Georgina Parkinson obituary

Georgina Parkinson, who has died of complications from cancer at the age of 71, was a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet, and muse to Kenneth MacMillan and Frederick Ashton, before spending 30 years as cherished ballet mistress to American Ballet Theatre. She was also a woman of exceptional beauty and kindness of heart. She created much choreography, and many roles of warm humanity, was a selfless coach to dancers both European and American, and was a good Samaritan to fellow artists in times of their distress, above all to MacMillan and Lynn Seymour. Born in Brighton, Parkinson won a scholarship to the Sadler's Wells Ballet School in London, on the recommendation of the school's founder, Ninette de Valois, in 1957. She joined the company on graduation, danced Odette in Swan Lake in the Covent Garden performance of 1960, became a soloist and by 1962 had been promoted to be a principal by Ashton. Her friend and contemporary, Seymour, described her as "a stately dancer with jet-black hair, blue eyes framed by silky lashes, and a flawless complexion". She became one of the close group of young people who shared and contributed to the early ballets of MacMillan, known among themselves as the Diners Club, who gave each other nicknames and to whom Parkinson became "the beautiful Georgina" or simply "the BGP". With them, she danced in MacMillan's pure dance work Symphony, designed by Yolanda Sonnabend (1963). The following year, Ashton introduced her to Bronislava Nijinska, whom he had invited to stage her masterpiece of chic 1920s society, Les Biches, for the Royal Ballet. Nijinska cast her for the enigmatic, sophisticated, even daring character, in the famous Marie Laurencin blue tunic, La Garconne (Georgina refused to label it girl or boy). In 1966, Nijinska used her again as a soloist in the even more impressive revival of Les Noces at Covent Garden. Ashton cast her as one of the Muses when he acquired another Diaghilev jewel, George Balanchine's Apollo, in 1966 and himself created for her roles in Monotones I and that of Winifred Norbury in Enigma Variations. That appealed to her, because she was recapturing a real person. She recalled in an interview in the Dancing Times, "I had a marvellous night when a little card was sent backstage from a relation of hers who was in the audience and who said how much I reminded her of Winifred – how thrilling it was to see her again." She was the first to dance MacMillan's Juliet in the Royal Swedish Ballet's production of his Romeo and Juliet in 1969 and she coached many dancers in the ballet (she had created the role of beauteous Rosaline). Her admiration of MacMillan was total; when asked by the ballet critic James Monahan how to explain his gift, she replied simply: "He is a genius." Of all the roles she created for MacMillan, perhaps the most memorable, and her last created, was that of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria in his 1978 epic Mayerling. The failure of the mother to make any emotional contact with her son, Rudolf, is a crucial element of the tragedy but the other essential attribute for anyone playing Elisabeth, still an icon in Vienna, is to be a beauty; Parkinson found the character and added the beauty. It was to teach Mikhail Baryshnikov the role of Romeo for the film The Turning Point (1977) that Parkinson went with MacMillan to the US in the 1970s and was invited to stay, as ballet mistress to American Ballet Theatre from 1978. With her family – her husband, the photographer Roy Round, and son Tobias – she moved to New York and stayed there for 30 years, continuing to play mature character roles in the ABT repertory and for other choreographers. She had been seriously ill for some time, but her loss at this age is nonetheless poignant. She is survived by her husband and by Tobias, who is married to the Royal Ballet ballerina Leanne Benjamin, appropriately herself an exceptionally eloquent exponent of MacMillan choreography. • Georgina Parkinson, dancer, born 20 August 1938; died 18 December 2009