tell her to keep her chin down: "Everyone says that because of my nose."

I get a tap on my shoulder and a voice in a Sheffield twang asks: "Is that really Darcey Bussell?" Three young English women stand watching, mouths agape. They are the only passers-by to stop. "In London there would be proper crowds," says one, before shyly asking for an autograph.

Bussell mentions that she will be back the following week at Sydney Dance to watch a rehearsal. Despite requests from Rafael Bonachela, she refuses to dance. "When I get over the ballet chip on my shoulder and say I am ready to come and dance, I will." She adds with a touch of weary resignation. "I think I will never get over that. I keep thinking that I am going to be seen differently, but I suppose I am not. Once a dancer, always a dancer."

• Darcey Bussell appears on Strictly Come Dancing from 5 December

Paul McCartney takes his first steps in the world of ballet, Dominic West reunites with an old Wire friend, and Darcey Bussell owns up to some trickery. It's the week in theatre, as seen by the Stage's Alistair Smith

Former Royal Ballet principal ballerina to replace Alesha Dixon on BBC show's judging panel in autumn 2012

Darcey Bussell might have hung up her pointe shoes, but she's set to dish out scores instead, after the BBC announced that the former Royal Ballet principal dancer is to join Strictly Come Dancing as a judge.

She will replace Alesha Dixon on the show's judging panel when it returns in the autumn, after the singer binned ballroom dancing for variety acts earlier this year and joined Britain's Got Talent instead. Bussell will sit alongside the show's long-term judges Len Goodman, Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno Tonioli to pass comment on a selection of celebrities taking to the dance floor for the first time.

It won't be the first time Bussell has perched on the Strictly panel, after a stint as a guest judge at the end of the 2009 series. As part of the semi-final show, she danced a non-competitive jive with Ian White, one of the regular professional dancers on the series.

Bussell expressed her excitement at the new role. "I had such a lovely experience in 2009 when I was a guest judge, that coming on board now feels very natural. Strictly combines quality dance and great entertainment, which is such a positive for everybody involved."

It will be interesting to see how Bussell's years in ballet inform her assessment of rumbas, quicksteps and paso dobles. After her previous appearances on the show, she told the Independent: "People think, when you've been a professional dancer all your life, that you're going to have tried every sort of style, and I kind of felt embarrassed that I'd never ever tried ballroom dancing."

Bussell joined the Royal Ballet in 1988, rising to principal a year later. She retired in 2007, but subsequently performed alongside opera singer Katherine Jenkins in Viva la Diva at the O2 Arena.

Despite such large-scale live appearances, Strictly Come Dancing will bring a considerably bigger audience. The BBC remain absolutely committed to the format, with the channel's controller Danny Cohen describing the programme as "a jewel in BBC One's crown."

He continued: "I can think of no-one better to join our Strictly judging panel than Darcey, the UK's queen of ballet. Darcey has all the poise and glamour, along with the experience and credentials to deliver meaningful and insightful critiques of our couples' performances. She's a huge fan of the show and will be a fantastic addition to the Strictly family."

The BBC's ballroom show has a million more viewers than X Factor and has turned Darcey Bussell into a TV superstar

The format did not sound as though it had universal appeal back in 2004, when producers first pitched the idea of a Saturday night television extravaganza based on the garish, old-fashioned rigours of ballroom dancing. But time and the hard work of a succession of unlikely kings and queens of the rumba, the foxtrot and the cha cha cha have proved that Strictly Come Dancing always had what it takes to become a reliable family hit.

After a triumphant, festive final to the 10th series on Saturday saw Olympic gymnast Louis Smith and professional dance partner Flavia Cacace walk away with the glitterball trophy, the millions of fans of this odd mix of sparkle and hard graft can rest secure in the knowledge that it will be back in 2013 and that Strictly's new heroine, the former Royal Ballet prima ballerina Darcey Bussell, will also return as a judge. On Friday night the 43-year-old Covent Garden star confirmed reports that she is to sit on the panel again.

Announcing her decision, Bussell said: "I've thoroughly enjoyed my first series as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing and I'm absolutely delighted to be returning next year."

A fortnight ago Strictly's rival talent show on ITV, The X Factor, was forced to concede it had been beaten in the ratings war. Defeat became evident when, on the night of its final, it managed to attract a million fewer viewers than BBC1's Strictly, which basked in the attention of 11 million pairs of eyes. In contrast, The X Factor's figures were 5 million down on its peak period two years ago. So this weekend, amid news that Simon Cowell, The X Factor's creator, has been called in to revamp the faltering ITV format next month, Bussell's decision to stay on the BBC show makes her the Sugar Plum Fairy on Strictly's Christmas cake.

