Bryony Brind, ballet dancer - obituary - Telegraph Bryony Brind, ballet dancer - obituary Principal dancer at the Royal Ballet who became a staple of gossip columns after her career faded Bryony Brind in 1981 Photo: Photoshot 5:08PM GMT 09 Dec 2015 Comments Bryony Brind, who has died of heart failure aged 55, made world headlines in 1982 when, aged just 22, she was picked out of the Royal Ballet’s junior ranks by Rudolf Nureyev to become his partner at Covent Garden. Only half his age, the coltish Bryony Brind seemed to represent a fresh kind of British ballerina, but in the pressure of public glare her career faded in less than a decade. She then acquired a new celebrity when she stepped out (platonically) with Prince Michael of Kent and became the romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland’s daughter-in-law.. Bryony Brind in 1981 Photo: Rex Features Thin and long-legged, Bryony Brind was physically striking, and won one newspaper’s accolade as one of the most beautiful women in London.

In classical ballet roles she was more ethereal-looking than the usual British physique, and her leanness and flexibility were well suited to contemporary ballets requiring all-over body tights. She emerged at a time when the Royal Ballet was regarded as having lost some of its classical finesse and lustre under a new contemporary-minded artistic director, Norman Morrice. Her debut in the leading role of Swan Lake at Covent Garden, aged 21, was acclaimed by relieved critics and a public longing for fresh faces after a decade of over-familiarity with senior ballerinas. The following year, when the 44-year-old Nureyev was invited back to the Royal Ballet to stage the classical La Bayadère: Kingdom of the Shades, he chose Bryony Brind to be his ballerina, even though she was still a junior dancer. It was not an unmitigated compliment. Nureyev was aggrieved at having been passed over as artistic director, and he said about his return: “She is the best bet.

I have come back to this bucket of s---.” Bryony Brind with Rudolf Nureyev in 1982 Photo: WILLIAMS Darryl/Arenapal Yet he maintained his faith in the young ballerina and later that year asked her to dance the sensuous Siren who seduces the Prodigal Son (played by Nureyev) in Balanchine’s The Prodigal Son, and he cast her as young Miranda in his new ballet The Tempest. But his attention did not last, and when in 1984 he returned to La Bayadère at Covent Garden again, he took the leading role with the rising French ballerina Elisabeth Platel and relegated Bryony Brind to a subsidiary role among the Shades. Although Bryony Brind took the leading role on another night, it was prophetic of the rollercoaster her subsequent career would become.

Born on May 27 1960 in Plymouth, Bryony Jane Susan St John Brind was the elder child of Major Roger Brind of the Royal Marines and Jennifer (née Grey), and trained at the Royal Ballet School, where, with her androgynous body, she seemed to herald a fresh new kind of ballerina. She and her contemporary and then lover Ashley Page (later a resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet and Scottish Ballet’s director) were fast-tracked into leading roles, sparkling in Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun, and then being chosen by the American choreographer, Glen Tetley, to head his athletic new creation for the Royal Ballet, Dances of Albion: Dark Night Glad Day. Bryony Brind and Mark Silver in a scene from 'Young Apollo' Photo: Photoshot Following her Swan Lake debut and the attention brought to her by Nureyev, the young Bryony seemed set for an exciting career and was promoted to principal rank at 24. She made patchy progress, however, which some observers blamed on an inattentive Royal Ballet management failing to nurture her through the tests of classical repertoire.

She was gradually eclipsed by her contemporaries, the more dramatic Alessandra Ferri and the more classically versatile Fiona Chadwick, both of whom were favoured by the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan for his psychodramatic ballets. Bouts of ill health emphasised her striking thinness and some critics noted in 1987 that she had lost strength when she danced the leads in Giselle and Swan Lake after a period away. The arrival at the Royal Ballet in 1989 of the brilliant young Paris star Sylvie Guillem and the emergence of Darcey Bussell created further competition, and in 1992 Bryony Brind left the Royal Ballet aged 31. She branched out into film, dancing in Malcolm McLaren’s eccentric musical The Ghosts of Oxford Street, which featured the celebrated Kirsty MacColl/Pogues ballad Fairytale of New York. She also made an impact as the spectral Miss Jessel in Rusty Lemorande’s film of Henry James’s horror story The Turn of the Screw. Her dance performance in a Glyndebourne Opera production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was filmed, and she occasionally appeared as an actress.

