Just Different

Wayne Sleep has danced with ballet legends Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, partied with Freddie Mercury and performed with Princess Diana, becoming her close friend.

Behind the glitz and glamour, Wayne has always felt like an outsider. Sleep reveals the difficulties for a working-class, gay man in handling the prejudices of his generation and living through the Aids epidemic. Wayne was also the shortest principal dancer in the Royal Ballet - he had to spin twice as fast and jump twice as high to succeed.

In this moving - but also laugh-out-loud and gossip filled - memoir, Wayne Sleep shows how he danced his way to success, fulfilment and love, and how he overcame obstacles and prejudice along the way.

Wayne Sleep won a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in 1961 and joined the Royal Ballet Company in 1966, becoming a Senior Principal Dancer. He has also worked as an actor, including in musical theatre, and as a choreographer he created, directed and appeared in DASH, which for the first time incorporated all genres (including ballet, jazz, tap, and contemporary). He was appointed OBE in 1998 and is the patron of a number of charities. He lives in London and has two entries in the Guinness Book of Records.

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