The ballerina has candidly admitted to having a crush on Smith, the winner, yet her even-handed support for his fellow finalists, singer Kimberley Walsh, Dani Harmer and presenter and actress Denise Van Outen, earned her respect on the panel and with viewers.

"Darcey has been a fantastic addition to the judging panel and a pleasure to watch this series. We couldn't be more thrilled with her reception from the Strictly audience," a source from the show said last week. "We cannot wait to have her back alongside Len (Goodman), Bruno (Tonioli) and Craig (Revel Horwood) next year."

Bussell did not have an easy start as a judge. As she confessed recently, "no one was sure if I would fit in". Her nervous tendency to say "yah" at the ends of sentences ensured the well-spoken dancer was widely ridiculed after her first appearances. She has since explained she did not notice her vocal tic until it was pointed out to her. She has also suggested it might have been the symptom of her initial discomfort about having to talk "at contestants" rather than show them what she meant on the dance floor.

For Dame Monica Mason, former head of the Royal Ballet and a friend and mentor of Bussell, the care that the newest Strictly judge takes with the contestants suggests the dancer is remembering the challenges she faced when she took on her first lead role as a teenager.

"She was picked out to dance in The Prince of the Pagodas in 1988, when she was still young, and she was nervous about working with Kenneth MacMillan," said Mason this weekend, adding that the renowned choreographer made great demands. "Luckily she was dancing with Jonathan Cope, who was a little older and more experienced than her and also a very nice man. He was very protective of her. Without his care I think she would have had real difficulty," she said.

Mason, who was trained by Dame Margot Fonteyn, remembers spotting Darcey when she was a student at the Royal Ballet School.

"I was aware of huge potential there. The school could see she was very talented and they wanted to nurture it. I remember watching her in class and seeing how determined she was and also how sensitive."

Mason, 71, is currently working with Cope to rehearse the Royal Ballet cast of Firebird, part of a mixed bill until early January, and she believes Bussell's work on Strictly will have taken a positive message about ballet to a new audience.

"I have so enjoyed watching her. She has promoted dancing so people can see that dancers are real people, who can have babies and a life outside dance," she said. "I have always thought all forms of dance have a great benefit."

The former pupil has talked to her ex-coach about her enjoyment of the television show.

"She loves it. I have been impressed by the choreography and I think Darcey appreciates that too. It is really first class. She also appreciates the work put into learning a new number each week, or in some cases two new numbers. You really have to go some to do that. When Darcey asks contestants to lengthen their neck, or keep their shoulders down, I'm sure she is remembering how she was once corrected. Dancers are used to being corrected all the time."

Bussell says her approach to judging is based on the idea that improvement is always possible. "For me, it's important to make the contestants feel they can come back next week and be better," she has said. "I hope that will inspire them and not just flatten them."

Mason recalls Bussell was known for her "tremendous sense of fun" during her time at the Royal Ballet. "She would enjoy her free time, but when she had to focus she worked hard. She never took anything for granted."

Another former Royal Ballet principal dancer, Tamara Rojo, now artistic director of the English National Ballet, pays tribute to Bussell's equable temperament.

"I don't have the patience to judge Strictly Come Dancing," the Spanish dancer told The Observer in an interview in next Sunday's Magazine. "My awful side would come out. I would be vile. I have no time for people who think they can cut corners – for people who think they can be better dancers in three weeks than a dancer of 20 years."

Bussell first appeared as a guest judge on the show and then moved from Australia back to Britain with her family after accepting the vacant seat on the panel left when Alesha Dixon left to join ITV's Britain's Got Talent.

Mason suspects Bussell's stable family background has helped her to deal with competitors sympathetically. "Although she rose to the top of the tree, she was always one of the dancers. She has been blessed with a nature that is not neurotic," she said, "And her husband Angus [Forbes] has his feet on the ground too She can identify with everybody."

The judges on Strictly are appealingly benevolent in comparison with The X Factor, where the contestants seem driven by a desire for fame and the panellists appear determined to find a lucrative recording artist, for however short term a gain.

The dance show also benefits from its clear identity as family fare. Beginning at 6.30pm, Strictly rarely contains anything more alarming than a flash of knickers. The X Factor was criticised for featuring lewd routines.

