[2] In 2001, after Hirano competed at the Prix de Lausanne, he became an apprentice with The Royal Ballet in London.

He made his stage debut as a corps dancer in the third act of Cranko's Onegin.

[1] He and Akane Takada, who was promoted the same year, are the third and fourth Japanese principal dancers in the company, after Tetsuya Kumakawa and Miyako Yoshida.

[5] In an October 2018 review in The Guardian, Luke Jennings called Hirano "a dashing dancer and fine actor", but that he and Natalia Osipova were "uneasy bedfellows" in MacMillan’s Mayerling.

I was a Hirano doubter, but this was a magnificent performance: athletic power matched by classical control.