Dame Monica Mason DBE (born 6 September 1941) is a ballet dancer and has been the director of The Royal Ballet, since 2002.

Monica Margaret Mason was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1941. A talented dancer, she moved to Britain at the age of 14 to join the Royal Ballet School.

At the age of 16 Mason joined the Royal Ballet as the Company's youngest member, and became a principal dancer in 1968. She worked closely with the choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who created the roles of Lescaut's Mistress in Manon, Calliope Rag in Elite Syncopations, Summer in The Four Seasons and the Midwife in Rituals for her.

Mason was also given the role of the Chosen Maiden in The Rite of Spring that had been originally created by Diaghilev for Lydia Sokolova in the 1920s. Her last leading role was as Nursey in Isadora by Kenneth MacMillan, in 1981, although she continued to appear in mime roles as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet for some time after that.

Following her retirement as a principal dancer, Mason continued to work for the Royal Ballet company and in 1984 she was appointed Principal Répétiteur to the company. In 1991 she became Assistant Director of the company under Sir Anthony Dowell. Following the company's move to its new headquarters at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, Mason replaced Dowell's successor, Ross Stretton, as Director in late 2002. She recently announced her retirement and will leave The Royal Ballet in August 2012

Deborah Bull CBE (born 22 March 1963) is an English dancer, writer, and broadcaster and Creative Director of the Royal Opera House.

Born in Derby, and brought up in Kent and Lincolnshire, she studied dance from the age of seven, first locally, and then, on the recommendation of her teacher, at the Royal Ballet School. Whilst at the school she won the 1980 Prix de Lausanne, the prestigious international ballet competition.

She was invited to join The Royal Ballet in 1981, having toured with the company as a student during the summer. She was promoted through the ranks and gained principal status in 1992, immediately following the company's opening performance in Japan, at which she danced the role of Gamzatti in La Bayadere.

During her twenty years in The Royal Ballet, she danced a wide range of work throughout the repertoire. Her leading roles in the classics included Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and Kitri in Don Quixote, and she created roles for Ashley Page, David Bintley, Michael Corder, Emma Diamond, Wayne McGregor, Glen Tetley and Twyla Tharp. She received particular praise for her performances in the works of George Balanchine and William Forsythe. In 1995 Forsythe staged for her the first performance in this country of his ballet Steptext, and she was subsequently nominated for a 1996 Olivier Award in the 'Outstanding Achievement In Dance' Category for her interpretation. She was named as 1996 Dancer of the Year by both The Sunday Express and The Independent on Sunday, who praised her work both on and off the stage, saying 'here is a dancer whose intelligence and courage - for once - don't reside entirely in the tips of her toes'.

Barry Wordsworth (born 20 February 1948, Worcester Park, Surrey, England) is a British conductor.

From 1989 to 2006, Wordsworth was principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, and now holds the title of conductor laureate. From 1990 to 1995, Wordsworth was music director of the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden. He began his second tenure in that post in 2007. Since 1989, he is the principal conductor of the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra. In March 2007 at Brighton, Wordsworth caused controversy when he refused to conduct Andrew Gant's new composition A British Symphony the day of the scheduled premiere. He was music director of Birmingham Royal Ballet from 2005 to 2008.

Wordsworth's discography includes works by lesser-known British composers alongside more mainstream pieces. He conducted the Last Night of the Proms in 1993. In 2003, he was the first conductor to record commercially all nine surviving movements of Constant Lambert's ballet Horoscope (only a suite of five movements had previously been recorded).

Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE ( /ˈdʒækəbi/; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor and film director.

A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet,Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing. His stage work also included playing Edward II,Octavius Caesar,Richard III, and Cyrano de Bergerac.

In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Jacobi has also enjoyed a successful television career, starring in the critically praised adaptation of Roberts Graves' I, Claudius, for which he won a BAFTA; the titular role in the acclaimed medieval drama series Brother Cadfael, and Stanley Baldwin in The Gathering Storm. Though principally a stage actor, Jacobi has appeared in a number of films, such as Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Gladiator (2000), Gosford Park (2001), The Golden Compass (2007), The King's Speech (2010), My Week with Marilyn (2011), and the forthcoming Hippie Hippie Shake. Like Laurence Olivier, he holds two knighthoods, Danish and British.