Here is a man who’s landed the job of his life – after missing out on it before – and he’s taking a humble, measured approach. The new artistic director of Queensland Ballet says it would be foolish to rush in and make sweeping changes or grandiose statements.

When we meet at the Thomas Dixon Centre, Gil-Ortega is fresh off the plane from Zurich, where he has lived with his partner and six-year-old son.

“I have a very clear idea of what I want to do, don’t get me wrong, but first you have to see what’s happening in the surroundings, how everything works,” he says, with a British accent overlaying his Catalan mother tongue.

“I think it would be a bit …” he pauses, searching for the right word, “dumb to go, ‘chuck everything out, this is what we need to do’.”

Madrid-born Gil-Ortega, 47, is the seventh artistic director of Queensland Ballet, and sees his role as a steward, building on the tremendous legacy of Li Cunxin, the company’s fifth director, who was recently honoured with the prestigious Prix de Lausanne 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Li retired after 11 years due to ill-health in late 2023 and was replaced by Rockhampton-raised Leanne Benjamin, a long-time principal dancer with London’s Royal Ballet who lasted less than six months in the role.

Benjamin’s abrupt departure in August 2024, due to clashes with the board over her vision, created unwanted turmoil for a company already battling financial pressures.

“I don’t know her personally, I’ve seen her dance throughout her career, and I have only respect for the lady,” Gil-Ortega says of Benjamin.

“Nobody (overseas) had heard of Queensland Ballet until Li came, and I don’t mean it in a bad way for everybody else, but he made it what it is today, so there is a big legacy,” he says.

“If you don’t understand that, I’m not saying she (Benjamin) didn’t, but you also have to understand what you can do with what’s here.

“Even if you have your own vision, and we all do, you can’t go, ‘scratch it, I’m going to start from zero’ … impossible.”

While the 2025 season is locked in – Romeo and Juliet opened on March 21 – Gil-Ortega is already working on 2026, his first season.

“I’m also looking at the next few years, to see what is achievable; we don’t want to go mad and over budget because there is no point,” he says, speaking generally.

“The financial side is very important. A lot of people will say, ‘I want this or that’; well, I’d like a plane but I can’t have it.

“You can’t put the whole institution in jeopardy just to do a ballet; that’s just crazy.”

While this is Gil-Ortega’s first artistic directorship, he comes well prepared, and is no stranger to Brisbane.

In 2016 and 2023, he was part of Queensland Ballet’s production of Strictly Gershwin as the right hand of renowned British choreographer and director Derek Deane.

And, as well as helping Deane stage The Lady of the Camellias when Shanghai Ballet came to Brisbane in December 2024, Gil-Ortega – who’d all but retired from dancing a decade prior – performed in the production.

Now in Brisbane for at least the next four years, Gil-Ortega says he doesn’t “feel like a fish out of the pond”.

“Everyone has been incredibly welcoming – it’s amazing how people are supporting me, asking, ‘What do you need, what can we do to make you comfortable?’”

Having worked previously with the company – which has been capably steered in the interim by assistant artistic director Greg Horsman – Gil-Ortega sees huge potential.

“There are some very good dancers already, and others who WILL get better and that’s when I roll up my sleeves and (say) ‘who is with me?’”

Gil-Ortega is in awe of the Thomas Dixon Centre, a $100m complex in West End that Li Cunxin made a reality.

“I’ve been all over the world and this is incredible, I don’t know if people know how lucky they are – the space, the light,” he says.

“In Europe we work in opera houses and there’s a lot going on – we share it with the opera, the orchestra, there are over 1000 people working under the same roof, so to have this dedicated to the ballet is next level.”

A cornerstone of the job is to continue lobbying for federal funding parity with NSW and Victorian state ballets, and to engage with corporate partners, members and donors, but Gil-Ortega isn’t fazed.

“I obviously need to understand who is bringing the money, but I am going to be me, whether people like it or not,” he says.

“If you start changing depending on the people you’re with, eventually that’s going to have leaks.”

Gil-Ortega has wanted to be an artistic director since he was 17.

When he told his ballet teacher at the time, the response was: “Are you stupid?”

“Then I said, ‘Well, obviously, I am going to be a dancer first, but my end goal is to be an artistic director.’

“Why? Because it has a lot to do with people; when you’re sitting up front you can see so many things – ultimately, it’s people that move me. If it was just about the dancing it would be easy, but it’s the set, music, costumes, lighting and how everything comes together; I love it.”

Gil-Ortega, an only child, credits his mum Lucila’s selflessness for enabling his career to flourish. After his parents split when he was four, he and his mother moved to Barcelona where his grandparents helped raise him.

“I am very happy my father (now deceased) stepped aside; I am so thankful he just stayed away,” says Gil-Ortega, who legally removed his father’s surname from his own when he turned 18. “Every child needs to feel the love of a parent, it’s not the number (of parents) that is important, and my mother is amazing,” he says.