Her social life was a popular topic in gossip columns and she had a much speculated-upon friendship with Prince Michael of Kent in the 1990s – she protested that he was “only my walker” – and her marriages to two men both 22 years older than herself generated fascinated coverage. Bryony Brind’s first marriage, in 1997, to the Anglo-Greek businessman Skevos Theodorou, suffered the “curse” of Hello! magazine by collapsing within a year of the official photo-shoot of the nuptials. Bryony Brind in 1998 Photo: Rex Features Three years later she made a happy marriage to Ian McCorquodale, the younger son of Barbara Cartland. But in 2002 her husband suffered two strokes, paralysing one side. He paid tribute to his wife’s character: “I’ve been so lucky with Bryony, who looks after me beautifully. She went from being a newly-wed to a carer.

My mother loved Bryony – she saw her as a Cartland heroine.” Bryony Brind appeared from time to time as a presenter and speaker at ballet events, and two years ago gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph in which she lamented the loss of the “English” accent at the Royal Ballet owing to the increasing predominance of international recruits. A racehorse named Bryony Brind was briefly successful in the late 1990s in France, and a striking photo-portrait of the ballerina by Jillian Edelstein now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Her husband survives her. Ballet: the secret lives of dancers - Telegraph Dance Ballet: the secret lives of dancers They were once the toast of society. But modern-day corps de ballet endure punishing working hours, crippling injuries, terrible pay and little job security. Then why do it? Richard Johnson spent a day with the Royal Ballet’s finest to find out .

Royal Ballet principal dancers Lauren Cuthbertson, Rupert Pennefather and Mara Galeazzi Photo: WANG WEI Image 1 of 3 To the pointe: Lauren Cuthbertson in the pointe room at the Royal Opera House Photo: WANG WEI Royal Ballet principal dancers Lauren Cuthbertson, Rupert Pennefather and Mara Galeazzi Photo: WANG WEI By Richard Johnson 3:26PM BST 29 Jun 2009 Rupert Pennefather, a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, lights a cigarette and holds it – self-consciously – in his right hand. He mutters something about ballet being 'a different kind of fitness' – anaerobic rather than aerobic – but, clearly, he isn't convinced. 'Actually,' he says, 'I'm rehearsing Giselle at the moment and I do get a bit puffy.' Which explains why he's only bought a pack of 10. 'You always give up quicker with a pack of 10,' he says. Pennefather is on the balcony of the Royal Ballet building, looking down onto the piazza of Covent Garden. He's in for morning class.

It's like they say – miss class for one day, you notice; miss class for two days, your colleagues notice; miss class for three days, your audience notices. That's all hypothetical since the New York City Ballet announced that, because of the economic climate, they were laying off dancers. These days, nobody misses class. Not any more. Of course, it wasn't always like that. And nor was Pennefather. 'When I first joined the Royal Ballet,' he says, 'I was 18. And going out a lot. I would come in for class and wouldn't be able to remember what I was doing – I wouldn't even be able to lift the girls.' As he speaks, he watches the rest of the dancers inside – stretching, intently. 'But I grew up quickly. I had to, because life in the Royal Ballet is so competitive.' Without question, the Royal Ballet is one of the top three companies in the world. Pennefather knows that he is lucky to work there. Although the beauty and mystique that surround the art often make it easy to forget, that's just what ballet dancing is: a job. A tough and often thankless one.

