Yolanda Sonnabend (1935–2015). Zimbabwean-born British artist and theatre designer

Yolanda Sonnabend studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and throughout her life combined a career as a painter and stage designer. Her theatre career encompassed plays and operas, and her first designs for dance were for Peter Wright’s A Blue Rose. She was closely associated with choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, for whom she designed Symphony, Rituals, Requiem, My Brother, My Sisters, Playground, Valley of Shadows, Different Drummer and a television production of The Seven Deadly Sins. After MacMillan’s death in 1992, she also redesigned his The Rite of Spring for English National Ballet. For Michael Corder, Sonnabend designed L’Invitation au voyage and Cinderella, and for Matthew Hart, Fanfare. Later in her career, Sonnabend designed several classical ballet productions, including Anthony Dowell’s Swan Lake (which remained in The Royal Ballet’s repertoire for three decades), the costumes for Natalia Makarova’s staging of La Bayadère, and The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire for K Ballet in Japan. Sonnabend’s portrait of MacMillan is in the collection of London’s National Portrait Gallery. She died in 2015.