The boyz are back in town

When Tetsuya Kumakawa, 'Japanese wonderboy of the Royal Ballet', jumped ship from the company in October 1998, rumours flew that more defections were likely. 'Will this man break the Royal Ballet?' was the headline on one report. The Royal Opera House seemed to be listing as steeply as the Titanic. Sure enough, five of the ballet's leading men resigned the next month: principal dancers Michael Nunn, William Trevitt and Stuart Cassidy, soloist Gary Avis and first artist Matthew Dibble.

They handed their joint resignation letter to their Big Boss (as Kumakawa calls the RB's artistic director, Sir Anthony Dowell) just before curtain up at Sadler's Wells. The Royal Ballet was still homeless, its immediate future uncertain. There were threats of redundancies, radically reduced performance schedules, even closure, before the Royal Opera House reopened in time for the millennium.

Two of the defectors, Trevitt and Nunn, captured the soap-opera saga on videotape, including the gang of five's wide-eyed tension as they delivered their notice. The video-diary was screened by Channel 4 last year as a fly-on-the-wall series, Ballet Boyz. Now comes the sequel, scheduled for a primetime slot next Sunday. Ballet Boyz II: the Next Step tells how the defectors formed their own company, K Ballet, headed by Teddy Kumakawa. A Japanese television company gambled that he was famous enough back home to guarantee good box-office returns - and so it proved. K Ballet's performances in Japan sell out the moment the box office opens. But the adventure turned sour for some - Nunn and Trevitt, in particular, became disillusioned in the Far East.

At the time the 'boys' left the Royal Ballet, they were besieged by reporters, hot on the scent of yet another anti-Opera House story. The dancers kept their heads down, partly from nerves but also, they reckon, because there was no story. Kumakawa and his backer had made them an offer they had no intention of refusing.

'This was something we wanted to do anyway,' says Nunn. 'We'd been with the Royal Ballet for 12 years and a dancer's career is so short we couldn't wait any longer.' Trevitt agrees: 'If I'd turned down this opportunity, I'd be regretting it still, wondering what might have been.'

They were offered enough money (they won't say how much) to make it worth their while leaving secure jobs and pensions. 'Actually, our jobs weren't at all safe then,' Nunn recalls. 'They never are.'

Kumakawa was back in London when we met a week ago. He had been performing over the New Year as a guest with English National Ballet and rehearsing for K Ballet's next Japanese tour. It is apparently cheaper to bring Japanese dancers, who make up the female corps de ballet, to London than to rehearse in Tokyo. Besides, Kumakawa has kept on his Acton flat and his blue TVR sports car, 'which broke down this morning. English car.' He laughs disarmingly. 'Ask me what motors I have in Japan.'

OK, Teddy, what cars do you have in Japan? 'Two Ferraris and one Mercedes. Mercedes Jeep for picnics; black Ferrari F40 for posing; white 550 Marinello for racing.' I laugh. 'You think I'm making it up, don't you? It's a good story - I should write it.' (Two of the cars put in guest appearances in Ballet Boyz II ). Teddy, now 27, is still impish, sending himself up as well as me, though he has grown up a lot. His nickname comes from Royal Ballet dancers' initial difficulty with his first name, when he joined the company at 16 after two years at the RB School. His surname means Bear River in Japanese, so 'Ted' was inevitable as his English name.

He is a major star in Japan, thanks, he claims, to his exposure on TV, a Nescafé commercial and a film in which he appeared, rather than to ballet. 'Japanese paparazzi are worse than British. They want to know about my private life, so if I go out with a famous actress, they're trying to get me. So I wear a cap to hide myself.' Like Rudolf Nureyev, he has to dance at every performance in order to satisfy his public. 'Yes, I am responsible for K Ballet's success. Otherwise, we'd be on the street. I have to think what the fans want as well as what we want to do. It's hard being in the middle.'

Success has meant that the company has grown to 25 or 30 dancers, depending on the repertoire for each tour. He says his plans focus on his own career as a dancer. 'I'm not trying to develop the company. I've got to enjoy my life, do what I want to do. I've only got another 10 years as a dancer. So I choose what I want to dance; if people like it, then maybe the company gets bigger.' Relaxed, funny and charming, he is modestly dismissive, as though stardom hasn't gone to his head.

But here's the problem for some of the ex-Royal Ballet men who joined him. Instead of K Ballet being 'their' company, it is now Kumakawa's. He no longer needs a cohort of male principals to sustain the repertoire he selects. He invites female guest artists and takes the leading male roles himself in Frederick Ashton's Rhapsody and Symphonic Variations or Roland Petit's Carmen and Bolero . 'It's a challenge for Ted but not for us,' says Nunn, who has now left K Ballet. 'Yes, Symphonic Variations educated Japanese audiences who had never seen it before. But we'd already danced the supporting roles with the Royal Ballet.'

Trevitt is also leaving the company after the upcoming tour. He and Nunn admit that they may have been naive in expecting that they could dance all the works they wanted. 'Every good choreographer is booked up way in advance, so at first we had to rely on things we'd done before,' Trevitt says regretfully. 'But we wouldn't have done anything new at the Royal, so we didn't really lose out artistically.'

They gained so much in experience that they are starting up their own London-based company called George Piper Dances. George is Nunn's middle name, Piper is Trevitt's. They adopted the joint pseudonym years ago when they started taking photographs and making videos. Now in their mid-thirties, they are far less laddish than they appear in Ballet Boyz. They (and their TV producers) thought they needed to appear regular blokes, horsing around in front of the video-camera, rather than as dancers and administrators. They do themselves a disservice in their latest offering, entertaining though it is, by appearing clueless about the rigours of touring in Japan.

'K Ballet was a good progression for us,' says Trevitt. 'We've learnt so much over the last two years that we're as ready as we can be to set up our company.' Nunn chips in: 'We're not trying to recreate K Ballet. We want just eight dancers, plus ourselves, and we're already contacting choreographers.' Their immediate wish-list includes Michael Clark, Russell Maliphant and Paul Lightfoot (whose career has been with Nederlands Dans Theater).

Trevitt and Nunn talk a fabulous company. All they have to do is make it happen. 'We're excited, terrified but confident. That's the way to be,' says Nunn, who has discovered that he enjoys managing and producing. They have enough sponsorship to start raising more money for the launch of George Piper Dances, which they hope will be this autumn.

September-October could be an exceptional harvest period for dance, as new artistic directors take over at the Royal Ballet, ENB and Northern Ballet Theatre; K Ballet is negotiating a London season; Adam Cooper, who joins Kumakawa's Japanese tour, having created a work, Six Faces , for the company, has his own high-profile project for autumn. Add in George Piper Dances and the new millennium is rocking.

Ballet Boyz II: the Next Step will be shown next Sunday on Channel 4 at 8pm