Perhaps once in a generation an artist of such incalculable talent and achievement emerges that our understanding of their medium is changed forever. For over 30 years, French dancer Sylvie Guillem has been that generational icon, and now as she embarks on her farewell tour, dance lovers all over the world will be scrambling for tickets to catch one last in-the-flesh glimpse of the greatest dancer of the last 50 years.

Trained in rhythmic gymnastics from an early age, a bright and medal-strewn future as an Olympic athlete looked likely for Guillem. But when ballet became her focus, quite by chance after a gymnastics exchange with the Paris Opera Ballet School at the age of 11, the ferocious intensity of her abilities yielded some truly spectacular results.

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek’s Bye © Lesley Leslie-Spinks

She grabbed the attention of the world in 1984, aged 19, as the youngest ever étoile appointed by the most hallowed and historic company in the world, Paris Opera Ballet. Just five years later, despite the protestations of the French National Assembly, Guillem moved, in 1989, to the Royal Ballet in Covent...