So, like the show's new star judge, Strictly has won over its fanbase by showing that hard work can lead to lasting success, especially with help from a spangly costume. Glamour and true grit do go together, it seems.

The dancer and Strictly judge on childhood food memories – and what she keeps in her BBC fridge

My earliest memory is of Weetabix. I lived on them. For my favourite meal, breakfast, I could get through six Weetabix, with milk and sugar, getting them perfect – not too dry, not too mushy. One day, before she went off to work, Mum poured on salt instead of sugar and I was devastated.

I was never allowed in the kitchen, sadly. I was a clumsy child, energetic and knocking into things. I'd spill things and get food down me, so Mum never wanted me in there. If I said I'd help, she'd draw breath. It was a reason she sent me to ballet classes – to control my clumsiness. And to sort out my bendy legs.

At 13 I started, late, at the White Lodge [the Royal Ballet's school in Richmond Park]. It was 15 to a dorm back then and the food wasn't great. I remember tongue sandwiches quite a lot. We used to head to Sheen for chips, and one friend, from up north, introduced me to pork scratchings.

Two months after I joined the company, at 18, we went on a tour of China, Japan, Thailand. I vividly remember packing my tour box – theatre make-up, ballet shoes, dance clothes and lots of Cup a Soups. They were still in Mao suits on bicycles in Shanghai and Beijing and food was boiled cabbage with stringy bits of meat for breakfast and these weird white balls for lunch.

I was performing Juliet [in Romeo and Juliet] in Buenos Aires and the rattling and crunching of popcorn in the stadium was offputting. The ballet is serene with many still moments, so constant popcorn doesn't really suit that.

I was never a dancer who was self-conscious about everything I ate. It was about having enough carbohydrates and proteins and eating at 2.30pm so you didn't get stomach cramps from nerves. But I never really thought about everything going in my mouth until I had an injury and was on the sofa, leg in a cast, feeling, "Oh my God, I'm turning into a couch potato."

When I began learning to cook after retirement from the Royal Ballet my cup cakes were the first thing my daughters appreciated. Now I have time I make everything for their parties. I loved how my grandmother in Australia made angel bread with hundreds of thousands, so I do all that now.

I associate Strictly Come Dancing with crème brûlée. I have a little fridge at the BBC that's full of it. I nibble constantly.

The compact edition of Darcey Bussell: A Life in Pictures (Hardie Grant, £16.99) is published next month

The dancer has to go cheek to cheek with Fred Astaire. But how do other stars spend Christmas? Richard Curtis, Stephen K Amos and more reveal all

Darcey Bussell

Ballerina and Strictly Come Dancing judge
We watch Top Hat every year. If I'd been a boy, I would have loved to have been like Fred Astaire. There is never any rebellion from my girls – they love dance. But I'm in the festive spirit as soon as I hear Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, although my favourite singalong is All I Want for Christmas by Mariah Carey.

Richard Curtis

Screenwriter and director
We watch Elf and all say: "Will Ferrell should have got an Oscar for this." But the new tradition is listening to White Wine in the Sun, Tim Minchin's extraordinary song about Christmas, families and love. We find we are all sitting totally still with tears in our eyes.

Stephen K Amos

Comedian
It's the perfect time to do the opposite of what's expected. I don't send cards and I don't expect to receive any. I will be heading off to sunnier climes, to a land where there are no baubles, tinsel or overcooked turkey. Thailand, a Buddhist paradise, is where I'll be. Bring on Christmas!

Fuse ODG

Musician
I split my time between here and Ghana, where my family is from. In Ghana, we go out, exchange food with neighbours, play music outside. It's mad, it's packed out. But when we're in the UK, everyone stays inside. Usually I don't get to spend a lot of time inside, so I get to watch all the sitcoms I liked when I was younger: Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air – even EastEnders.

David Schneider

Actor
When I was young and Jewish (I'm still the latter) Christmas Day meant helping my mum cook for the homeless at the church. I remember a faith-shattering moment one year when I was told Jesus had arrived – only to discover he was a man from Venezuela, where the name is common. Now I'm part of a mixed-faith family, Christmas is very much part of my life. I still love the family traditions we've built up: watching Elf or The Grinch. And, as a matter of professional pride, I guess the punchline of every cracker joke. Our dinner doesn't start till I've done them all. Mwahahahappy Christmas!

