KEY POINTS:
I can still take my leg right over my head," says Sir Jon Trimmer as he stands up to show me to the door. Not that the veteran dancer and actor is about to demonstrate - nor does he allow himself to even think about one of those glorious jumps for which he was so famous when he danced with Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. "It was lovely," he sighs. "I had a lovely big bounce. It was a lovely, marvellous, feeling."
The Trimmer who dances this week in Cinderella, keeps himself "close to the ground". His parts are more those of a character actor: a priest in the opening scene; the grizzled royal shoemaker who chucks shoes into the orchestra pit.
But, even though he can't do the great leaps that made him famous, Trimmer shows no sign of regret. "I'm so lucky," he says over and over again. Lucky his legs are still strong enough to dance. Lucky he can act as well. Lucky the ballet still wants him. Especially lucky because next year, to mark his 50th anniversary, the Royal New Zealand Ballet is producing Don Quixote and Trimmer will dance the famous fantasist.
Colleagues tell how, when he got the call from Royal New Zealand Ballet artistic director Gary Harris, Trimmer was quite overcome. The only other time he had danced in Don Quixote was in rehearsal with Nureyev. A wistful look comes into those brown eyes: "But before we got to perform it the company ran out of money so it didn't happen."
This time, 40-odd years later, he will dance Don Quixote himself. "It won't be much dancing, more walking around carrying flags and swords," he says.
But even if he can't leap about and definitely won't carry the ballerinas, he still looks the part and supple with it. He sits there in his white polo, black plaited leather shoes, beret pulled to one side, with little hoop earrings in both ears, looking 10 years younger than 68 - and cool. "Yes two earrings," he says. "Why not? My grandmother was a gypsy!"
The veteran of countless tours wears an amazing lap belt into which is stuffed his passport, mobile (he doesn't know the number), money, keys and all sorts of cards.
He attributes his amazing fitness and relatively injury-free career to his genes and yoga stretching. His mother was 97 when she died and still sprightly until a few days before she succumbed. "I've been lucky with my knees though I did injure my ankle, snapped a tendon," he says. "It's good now."
"A lot of people of my age don't get the work," Trimmer says. But they're not Jon Trimmer. In New Zealand the crowds love him. Even a brief appearance brings a ripple of applause. And still Trimmer is humble.
Backstage they call him Jonty, he brings in organic grapes from his cottage in Paekakariki. Yet respect for one of only five or six New Zealand ballet dancers of true international class - who gave it all up to help get the struggling New Zealand Ballet on its feet - is deep. After 50 years and as the company reaches its 55th anniversary, he's still on staff, still on the payroll.
He was always going to be a dancer. The family was theatrical. His father, a wool classer by day, played the violin in orchestras around Wellington. His mother danced in musicals, as did his older sister Pam. "All six kids - three boys and three girls - danced around," says Trimmer. There were no stereotypes stigmatising him for being a boy doing ballet. "You'd get home and the rest of the world closed off. I guess I was lucky."
Eventually Pam opened a ballet school near where they lived in Petone and at 12 he enrolled. His talent, for those big jumps especially, was unmistakable. By 18 he was in the New Zealand Ballet Company where he met his wife Jacqui. Two years later he was accepted by the Royal Ballet School in London and a year after that was on tour with the legendary Sadlers Wells Ballet. Next came stints with the Royal Danish Ballet and Australian Ballet.
It was the 60s. Ballet companies toured for six months at a time. Jacqui was in the corps de ballet, they were both 20-something, and touring the great cities and towns of Europe and North America.
He danced Giselle and Raymonda with Nureyev and Fonteyn. "It seems such a long time ago - and yet it doesn't." He remembers how Hollywood movie stars would follow them from town to town and come backstage after the show. "There was Marlene Dietrich, Danny Kaye, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton. I think Danny Kaye followed us round for two or three towns."
There have been other marvellous moments including his Royal Command Performances - some for the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, about three for Queen Elizabeth II and two for the Danish king who "adored" ballet. "The special thing was they would always come afterwards, on to the stage, and say hello."
He could have had a brilliant international career, made large amounts of money, but after almost a decade in Europe he wanted to get back. "I was going well, yes ... but I needed to come home."
Needed?
"Put it this way, I liked living here. The New Zealand Ballet Company was my home anyway."
By then it was 1970. Things were different back in Wellington. There was little money, the New Zealand Ballet was still struggling, but the audiences were great. The Trimmers danced and toured for years on end, performing in small towns to standing ovations. Early on the dancers were billeted with local families because there was no money for hotels.
At first Trimmer was principal dancer. Later, he and Jacqui helped run things. By that time the ballet was better known, the dancers stayed in motels and Thomas, the Trimmers' marmalade cat, came along for the ride. The cat travelled by bus, plane and ferry. Jon and Jacqui smuggled him into motels, thinking the proprietors had not noticed. Only much later, says Trimmer, "when they asked where 'that cat was,' I realised they'd known all the time!"
There has never been much money. Trimmer does not dare to have a credit card because he can't afford one. He lives "hand to mouth", takes the train to work.
"Looking back you can see where there could have have been opportunities to put some away, but unless you're prepared to live in one place and work for a resident company where there's no touring at all ... "
And a job like that would have meant life in one of the great ballet cities, maybe Vienna or Copenhagen, and Trimmer wanted to dance in his own country.
He and Jacqui have a cottage in Paekakariki three minutes from the beach, with a sliver of a sea view from the "gin terrace" that Trimmer built himself.
As well as working for the ballet he teaches acting and mime at local schools. He and Jacqui both paint and make pottery - and they're good. Although Trimmer doesn't go to the ballet classes he taught for so long, he religiously does his own warm-ups and yoga. On tour he stays in decent hotels reflecting the fact that the ballet is in excellent shape. As he says, but more modestly, Cinderella is a knockout. "We've had excellent houses, good reviews, excellent audiences."
After this tour, the ballet, including Trimmer, will head to China for three weeks, presenting Cinderella, plus a triple bill programme, in Beijing and Shanghai. Trimmer, who last danced in China more than 20 years ago, can't wait.
Mid year next year he has been signed up for Romeo and Juliet when he'll play the Duke of Verona and and the priest who gives the poison to Juliet. And then, towards the end of 2008, he will perform and tour with Don Quixote.
And with that theatrical incline of the head, just a little tip backwards, he's on his way. Tall, straight as a power pole, and poised as any dancer. I can't help thinking that if Jon Trimmer can still get his leg above his head and looks as good as he does, we might be in for a surprise.