Even if you make it to the top, you'll still be faced with short-term contracts and early redundancy. Since the death of Rudolf Nureyev, there have been no 'superstars' in ballet. He was about so much more than the dance, which is why he went on to become one of the most photographed men of the 20th century. Born to an impoverished family in Russia, he ultimately died on his private island purchased with the millions he made during his dance career. That was in 1993, but he remains an inspiration to this day. Related Articles Love and Loss, by the BRB - review 29 Jun 2009 In T-shirt, tights and canvas shoes, Pennefather has the timeless quality of a Nureyev. 'Funny that,' he says with a smile. 'Because our outfits have all changed. Way back, tights were made of heavy woven material and weren't stretchy at all. You used to end up with terribly baggy knees. And I tried on a pair of ballet shoes from the olden days and they were really thick leather with a lot of material inside.

When I pointed my foot, I thought, "My God, how did people dance in these?"' In readiness for class, he's had breakfast. I imagined a cup of green tea. A natural yogurt maybe. But he had actually stopped off at his local café for an 'R Pennefather' – two fried eggs, two hash browns, two rashers of bacon and a side of baked beans. 'I have to be careful because I've got a very high metabolism,' he says. 'And if I don't eat, I go really skinny and weak. The girls are at risk if you're not strong enough. You really can't go dropping a girl.' Pennefather didn't get where he is today by doing that. It's one of the reasons that he's risen to principal so quickly – his reliability. 'Also,' he says, 'certain ballerinas have given me the opportunity to work with them.' Which sounds like a tip – if you want to get on, charm your principals. 'I don't really want to say that,' Pennefather says, with a smile. 'But some dancers in the company, I would say, have figured that out.

That's all I'm saying...' Lauren Cuthbertson is one of the principals that Pennefather has charmed. With a BMI of 18.5, she doesn't take a lot of lifting. 'My body might be slender,' she says 'but it's not too slender. Not too sinewy. I'm not too too, which seems to be the fashion these days. Everything has gone way beyond what is normal.' There's no fat on her. She looks down at her flat chest. 'But I've noticed some girls recently and I've gone, "When did they start teaching how to grow those?"' The dancers are pretty and thin, or handsome and thin. And they all look so young. Dancers for the corps de ballet are most attractive to company directors in their late teens or early twenties. It's a life of pressure, as they try to carve out a career before injuries, and age, cut it short. But to look at them all now, you wouldn't know it. They look wonderfully happy. Some are studying choreographers' notations. The notations are a ballet's steps, written down on a musical stave – a balletic score, in effect.

Each line of the notations represents a different part of the body, and abstract symbols show how each part moves during the dance. As any dancer will tell you, in their darker moments, the choreographer is the real star of ballet – the dancers are just the ones who dictate how brightly that star shines. 'As a dancer,' Pennefather says, 'there is only so much you can change. Johann choreographed La Sylphide, for instance, and had worked out, visually, exactly what everyone was doing. It was all thought out in his head. You don't want to change it. Technically, if you're on a pirouette, you can carry on turning as long as you're in time with the music – there's no set rule – but it doesn't really happen like that. It's your performance, but it's someone else's production.' The dancers are very huggy and kissy. And in such an intimate job, it's inevitable that relationships happen. Most, though, look elsewhere – even if it's not very far. Mara Galeazzi married a Royal Ballet stage technician.

'He always says to me, "You have so many beautiful men around you all day, with perfect, toned bodies. Why do you choose me?" He is very big, and strong, but I say to him, "That's the beauty of it – I see so much perfection every day.'" As the ballerinas file into class, it's clear that a lot of perfection is down to genetics. You're either born with a small head, a long neck, a shortened torso – or you're not. Galeazzi, who has been one of the principals since 2003, was one of the lucky ones. 'Actually,' she says, 'I was never really elastic enough. You get to a certain level, and you just can't go any further. So you find your own way.' Finding out the limits of what is possible can be painful. The ideal ballerina has toes that point outwards. The 'turnout' is the cornerstone of classical ballet. It begins at the hip and moves down to the knee, the tibia, the ankle and the foot. But if the leg isn't turned out naturally, it can be done by stretching, which can take its toll.

From the number of straps and supports, it's clear that every dancer nurses some sort of injury. Pennefather, for instance, is wearing a belt to help his back. And Galeazzi still has a toe fracture that she first sustained as a young dancer. It's difficult not to feel those injuries in class (every day of the week except Sunday) however much glucosamine and calcium you take. 'Your knees are stretched beyond their limit, your legs are over your head and your back is always bent,' Galeazzi says. 'I don't think it's a very natural way to train.' Cuthbertson has trouble with her left foot – a sprain next to her second metatarsal. 'Every time I go on pointe, it opens up the sprain. It just never gets any better,' she says. 'There's not much blood supply there to let it heal. I've found that acupuncture has helped, because it's meant to stimulate the blood flow. But, to be honest, rest is the only thing.' The physiotherapist is in today. One former Royal Ballet physio, who came from the world of rugby and rowing, said that the dancers were 'as hard as nails'.

The chiropodist is due at 2pm. For the male dancers, the jumping and lifting puts strain on their feet, so they get bad ankles. For the female dancers, it's all corns and bunions – the inevitable result of going on pointe. When dancing on pointe, a dancer's entire body weight ends up on the very ends of the toes, potentially causing clawed feet, broken bones and bleeding during a performance. It's worst when the company is doing Swan Lake. With its endless pas de bourrées – running tiptoe on the spot – it always brings the chiropodist a lot of new business. The dancers spend the class studying every aspect and angle of themselves in the mirrors. 'It's a visual art,' Pennefather says, 'so we're always aware of how we look. It's not vanity. Although there are some people who are vain. Who build up, not for strength, but for appearance. I've never done that. You should only do what's necessary. But you do want to look right in the part.' The dancer Gelsey Kirkland actually felt compelled to go one stage further and had plastic surgery to improve her onstage 'line'.

She had her earlobes trimmed and her nose reduced, and silicone implants in her lips and breasts. In her tell-all autobiography, Dancing on My Grave, Kirkland details her struggles with cocaine, eating disorders, and a choreographer who made her pop amphetamines while issuing dictates like 'must see the bones'. The dancer Heidi Guenther – who died in 1997 as a direct result of an eating disorder – was an exceptional case, yet to talk to young dancers working today, anorexia and bulimia are as much of a problem as they ever were. It's all about creating 'perfection' at every level. It was even suggested that Cuthbertson change her name because it wasn't perfectly glamorous. She refused. 'They said, "Try using your brother's middle name." My brother is Aaron Matthew Cuthbertson and Lauren Matthews sounded like a magician's assistant. So they said, "Use your mum's maiden name." She's Lewis. My middle name is Louise so I would have been Lauren Louise Lewis. Too showbiz if I'm honest.' The 75-minute class is followed by six hours of rehearsal – often without a break.

And the dancers can be rehearsing four different works in a day. 'Maybe one involves a tutu,' Cuthbertson says, 'one involves a sylphlike big skirt, one is all hot pants kicking your booty around, and one is with a fan – they're all completely different. That's one of the things about the Royal Ballet – the mass of repertoire we have now is growing. And we have to do all of it. But that's what I love most.' It's tempting to think that ballet hasn't changed since it was formalised in the courts of 16th- and 17th-century France. But it is evolving – slowly. Galeazzi is rehearsing The Firebird, written by Stravinsky in 1910. 'Back then, the dancers had less elasticity,' she says. 'Less curved feet. And less turnout in the legs. But they were amazing artists. Now I reckon dancers think more about technique.' These days, there is certainly more science. The dancers do Gyrotonic, an exercise system that uses specially designed wooden machines with rotational discs and weighted pulleys to strengthen their muscles with flowing, circular movements.

Gyrotonic looks like pilates but is more like yoga in its origin and breathing techniques. And their bodies are monitored throughout, by computer. 'Sports scientists are getting interested in how we train,' says Cuthbertson, 'and how we fire certain muscles. In the olden days, if someone was injured they would just go away and, when they felt better, come back. Now, because of the science, we know what we're going to achieve by rehabbing properly after an injury. But when we're on stage, we don't care if we're firing some muscle or not. We just want to move people.' Which is where the acting comes in. When everything else is about technique, it's easy to forget about the acting. 'You spend years and years at school,' Cuthbertson says, 'trying to make your best frappe, or your développé to the left a bit higher, or your arabesque a bit more extensive. Suddenly you join the company and the first thing is you're acting. You're not being this ballerina you trained for.

You are pretending to be a peasant, a whore or a gipsy.' Cuthbertson came up through the Royal Ballet system, and started boarding at White Lodge – the Royal Ballet school in Richmond Park – at the age of 11. She had no idea how hard the training would be. 'Every class – pushing your body,' she says. 'I had never hurt in ballet before. But you learn. Your stamina gets better. And you become a better machine.' She didn't feel robbed of a childhood. 'I was happy as Larry. I still messed around like a kid. I was always up after lights out. I had so much fun because I was quite rebellious. Whereas other girls missed out because they were always nervous about doing something wrong. I just did something wrong, and got it out of my system. At the age of 13 I was told that, if I just cruised, I wouldn't make it. That stuck. And I realised then that ballet was what I wanted to do.' Pennefather danced because his sister danced. And he loved it. But when he went to a mixed school in Maidenhead, things turned nasty. 'Boys at that age don't really understand about ballet,' he says.

'They think it's feminine. They call you names. And it's not great. I know one boy who had his shins completely kicked in because he did ballet. It can be terrible. I did nearly give up at one point – everyone got to me – but my parents helped me through it.' And he's so glad they did. But all too soon it's over. Galeazzi, at the age of 34, is considering her future. Ironic really because, she says, 'right now I feel I've got real control of the stage'. She still wants to have a family, although returning to ballet after a family isn't out of the question. Darcey Bussell did it. And when she came back they said she was better than ever. She had realised there was life outside ballet. But that's what happens to dancers – as their emotional maturity increases, their physical ability decreases. Even though Pennefather and Cuthbertson are young and very successful, the thought of retirement hangs over them all the time. 'I'm 24 and I've only got another 12 years to 15 years max. And then it will all be over.

And I bet I'll feel then like I feel now.' A lot of older dancers go into teaching. But Pennefather thinks he'll fancy a change by then. A film-directing course maybe. Cuthbertson wants to be a fashion buyer for a store, or a milliner. Galeazzi wants to go back to composing music. Whatever they decide, it's unlikely they will have much of a pension to fall back on. Some principals at the Royal Ballet negotiate salaries for themselves – some appoint an agent. 'When I started out,' Pennefather says, 'I was on £1,100 a month. Now they start on something like £1,500 a month.' As dancers move from first artist to soloist to first soloist to principal, they get a rise. But the biggest rise is from principal to highly paid media darling. Nureyev was the wealthiest man in ballet, with an estate, estimated in Vanity Fair, at $80 million. Other estimates were noticeably less, at between $15 million and $25 million.

But there are reports as late as 1977, the heyday of the 'dance boom', when the Kirov émigrés were making up to $10,000 a performance, that Nureyev still demanded cash payments on occasion and still got them. Sylvie Guillem made thousands for every show she did in Japan. But there's only one Sylvie Guillem. And, these days, it seems society only has room for one Sylvie Guillem. During the golden age, of course, the great ballerinas were the toast of all society. 'I do sometimes wish I was in on the Ballet Russes,' Cuthbertson says. 'On that train with Diaghilev. When ballet was fashionable and pioneering and something that people looked up to. Nowadays, to a lot of people, it's something that belongs in a museum.' Biography Future Performances Biography Kenneth MacMillan was the leading ballet choreographer of his generation. Born of a poor Scottish family, he had a burning sense that ballet theatre should reflect contemporary realities and the complicated truths of people’s lives. He became director of The Royal Ballet and created some of the outstanding dance works of the twentieth century.