Tom Chaplin

Lead singer of Keane
I've got my sister and her kids coming over for Christmas, so I've ordered The Snowman DVD. I used to watch it as a kid. I was a budding Aled Jones, always trying to give a note perfect Walking in the Air. Star Wars is never too far away either – something familiar to help the mind unwind once the giant lunch is out of the way. And what would life be without a re-run of The Two Ronnies? Ronnie Barker's hieroglyphics sketch is one of the great moments in british comedy. Also, my Dad and I do this thing called Mini-Santa: he's the head and feet and I'm the arms. My grandad came up with the idea and made the costume, so it's a tradition that's been going for over 80 years. We have to sit it up on a table. It's quite eerie.

I'm fulfilling a lifelong dream this December by going out to Australia to watch the Ashes cricket. My wife is pregnant so I'm under strict instructions to be back on Christmas Eve. Beyond that, I always love doing something musical at Christmastime - we always used to go carol singing as kids. Last year, Tim [Rice-Oxley, Keane keyboard-player] and I did a few songs in a shopping centre in Hastings to raise money for a local homeless charity. I did a similar thing in London for Shelter. Christmas is lovely for most of us, but very tough for anyone who hasn't got a roof over the heads.

I like to be in bed on New Year's Eve. I honestly can't cope with the lack of spontaneity. The best parties are always the ones that come out of nowhere and I always feel like I have to try too hard at New Year. Plus I don't really drink any more, so it's a bit of a slog having to watch everyone descend into drunkenness. Fine for a while but by midnight I can only think of my bed. Bah humbug!

Andy Burrows

Composer of The Snowman and the Snowdog
I have no qualms about the fact that I'm a complete Christmas whore – I love it! There's nothing like an ice rink in a town centre. I don't mind if it's Slade, or that amazing song by Paul McCartney, or the theme tune from Home Alone, or walking into a church and hearing choirs, I love all of it.

I'm looking forward to the Queen's Speech, too, and a bit of EastEnders – I like how there's always a massive fight to make every family in the UK feel better about themselves. Everyone needs Christmas, whether they like it or not.

Darcey Bussell and Jonathan Cope in Tryst at Sadler's Wells. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Last night I sat transfixed through Darcey Bussell's farewell show at Sadler's Wells, thinking: "No, please, this is all wrong, don't go." Bussell was so good - so fluid, so supple, so poetic and so mesmerising that it was awful to think this is the last time we'll see that graceful glamour on the dance stage. Which, to be strictly nit-picky, it isn't, since there are three more shows at Sadler's Wells this week, as well as a final set of appearances next month at Covent Garden. To say nothing, and possibly rightly so, of her planned Viva la Diva show with Katherine Jenkins in the autumn. But then that's it. Say it ain't so, Darcey.

Darcey Bussell has been Britain's favourite ballerina for nearly two decades, so it is fair that she should spin out her goodbyes. While her official farewell at the Royal Ballet is to be in the austere showcase of Song of the Earth, Bussell is giving her fans this extra: a swansong that contrives to be sweet, funny, sentimental, even a little bit rock'n'roll.

The evening has been put together by William Trevitt and Michael Nunn, past masters of the accessible touch. The first half is spliced with film images from Bussell's career: the glamour girl and the giggler as well as the hard-working ballerina. Some of the interview footage is disarming, but the rehearsal material is awesome, her liquid, powerful body apparently incapable of a jarring move. The live dancing is a personal marathon as she performs snippets of Tuckett, Forsythe, Ashton and Wheeldon. It is hard to believe she is ready to go - her technique looks as fearless as a teenager's, even with the subtlety she has learned during her long career. Even at 38, there are few who can concentrate such pure drama into the act of dancing.

People have argued for decades about what 'Englishness' means in ballet and two performances last week provided something close to an answer. When Michael Nunn and William Trevitt decided to present a farewell evening for Darcey Bussell at Sadler's Wells, the tickets for the four performances sold out in a couple of hours, a testament to the luminosity of her 20-year career and the intense, possessive love that she inspires in her army of fans.

Nunn and Trevitt, better known as the Ballet Boyz, have known Bussell since they were students together at the Royal Ballet School and the filmed interview which opens the evening sees Bussell at her most flirty and guileless. Her ultimate ambition when she joined the Royal Ballet was to' be on a poster'. That, to employ Bussell's favourite superlative, would be 'really major'.

