The Bolshoi Ballet’s wunderkind ballerina Natalia Osipova defied received wisdom when, in 2012, she cast off from the great Moscow company with her equally prodigious then boyfriend and partner Ivan Vasiliev to go freelance. Without the Bolshoi’s unmatched support system, its coaching and opportunities, its reputation behind her, protested the Russian media, how could she thrive?

Much the same was said over here the following year when the Royal Ballet’s precocious young star, the matchlessly graceful, imperiously aquiline Sergei Polunin thumbed his nose at a cornucopia of Covent Garden leading roles and skipped off to an uncertain future trailing behind him...