He was born in Dunfermline, Fife on 11 December 1929. His parents, William and Edith MacMillan, had met in Norfolk where William was briefly stationed, en route to France, during the First World War. After William, a coal miner, was gassed in the conflict, mining was no longer possible for him. Instead, he tried and failed as a chicken farmer. The family fled the farm in the middle of the night (“a moonlight flit”) and went south to Norfolk, to live in Great Yarmouth, where William could only find occasional work during the Depression years of the 1930s. When Kenneth was 11, he won a scholarship to the local grammar school. The Second World War had begun and Great Yarmouth was repeatedly bombed by the Luftwaffe. The school was evacuated to Retford in Nottinghamshire and it was here that he first discovered ballet. He had already learnt tap and Scottish country dancing and taken part in entertainments for soldiers at American air force bases. In Retford, he took tap lessons from Jean Thomas, a local dance teacher, who encouraged him to try ballet.

He was soon obsessed and devouring back issues of The Dancing Times in the local library. Edith MacMillan, who suffered from chronic epilepsy, died in 1942. Kenneth was emotionally devastated. ''I remember coming back for my first school holiday to Yarmouth, and was met at the station by my father and my sister, who told me my mother had died the previous night. From that moment on, I felt that I was on my own. I wasn't very close to my father. We got on all right, but he was a rather strict Scottish gentleman, rather remote and unemotional, especially to me.” “A lasting memory of mine was watching Kenneth doing grand jetés across Yarmouth Market Place on his way home from school.” A dance teacher in Great Yarmouth, Phyllis Adams, became, in effect his surrogate mother. She taught him for free and, in effect, shaped his ambitions. “She treated me as an adult, which was wonderful”, MacMillan said in a 1991 interview.

“I didn't know what I was going to do when I grew up until I met Phyllis Adams.” Adams realised that she had a prodigiously talented pupil and MacMillan created his first choreography on Adams’ daughter, Wendy and a friend. It was, she remembers “a duet with chairs to I love a Piano ”. “A lasting memory of mine”, she continued, was “watching Kenneth doing grand jetés across Yarmouth Market Place on his way home from school.” When he was 15 he found an advertisement in The Dancing Times offering scholarships for boys at the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. He wrote to Ninette de Valois in the name of his father. The letter got him the audition, but did not fool anyone, as he discovered years later when he took over as director of the Royal Ballet and found his file in the archives. The audition was participation in a class with the Sadler's Wells Company.

''I was put between Margot Fonteyn and Beryl Grey and I was terrified, added to which I was screamed at, quite rightly, by Miss de Valois for being late for her class.'' Ninette de Valois was persuaded of his ability and awarded him a scholarship consisting of free tuition, an accommodation allowance and five shillings a week pocket money. At the end of term, MacMillan told his headmaster at the grammar school that he would be leaving, who in turn proudly announced the news at morning assembly. ''I was mortified,'' MacMillan recalls. ''I fled the school that morning and never went back.'' In many of MacMillan's ballets the hero or heroine is an outsider. ''Well, I felt like an outsider as a child and it all started with the moonlight flit. I had to keep that secret. Then, when my mother was ill and having fits, I was told never to talk about that. And, of course, in a place like Yarmouth, I had to keep my dancing a secret, because they would have thought it was appalling. There wasn't one other boy in either of my dancing schools before I came to London.

It all made me feel very out of it, and this creates in a person a kind of schizoid state.” “It was the first time I was with people whom I could talk to about the things I really felt.” At the Sadler’s Wells School MacMillan began to meet kindred spirits his own age. “It was the first time I was with people whom I could talk to about the things I really felt.” In little over a year he was a member of the Sadler's Wells Opera Ballet (later Theatre Ballet). Soon he moved to the larger Sadler's Wells company, now based at Covent Garden. And he went on its first American tour, dancing the role of Florestan in the last act pas de trois in The Sleeping Beauty on the company's triumphant opening night in New York in 1949. His elegant classical style attracted admiration. The dance writer, Peter Brinson, remembered “ a tall, obviously talented dancer with a terrific jump”, who was notable also as a convincing Sherlock Holmes in Margaret Dale's The Great Detective, and moving actor-dancer in John Cranko's The Lady and the Fool .