The Guardian's Judith Mackrell described Darcey Bussell's valedictory show - which is actually followed by another "final" performance in Song of the Earth - as "a swansong that contrives to be sweet, funny, sentimental, even a little bit rock'n'roll." The Daily Telegraph's Sarah Crompton found herself similarly touched by "an evening beyond praise or blame, a kind of public leaving card for a much-loved colleague," enhanced by the involvement as producers and performers of Ballet Boyz William Trevitt and Michael Nunn, both of whom have known Bussell since childhood. The pair lent their signature to the programme by interspersing the live performances with video footage of Bussell past and present - in rehearsal, performance and interview.

The Evening Standard's Sarah Frater lamented what she saw as the major drawback of this format, writing that "the real problem is that it eats into valuable dance time. At just two hours including an interval, there's only space for six short ballets, a tiny number when you consider the dozens Bussell has danced. Not including a Sleeping Beauty extract, or a Balanchine ballet, feel especially big gaps."

Just in front of me in a Covent Garden rehearsal studio, Darcey Bussell is sitting on the floor removing one of her ballet shoes. It is impossible not to be transfixed by this unexpected and intimate glimpse of the business end of her graceful art. Her toes are wrapped in white protective bandages. She frowns as she rubs the inside of her foot. Dance is a performance art that partly depends on the concealment of effort. A dancer's feet are the engine under the bonnet. Bussell inflicts a lot of pain on herself to give the public its pleasure.

To watch Bussell rehearsing for her farewell Royal Ballet performances this week is an ambivalent experience. Britain's favourite ballerina - and British ballet's first household name since Margot Fonteyn quit the stage nearly 40 years ago - is currently dancing superbly, yet she hangs up her ballet shoes for the last time on Friday night. BBC2 will broadcast the bittersweet event live to the nation along with a tribute documentary. Unflinchingly, Bussell will exit from Covent Garden not in one of her many crowd-pleasing princess roles, but after a performance of Kenneth MacMillan's Song of the Earth, based on Mahler's Der Abschied (the farewell). It is sad music for a sad occasion. The end of any artist's career is even a kind of death.

Along with Bob Marley and Che Guevara, another figure adorns the walls of too many student halls of residence up and down the country. No, not the “hang in there, baby” motivational poster kitten, but Audrey Hepburn. She smirks down from the magnolia in her Givenchy dress and string of pearls, cigarette holder at a jaunty angle. “The person who bought me at the freshers’ fair hasn’t even seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” her dancing eyes always seems to be saying. “But it’s fine. This is my place in the culture.” From Darcey Bussell’s Looking for Audrey (BBC1), one suspects the Strictly judge probably had a tasteful A5 Audrey poster in her own student house.

This was a journey to discover the “Audrey who has always inspired and intrigued”, Bussell told us. Is it possible that all of us don’t already know everything there is to know about Audrey Hepburn? Well, yes and no. The problem with profiling cinematic icons such as Hepburn is that we have all soaked up information over the years via cultural osmosis. You could probably select her as your Mastermind specialist subject with only a cursory internet search to refresh your memory. So yes, most of us already knew she was born in Belgium. But, ooh – her dad was British and Irish? Interesting! And yes, we knew she had begun her performance career as a dancer. But that she was a student at Ballet Rambert in London a few years ahead of Vanessa Redgrave? What a tidbit! And so on, and so forth.

The BBC is devoting a year of specially commissioned programming to the worlds of music and dance, from the arias of La Traviata to the acclaimed BalletBoyz and banjo-toting hillbillies, as part of director general Tony Hall’s promise to increase the corporation’s commitment to the arts.

Among the new shows will be the launch of a dance talent contest, BBC Young Dancer 2015, as well as documentaries examining everything from the origins of ballet, how to make a pop song and the story of contemporary dance. Footage will be broadcast of the BalletBoyz award-winning show at London’s Roundhouse last year.

The British have a longstanding love of TV dance shows. Think only of the huge popularity of Come Dancing, one of television’s longest-running shows, and its more glitzy celebrity reincarnation, Strictly Come Dancing. Now the BBC is hoping that its latest, more serious, dance competition will be just as a big a hit.

BBC Young Dancer 2015 is inspired by the success of the BBC Young Musician contest, which is still going strong after almost 40 years on our screens. Violinist Nicola Benedetti and pianist Freddy Kempf are among the classical music stars who were brought to the world’s attention by the competition. Dancers in the new show’s four categories – ballet, contemporary, hip-hop and southern Asian – are hoping for similar acclaim. Preliminary rounds have already been held to select dancers, who must be aged between 16 and 20. They were judged by some of the industry’s most eminent dance experts – including Christopher Hampson, artistic director of Scottish Ballet – on technical, creative and expressive abilities.