Monica Mason Reflects on Leadership of Royal Ballet LONDON - When Monica Mason retires as artistic director of Britain's Royal Ballet this weekend, she will have served the company for 54 years. While a few artists have served ballet companies longer, I can't think of anyone who has worked in as many capacities. Ms. Mason was a corps dancer who rose to star ballerina, a powerful technician who became a blazing character artist, a teacher, an assistant to a celebrated choreographer (Kenneth MacMillan) and an eventual leader of the company. A fascinating exhibition at the Royal Opera House details her career in photographs and in costumes and reveals an essential paradox about her. On the one hand, she broke the Royal mold with the attack and scale of her dancing; on the other, her overall career has been the embodiment of tradition and duty. Before her the Royal had six artistic directors since its foundation (as the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1931). She is nicknamed "safe pair of hands" for the cautious, respectful policies she has generally pursued. She has in no way drastically changed the Royal since becoming director in 2002. Since the early 1980s, it has remained an intermittently great classical company, seldom any more superb at corps level, often exceptional in the development of its principal women. The choreographic legacies of Frederick Ashton and MacMillan have been honored to a fair degree; the state of Ashton dancing, an elusive and intricate idiom, is far healthier than it looked 15 or 20 years ago. The company does plenty to promote new choreography. If neither Christopher Wheeldon nor Wayne McGregor (who became resident choreographer in 2006) has seriously enriched Royal style, they have kept dancers challenged and audiences stimulated. A young new choreographer of talent, Liam Scarlett, has emerged. Ms. Mason has often said that the first thing she did after accepting her current job was to find photographs of the company's first three artistic directors - Ninette de Valois (1931-63), Ashton (1963-70) and MacMillan (1970-77) - and hang them in her office. "I stand here and have conversations with them," she told me during a visit in April. "When I appointed Wayne McGregor as resident choreographer, I talked to them a great deal," she added, with a laugh. Mr. McGregor came from way outside the Royal stable; his background was modern dance. What had the three photographs told her? Ms. Mason, her face deadpan, replied, "They told me "It's your decision." " She paused, then with a half-smile added wryly, "I decided that that was what they said." Intelligent, good-humored and efficient, she has an astonishing memory, a rich sense of humanity and a ready wit. Since there are disconcertingly few women today in charge of ballet companies, I asked her if the job is harder for a woman. "I don't know," she said with a twinkle. I haven't been a man. But she does not dwell on herself and exhibits concern neither to cause controversy or offense. Her generosity to others is remarkable; so is her sense of history. In April she presented a triple bill of 21st-century British choreography by Mr. Wheeldon, Mr. Scarlett and Mr. McGregor. In Mr. Scarlett's ballet, sex, violence and death were ordinary; it was inspired by the 1907 Camden Town Murders and the sexual and murderous connections between high-profile men and lowlife women. Mr. McGregor's featured famous rock-pop artists - Boy George, Mark Ronson and others - playing their music onstage. With a dash of defiance, Ms. Mason said, "While all that was in preparation, I looked at those three photographs and said, "Well, do you think I'm a safe pair of hands now?" " As a modern artistic director, Ms. Mason has had to confront problems that didn't face de Valois, Ashton or MacMillan. "Today dancers tend to find us rather than we them," she said. Once, though, Wayne Eagling rang me when he was leaving the artistic directorship of the Dutch National Ballet; his successor was planning to take the company in a less classical direction, and he had two leading men, Federico Bonelli and Viacheslav Samodurov, whose talent was particularly classical. I flew over to watch them dance soon and hired them immediately. So there are many ways in which dancers join our ranks. The Royal Ballet has certainly seen changes; she touched on a few. One involves manners. Dancers all used to be referred to as "boys" and "girls" but are now treated as adults. Another change involves technology. Ms. Mason remarked in particular on the sophistication of lighting now. A third change involves physiotherapy and the treatment of dancers" health over all. A fourth change involves touring. From 1949 to 1976 the Royal toured North America at least every other year. In recent decades it has mainly toured Asia. Ms. Mason recalled the company's first season in China in 1983; she said the Japanese in particular have become devotees of Ashton and MacMillan. I have heard her say that she had never thought of being an artistic director ("I thought you had to be a choreographer or to direct productions of the classics to be one of those," she said) and that to find herself succeeding Ross Stretton at short notice had taken her by surprise. Yet she described her 10 years as artistic director as "wonderful" and "a privilege." Her life, she said, will be immeasurably different "the morning after the last night." But her successor, Kevin O'Hare, has booked her to coach four MacMillan ballets next season. There will be some contact with the institution to which she has given most of her life. The rest she leaves to arrange itself. I asked her if the company had become her family. She had no hesitation saying yes. She said it contentedly, with fulfillment - then carried on talking enthusiastically about members of that family, past and present.