But MacMillan was increasingly troubled by stage fright and this was an important reason why he turned his hand to choreography. Somnambulism , his first workshop piece for a Sunday workshop under the direction of David Poole, showed evident flair. This sureness of touch was confirmed by Laiderette in the following year. But it was Danses Concertantes in 1955 that established him. In Clement Crisp’s words, “ Danses was a declaration of talent, of the arrival of the new heir.” The following years were intensely productive; Noctambules , a commission for the senior company at Covent Garden; an entire evening of his ballets, including House of Birds and Solitaire for the touring company; two works, Winter's Eve and Journey for American Ballet Theatre’s dramatic ballerina, Nora Kaye. But two ballets from this period were highly resonant of their times; The Burrow with its heavy evocation of oppressive enclosure, spoke eloquently to the post-war generation and reminded many of The Diaries of Anne Frank . The Invitation pushed ballet’s theatricality to new limits with its graphic depiction of a rape.

Lynn Seymour, on whom he created both works, became the outstanding of his muses and would continue to be so for another twenty years. “I wanted dance to express something largely outside its experience, I had to find a way to stretch the language - otherwise I should just produce sterile academic dance.” “I wanted dance to express something largely outside its experience”, MacMillan explained. “I had to find a way to stretch the language - otherwise I should just produce sterile academic dance.” He was particularly influenced by the abrasive young playwrights of the 1950s, notably John Osborne and Look Back in Anger . Years later he wrote to Osborne saying that the play made him realise that everything in his world “was merely window-dressing.” In the 1960s MacMillan increasingly proved his mastery of the extended creativity so central to the identity of The Royal Ballet, first with the high theatricality of The Rite of Spring and then in 1965 with his definitive version of the Shakespeare/Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet , the work by which he is best known today to dance audiences around the world. For several years, MacMillan had ambitions to create a dance setting of Mahler's Song of the Earth .

But the board of the Royal Opera House felt that the score was sacrosanct. MacMillan's contemporary and friend, John Cranko, the director of the Stuttgart Ballet , welcomed the opportunity to stage it. It was quickly recognised as one of MacMillan's most intense and beautiful ballets. In a radio interview before he died MacMillan said it was his favourite among his works. Throughout his career, Stuttgart provided MacMillan with artistic refuge, in 1976 it staged the intensely felt Requiem (to the Fauré score), another MacMillan ballet denied performance at Covent Garden - and for similar reasons to Song of the Earth . In 1966 Kenneth MacMillan moved to West Berlin to become director of the ballet at the Deutsche Oper and remained there for four years. It was a testing time which took a heavy toll of his health. Nonetheless he staged handsome versions of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake . Of his own creations in Berlin, the multi-media Anastasia about a mental patient who claimed to be the sole survivor of the Russian Imperial family was an important marker for later works such as Isadora and Mayerling . In 1970 he returned to London to direct The Royal Ballet.

Many in the London’s dance world were resentful at what they regarded as the premature retirement of MacMillan’s predecessor, Frederick Ashton. Almost immediately MacMillan faced a financial crisis and was forced to lose some forty dancers from the strength of the two companies. Temperamentally MacMillan struggled with the demands of administration. Nonetheless in his time as director he greatly expanded the company’s repertory, doubling the number of Balanchine works, introducing ballets by Tetley, Cranko, Van Manen, and Neumeier. Outstandingly, he persuaded Jerome Robbins to come to London to stage Dances at a Gathering . “In his concentration on long ballets MacMillan was exceptional: no twentieth century choreographer has produced so many full-length works.” Throughout, MacMillan continued to be busy in the studio making one act works; Triad , Elite Syncopations , Rituals . In 1974 he created the three-act Manon , which became a repertory classic. In his concentration on long ballets MacMillan was exceptional: no twentieth century chorographers has produced so many full-length works - and on subjects which to some minds seemed alien to ballet.

