A great ballerina's last bow

Having turned 50 this year, the superlative French ballerina Sylvie Guillem has announced she will retire from the stage following a farewell world tour that hits London this month. Her decision has come as no surprise to those who know her: although she quits at the top of her game, apparently in peak physical form, she has never been one to outstay her welcome, and her ruthless self-appraisal would not allow her to continue once the creaks and stiffening of middle age had inexorably set in.

The dance scene will look the poorer without this unique phenomenon. For three decades she has pushed boundaries and set new standards, constantly questing, uncompromising and undeviating. There have been no cheap stunts, no lapses of taste: everything has been stamped with artistic integrity and – as her nickname "Mademoiselle Non" suggests – a degree of intransigence too. Her professionalism may have been immaculate but ordinary dealings weren't always easy. Shy, sensitive and ruthlessly determined, she always went her own way and ended as one of the tiny handful of dancers whose name and reputation travelled beyond the dedicated fan base and meant something in the wider world.

As a child, she trained as a gymnast before she entered ballet class, and many see this as explaining a certain ice-queen froideur in her manner as well as her matchless pliancy and fearlessness. Her critics also persistently complain that in classics such as Giselle or The Sleeping Beauty, audiences were often more conscious of her technique than the character she was playing: the qualities of girlish softness, vulnerability and innocence did not come naturally to her, nor the imperious yet gracious regality that informed the presence of her Russian contemporaries.

Instead she struck a more acerbically contemporary note – crisply elegant and erotically insouciant, killing with a glance at 40 paces or kicking her leg to a two-minutes-to-12 height (below) that Pavlova or Fonteyn would have considered merely vulgar. With this sharp edge came a potent and predatory allure. One of her greatest roles was that of the Siren in Balanchine's fable The Prodigal Son: coiling rolls of painted cloth around her exquisite limbs, unsmiling and unyielding, she radiated an infinitely seductive sexual sophistication that would show its victims no mercy.

Guillem's career, impeccably managed and marred by very little of the muscular injury that dogs so many ballerinas, falls broadly into three phases. She learned her craft at the elite school of the Paris Opéra Ballet, graduating into the company in 1981 at the age of 16. There she swiftly rose, promoted by its director, Rudolf Nureyev, who choreographed a new version of Cinderella for her in 1986. But she kicked against the hierarchy and protocols of this most tradition-bound institution, quarrelling with Nureyev when he rejected her demand for exceptional fees and more chances to perform abroad.

The split was described at the time as "a national catastrophe", not least as in 1989 Guillem then left for London and defected to the rival Royal Ballet, where she would be based for the next 14 years on a guest contract which allowed her the freedom denied her in France. Her repertory was wide and eclectic – ranging from Kenneth MacMillan's Manon to post-modernist works by William Forsythe – and her globe-trotting incessant. The US never quite fell in love with her but she was idolised in Japan, where she will make her very final appearances in December.

As relations with the Royal Ballet cooled and eventually ended frostily in 2003, Guillem moved her power base to Sadler's Wells. She embarked barefoot on an intensive series of explorations of dance's frontiers with collaborators such as Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant whose work will feature in her farewell tour.

Artistically, this appears to have been her happiest period: having gained the clout to call the shots and hone all elements of performance to perfection, Mademoiselle Non seemed to mellow somewhat, admitting in interviews how difficult she had been in her younger years. "Perhaps I was a bit Latin in¬

my approach to things," she shrugged. If she's ever felt she had a home, Sadler's Wells has been that place, and leaving its stage door for the last time will doubtless be a wrench.

What will she do next? She might try acting, but has expressed no desire to teach or transmit her experience or wisdom. Conservation causes, such as the marine charity Sea Shepherd, seem to have caught her imagination, and she talks of retreating into nature with photographer husband Gilles Tapie and two adored dogs. In any event, this remarkable artist will doubtless continue to follow her own star – a fiercely original individualist who has always mistrusted conformity and defied convention.