Georgina Parkinson: “La Belle Dame sans Merci”

1; 2. It is almost forty-three years since Georgina Parkinson (1938-2009) left the Royal Ballet, to which she had belonged for over twenty years. I watched the last four years of her career there: she danced roles she had created for Frederick Ashton (Winifred Norbury in “Enigma Variations”) and Kenneth MacMillan (Rosalind in “Romeo and Juliet”; Empress Elisabeth in “Mayerling”), other roles by those two, as well as supporting roles in choreography by Marius Petipa, the Prelude in Mikhail Fokine’s “Les Sylphides”, the Beautiful Tsarevna in his “The Firebird”, Terpsichore and Calliope in George Balanchine’s “Apollo” and the Elegy heroine of his “Serenade”, and - the role of her July 1978 farewell - the Wife in Jerome Robbins’s “The Concert”.

She joined American Ballet Theatre in fall 1978 as one of its ballet masters and mime/character artists. (Many will remember her as the Queen in “Swan Lake” and as Lady Capulet in the MacMillan “Romeo”.) As a coach there until her death in 2009, her intelligence and care made a profound impression on generations of ballerinas and women soloists - from Julie Kent to Isabella Boylston - some of whom are among today’s principals.

Today, I found these photographs of her in a created role at the start of her career. She was one of the same illustrious generation as Merle Park and Doreen Wells (born 1937), Antoinette Sibley and Lynn Seymour (born 1939). At age twenty-one, she created the title role of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1958), a one-act ballet choreographed and designed by the important female choreographer Andrée Howard to a commissioned score by the young Alexander (“Sandy”) Goehr. The ballet did not last long in repertory, but these photographs - she is partnered by Donald MacLeary - capture Parkinson’s beauty, glamour, and personal authority.

Friday 5 February

Georgina Parkinson in “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (Andrée Howard, Royal Ballet, 1958)

Georgina Parkinson and Donald MacLeary in “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (Andrée Howard, Royal Ballet, 1958)