Created by Frederick Ashton to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Birthday Offering is a one-act divertissement for seven ballerinas and their partners, and includes...
people » Rowena Jackson
LES PATINEURS ;
Pas de trois ;
Rowena Jackson ;
Annette Page ;
Brian Shaw ;
Choreography by Frederick Ashton ;
Composer Giacomo Meyerbeer ;
Musical arrangement Constant Lambert ;
Designer William Chappell ;
Lighting Designer John B. Read ;
1956 ;
Credit: Roger Wood / Royal Opera House /ArenaPAL
Rowena Jackson (1926–). New Zealand-born ballerina, teacher and director
Rowena Jackson was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1926. She originally studied ballet with Stan Powell and Rosetta Lawson. For her academic studies she attended the Epsom Girls’ Grammar School in Auckland. In 1941, she won the very first Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) Scholarship to be awarded in New Zealand. She travelled to London and joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School in 1946, winning the Gold Medal at the RAD’s Adeline Genée Awards in 1947. She joined the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet at Covent Garden the same year.
By 1954 Jackson had been promoted to principal and danced most of the ballerina roles in the repertoire at that time. She was especially noted for her Swanilda in Coppélia and for her ability to pirouette, both alone and supported. There is film of her ability to perform fast and brilliant turns with a repetition of single and double fouettés for the whole of Odile’s 32 fouettés in Act III of Swan Lake, something seldom attempted then. Before she left New Zealand for England, she had set a world record of 121 consecutive fouettés without rest.
Early in 1958 Jackson married fellow Royal Ballet principal, Philip Chatfield. That same year they danced together in The Royal Ballet’s Giselle before the couple retired from the stage and moved to New Zealand in 1959. In 1961 Jackson was awarded an MBE.
In 1972, Jackson and her husband became directors of the National School of Ballet in Wellington. Both were, for a time, artistic directors of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. They eventually moved to Australia but continued to teach until well into their eighties. They have two children.