Lucila Gil-Ortega, now 70 and still in Barcelona, enrolled her “hyperactive” son in ballet after a friend said it would help settle him.

“I was four and someone decided to say to Mum: ‘He’s got talent for this’, which I’ve always said is impossible to pick up that early, with all due respect, four years old?”

He leans over and whispers, “I used to haaaate ballet.

“Imagine Spain in the ’80s, a very butch country and, oh my god, it was a difficult time,” he says.

By the age of eight, Gil-Ortega had had enough of being bullied, and of fighting to defend himself.

“One day, bluntly, I said to a friend of mine: ‘Why don’t you come to a class?’, and straight away he was struck – there were only three boys in a group of 40 girls.

“I remember the following day when we went to school he spread the word like there was no tomorrow.

“So all the boys asked could they come and watch the class … and it completely changed the dynamic.”

Was there a point when Gil-Ortega realised he had a gift?

“More than me realising that I had it, my mum put it quite clearly to me – I was 13 and in a private school in Barcelona, and she said: ‘We have to make a decision because this career starts very early and finishes very early. If you say yes, you need to go somewhere else.’”

At 14, Gil-Ortega moved back to Madrid where he attended ballet school under the legendary teacher Carmen Roche.

His mother arranged for him to board with an elderly woman he had not met before, and by night he did distance education.

“I was so exhausted after dancing all day; studying was a killer,” he recalls.

So was separation from his mother and grandparents, although he caught the bus home every week to visit. “I’ve spoken to Mum about it, the decision, it must have been so hard for her, but it was only when I had my own son that I realised – what a woman!

“I still speak with her every day – I can’t thank her enough because she just let me be me.”

Gil-Ortega’s career took off in 1996 with Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet, where he rose to principal dancer in 2001. He left to join Dutch National Ballet in 2007 and thereafter was a guest artist with prestigious companies from England to Italy and Croatia to Chile.

Later, as a ballet assistant and stager, he collaborated with acclaimed choreographers and directors including Carlos Acosta, Christian Spuck, Goyo Montero and the aforementioned Derek Deane.

Now reaching the pinnacle of his career, Gil-Ortega says Brisbane was “meant to happen”. “I believe that now, but I wasn’t, like, desperate.”

He applied when Leanne Benjamin did and was also overlooked for similar roles elsewhere, and by late last year, he figured he had nothing to lose.

“I knew I was coming to Brisbane in December (with Shanghai Ballet) so I just raised my hand and said: ‘If you want to think of me, I would be more than happy to apply again.’”

It comes as a surprise to learn that by then Gil-Ortega had pursued a completely different career.

“For years I had applied to many places (to be an artistic director) and eventually I said to myself, you just need to relax.

“I even said to some of the choreographers I was working with that I was going to take a step back to see what I want to do with my life – and then I became a professional organiser.”

Smiling when asked if this is a made-up job or a real one, he references Marie Kondo, the Japanese entrepreneur who developed the KonMari method of decluttering and arranging.

“I don’t like visual noise, that really annoys me,” says Gil-Ortega, who colour-codes his wardrobe.

“I did a certificate in Switzerland and started my firm last year.

“But I did it more in a holistic way because I’m interested in people – you go into someone’s house or office, and it’s incredible how much a space says about them and what they tell you – that’s why I found it very interesting.”

For now, that is on hold as Gil-Ortega focuses on Queensland Ballet – and the July arrival of his partner, Alba Sempere Torres, 40, and their son Max, who’ll be seven by then.

“Before I said yes to this job, I said to Alba: ‘I can’t do this without you’, my family is my life,” he says.

The couple, who met in Stuttgart when Barcelona-born Sempere Torres was also dancing (she now works in event management for Zurich Opera House), eventually plans to return to Switzerland.

“Max is a little Swiss boy,” Gil-Ortega says, “and although we love Spain and the food, we adore Zurich, and the skiing is great.”

The pair has applied for Swiss citizenship.

“I need to have a Swiss passport to retire there, unless I’m a millionaire, which is not going to happen – this is the ballet,” he says.

“It’s very difficult to become that rich just by doing ballet, but money was never the aim.

“The important thing for me is not to be happy, because what does that even mean?

“I just have to feel good about myself, to be content with what I do.

“Am I going to make mistakes? Yes, because if I do not make mistakes I am not human; mistakes are part of the journey.

“A lot of people are jealous of what you get, but they’re never jealous of your journey; they think you’re so lucky. Lucky, to me, is if you wake up one day and something great has happened and you’ve done NOTHING.”

Gil-Ortega has done plenty, and now the job he first said he wanted 40 years ago is finally his.

But he remains grounded and appreciative of the legacy he is charged with protecting.

“It’s not about me – this company was here before I got here and will be here when I leave,” he says.

“It’s what you do in the time that you’re here so the legacy can continue that matters.

“If they talk about me after, I’ve been doing something wrong.”

Queensland Ballet performs Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo & Juliet at QPAC until March 29. Visit queenslandballet.com.au