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...
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Robert Mead (1940-1988). British dancer
Robert Mead was born in Bristol in 1940. He studied at The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet Touring Company in 1958. He transferred to the Covent Garden company in 1962 and became a principal dancer in 1967. Noted for his purity of style, for he created roles in Frederick Ashton’s Monotones (1965) and Jazz Calendar (1968) and as Richard P. Arnold in Ashton’s Enigma Variations (1968). Robert Mead joined Hamburg Ballet in 1971.
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...
Enigma Variations was choreographed by Frederick Ashton to Edward Elgar’s music in designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman. It was first performed by The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 1968. Elgar...