MacMillan was deeply wounded by some critical reactions to his three-act Anastasia (an expansion of the work he had earlier staged in Berlin) from writers who thought it a misjudgement of ballet’s range. 1974 was also the year in which MacMillan married Deborah Williams, an artist who is Australian and together the couple had a daughter, Charlotte. His marriage gave him a new emotional security and helped steel his resilience. After seven years as director of The Royal Ballet, he retired so that he could focus exclusively on his choreography, a decision triumphantly vindicated by Mayerling , which he made in 1978. Choreographically the richest of his three act ballets, it is a dark study in psychosis. Later works drew on a similarly dark palette; a disturbed family in My Brother my Sisters ; fractious mental patients in Playground ; Valley of Shadows included scenes in a Nazi concentration camp. Different Drummer told the story of George Büchner's Woyzeck, another example of man's inhumanity to man. And with the full-length Isadora , he sought to breach the barrier between ballet theatre and the theatre of the spoken word.

Kenneth MacMillan was knighted in 1983 and. In 1984, while remaining chief choreographer of the Royal Ballet, he became associate director of the American Ballet Theatre for some five years. For ABT he staged two new works, Wild Boy and Requiem (to Andrew Lloyd Webber's music)., in addition to staging Romeo and Juliet and creating a new production of The Sleeping Beauty . The final years of his life were immensely productive. After a serious heart attack in 1988 he knew he was living on borrowed time. After a five year period in which he had not created a new work for Covent Garden, he returned in 1989 to make The Prince of the Pagodas , choosing the 20-year-old Darcey Bussell as his young heroine. For Dance Advance, a group of former Royal Ballet soloists, he created Sea of Troubles , a modern-dance version of Hamlet. In the former Bolshoi principal dancer, Irek Mukhamedov, who joined the Royal Ballet in 1991, MacMillan found his final muse.

For Bussell and Mukhamedov, he choreographed a gala pas de deux, which became the core of his ballet Winter Dreams , inspired by Chekhov’s play Three Sisters. The final ballet was replete with cameo roles for older dancers; Gerd Larsen, Anthony Dowell, Derek Rencher. The Judas Tree , MacMillan’s dark parable of betrayal with Mukhamedov as its brutal anti-hero, was his final ballet. According to Jann Parry writing in The Observer after his death, it was “an intensely personal work, tapping the murkiest streams of his ‘inner landscape’ in a way even he found frightening.” Kenneth MacMillan died at the Royal Opera House on a night when Birmingham Royal Ballet was presenting his Romeo and Juliet in Birmingham, and when Mayerling was being revived at Covent Garden after a long break. The curtain calls were cut short by the news that he had collapsed backstage. The cast of Mayerling , still caught up in the drama of the ballet were numb with shock.

There were gasps and sobs from the members of the audience, who stood in silence before filing out into the night – an astonishingly theatrical echo, Parry recalled, of the funeral scenes that conclude the ballet. Six weeks later The National Theatre’s Carousel , for which MacMillan had choreographed the dances opened on the South Bank. The opening night in the Lyttleton Theatre was an intensely emotional occasion with MacMillan’s family and many of his closest friends in the audience. MacMillan left them a final coup de theatre; as Frank Rich of The New York Times recorded, “in the Act II pas de deux, in which Billy's unhappy teen-age daughter searches for her dead father's love by taking up with a fairground boy, MacMillan joins the hero in seeming to speak to a spellbound audience from beyond the grave.” Sometimes in his lifetime it seemed as if his gifts were more valued in the wider world of the theatre than in the enclosures of classical dance. Since his death, however, his reputation has continued to grow. Audiences flock to his work, while dancers everywhere vie to perform in his ballets. Throughout his career he kept faith with his classical formation.

He married to it a strong theatricality and, underneath it all, a deep moral sensibility. In Kenneth MacMillan’s hands ballet was not a fairytale art, but a powerful mirror to human frailty. Related Content Born: 11 December 1929, Dunfermline, Scotland Died: 29 October 1992, London 1955-1966: Choreographer with The Royal Ballet, Resident Choreographer from 1962 1966-1969: Director of the Ballett de Deutschen Oper, West Berlin 1970-1977: Director and Resident Choreographer, The Royal Ballet 1984-1989: Associate Director, American Ballet Theatre 1989-1992: Artistic Associate, Houston Ballet Knighted: 1983

Question: Who became the Royal Ballet’s youngest principle dancer in 1989 at the age of 20?
Answer: Darcey Bussell