Podcast » Antoinette Sibley
Antoinette Sibley talks with Alastair Macaulay. Her wonderful mix of enthusiasm, appreciation and practicality typify the glorious mercurial talent that has beguiled a generation of dancers and...
people » Georgina Parkinson
Georgina Parkinson (1938-2009). British ballerina and teacher
Georgina Parkinson was born in Brighton in 1938. She studied at The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet in 1957, becoming a principal in 1962. Although she danced many classical roles, Parkinson was known chiefly for her work in the 20th Century repertoire, dancing in works by Bronislava Nijinska, Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, George Balanchine and, above all, Kenneth MacMillan, with whom she had a particularly close professional relationship, including working with him in Berlin in 1967. Her creations for MacMillan included the Empress Elisabeth in Mayerling (1978). For Ashton she created the role of Winifred Norbury in Enigma Variations (1968).
In 1978 Parkinson acted as ballet mistress for American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in New York. She returned to take up that position in 1980 and also danced for ABT. Georgina Parkinson retired from ABT in 2009, and died the same year.
Acquired in 1964 for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton as director and born out of his reverence for the choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska’s charming Les Biches, a seemingly light-as-a-soufflé...
The acquisition of a second Bronislava Nijinska work by The Royal Ballet ensured the survival of perhaps her greatest masterpiece. Les Noces, an austere depiction of a Russian peasant wedding, was...
First performed by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1928, George Balanchine’s Apollo was only the fourth work by Balanchine to enter The Royal Ballet’s repertoire after Ballet Imperial in...
Jerome Robbins’ exploration of Frédéric Chopin found a comic outlet in The Concert, originally performed by New York City Ballet in 1956 and staged by The Royal Ballet in 1975. Audience-members...
Timeline Event » 1978 – Premiere of Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling by The Royal Ballet
With his fourth three-act ballet, Mayerling, Kenneth MacMillan cemented his legacy for reinvigorating the full-length narrative ballet for the modern age. Mayerling, first performed by The Royal...