(gentle music) - I'm very lucky to have such a life filled with something I really love to do.

If we all had that in the world, whether you're serving fish and chips or hamburgers, if you love doing it, and you've got a wonderful family or something, that's important.

I think that's what it's about.

I'm Ben Stevenson.

I'm here working with Texas Ballet Theater, which I've been doing for the last 20 years.

So I should be riding a horse with a cowboy.

I do have a cowboy hat, I do have boots, but I don't have a horse.

But I'm working on it.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Right now, Houston is the only city in Texas that supports its ballet so generously.

But Ben Stevenson says that dance is gaining status throughout the state.

- Texas, too, is a place that's on the arc, I think, in America, really.

And I think that, you know, there is a big interest in dance and the arts in Texas.

87 years.

You'd say, a brief thing of your life.

I was born in the south of England in this town called Portsmouth, which is very near Southampton where all the big liners come in and everything.

So it's quite exciting.

I was there during the war and we had a lot of bombing because it was a shipping port, so the Germans would come and bomb where we were.

So we spent quite a lot of time in my youth in the air raid shelters.

(somber music) So, it was a fun time.

Anyway, from there, I started dancing when I was seven.

I had my feet rolled in, like that, so I had to put a little steel support in my shoe to support the arch, and the doctor said if I did ballet classes, the turnout supported the arch.

I said, "I'm not doing that.

I don't wanna go to a ballet class."

So my mother said we should try some sort of dancing.

So I went around to two or three schools I was taken to, with little girls.

I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no."

So I eventually went to this school and I liked the building.

I thought, oh, I'd love to live in that fabulous house.

So I didn't start dancing because I liked the teacher, I liked the building.

I thought, oh, I'd love to live in there, so I couldn't wait to go inside.

When I got to about 12, my father said, "Good, you can stop now.

You know, we don't have to pay for that."

I said, "No, I love it.

I like the people I'm working with."

So somehow, it grew, like a disease, really.

So at 14, I left home and went to London, and went to the Arts Educational School.

And then I got into the Royal Ballet and was not very happy there because I wasn't trained at the Royal Ballet.

So all my friends were in the English National Ballet, so eventually I left the Royal Ballet, which was a stupid thing to do.

I always look upon myself as being the black sheep of the Royal Ballet.

(somber music) The Consul General in Houston called me.

And we had an English boy in the company; we were always playing jokes on one another, so I thought, it's Dorio.

So he came on the phone, he said, "This is the Consul General.

Would you accept an OBE from her majesty?"

And I said, "Well, I'll take five."

He said, "I think you only get one."

So I thought it must be really him.

I said, "I apologize."

And I said, "You know, I'm sorry, but..." So it started like that.

And then they said, 'cause then I ran back and I said, "Oh, I'm getting an OBE," I told everyone, and then after they said you mustn't tell anyone.

I was so impressed by her.

But I went, she looked me right in the eyes, and she just gives me such a pleasure giving this award.

She said, "You know, dance is a wonderful language."

She said, "It doesn't matter, if I could dance, I wouldn't have to go to all these countries.

I could dance while people understand what I'm saying."

She said, "This is so well deserved.

Thank you for your things."

It made you feel better than the medal, actually.

She's an amazing woman.

Missed.

(gentle classical music) When you work on a a ballet, every time you come back to it, you see things that you did, or that this could be better, or that could be better.

When I couldn't dance anymore, teaching became very important to me, and then choreographing.

So somehow, I still feel I'm dancing, but through other people.

I can't tell you how much I've loved dance and being part of it.

And I'd like to sort of spread that around Fort Worth because I think you have to educate the public.

People go, "Oh, I saw that ballet.

I didn't like it."

But you don't go to one movie and say, "I'm never going back again."

And there's so many.

There's what?

Classical ballets, there's contemporary ballets, "Dracula," "Alice in Wonderland," "Cinderella," and all sorts of new works that are coming out.

And I think dance is so exciting.

Movement is exciting.

(soft intense music) - [Interviewer] Do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to... - I've gone on so long that your film's run out and your film just died.

I mean, I've got all my Shirley MacLaine stories, Elton John; knowing him and different people.

Shirley MacLaine, you don't know who she is probably, either.

- [Interviewer] No.

- [Ben] Do you not know who Shirley MacLaine is?

Isn't that terrifying?

(chuckling) You know who Elton John is?

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

- [Ben] Oh, I can't believe it.

(chuckling)