Anthony Dowell was a British dancer of rare qualities. I write “was” because, although he’s still alive, he’s in his seventies. But those who saw him in his heyday—and that includes me—remember.

Dowell wasn’t known for bravura technique, although his technique was certainly strong enough. He was never showy, unless it’s “showy” to demonstrate elegance and lyricism with every move. His line was simple, clean, and uncluttered, and his musicality was never rushed or hurried.

In this variation for Siegfried (otherwise known as “the Prince”) from Act I of “Swan Lake,” the choreography has never appealed to me. It’s painfully slow—and I mean painfully, because it requires tremendous concentration, control, and strength to create a legato line that’s so drawn out in time. The dancer can’t hide under flash; he is completely exposed, and nothing can be jerky or harsh. Dowell turns it into a tour de force of style and acting; his every movement expresses some understated emotion with the utmost refinement and introspection. Dowell dances as though for himself alone, lost in thought, and he manages to express the yearning and vague enuii the prince feels as he is on the brink of something, although he knows not what. We know he is about to meet his tragic destiny—as was Romeo before the ball, poised on the edge of a similar moment:

…my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels, and expire the term
Of a despisé¨d life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But he that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail. On, lusty gentlemen.

Next is a recent clip of Dowell coaching Royal Ballet dancers in the same ballet. This section they are rehearsing is at the very end of the ballet, where the Prince and the Swan Queen fight the magician’s power and choose to commit suicide together (I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t know, if you know anything about Swan Lake at all). Dowell’s coaching isn’t about the steps, it’s about the emotion, the timing, the phrasing, the mime, the emphasis, the connection between the two characters. There’s not a moment that’s careless or thoughtless; every motion expresses something. Here Dowell works just as hard as the dancers, maybe harder, to create a great work of art, and I think you’ll agree that he succeeds. It’s one of the finest examples of coaching I’ve ever seen:

And here is Dowell in his prime, dancing this same section with the great Natalia Makarova. You can see the moves he talked about years later when coaching—how he hangs onto his lover, how he almost never lets her out of his sight, how they pull at each others’ hands. The boat at the end represents their ascension to heaven, by the way; it doesn’t mean they survived and took a ride on the swan boats at Boston’s Public Garden: