When Ajose-Cutting worked with Protein dance company, her daughter was welcomed into rehearsals and crawled around the studio. Smith and Ajose-Cutting have both relied on informal childcare arrangements. “If this piece is going to be left behind, what does this say to my daughter?”

“But I also think it makes me want to say more, to speak more clearly, because time is precious,” she says.

“Focus and direction can definitely come, but you’ve got to laugh at the huge amount of chaos, too.” Smith has also felt the effect on her creativity, not being able to get “into the dream zone” for long enough without being interrupted. Now, though, she carves out space to be an artist and mother, and works with “no faffing about”. “I’m going to go into this dingy studio and begin to explore the meaning of life via my elbows?!” It makes me want to say more, speak more clearly, because time is precious Bobbi Jene Smith Who am I? What does my body mean now? Where is security?” The conceptual ideas she explored through her work suddenly felt triflingly abstract. With my daughter it was four months and I was back in the studio, but the first one, it just blew me away. “I think it was almost two years before I got my head above water. “After my son was born in 2011, it blew my identity apart,” says London-based dance artist Temitope Ajose-Cutting. “Should I have rested, should I have waited? I’ll never know.” Now it’s finding a new place to dance from.” Nevertheless, Smith was back in the studio after six weeks. Those muscles have been cut and I feel like that’s where I’ve always danced from. “I didn’t anticipate needing to recover from that and I still don’t feel ‘back’. “Thinking my body was going to bounce back, for one,” she says. I spoke to New York dancer and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith while she was pregnant in 2019 she tells me that the birth and its aftermath brought many surprises. Harrod felt supported by her company, whereas most dancers are freelancers, with no structure to rely on. ‘I still don’t feel “back”’ … Bobbi Jene Smith, centre, in the film Mari, about a dancer discovering she is pregnant. (That’s a culture change the Royal’s healthcare director Shane Kelly tells me he’s actively tackling.) “There’s the sense with this job that you’ve had a baby and you’ll reappear at work with a six-pack and your pointe shoes on,” she says. “I remember doing Les Patineurs and thinking, I have absolutely no sensation of control over my limbs.” But getting back to work is harder. Then there’s navigating the hormone relaxin, which relaxes ligaments in preparation for birth. The physical effects of pregnancy are one thing, gritting your teeth and dancing through the nausea (Harrod stopped performing early in her first pregnancy, but carried on to five months – with forgiving costumes – for the second). “We made it work,” she says, “but third time around, I realised that the personal compromises to myself, in terms of missing time with my children, and the toll it takes, the physical aspect of the job, I had reached my limit.” She and her husband, principal dancer Steven McRae, hired a live-in nanny, a luxury Harrod admits not everyone can have. It makes for long days, especially when you have children that don’t sleep: you come home and you’re up every hour or two then you do it all again.”

I could have six shows in one week, coming home at midnight. “There’s no question it’s the best thing for us as a family,” she says, “but ultimately it came about from the constant pressures of juggling babies and the job. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardianįor Harrod, it’s a positive decision. Lauren Cuthberton in Swan Lake by the Royal Ballet in March 2020.

Dance baby boom