Julie Lincoln, repetiteur
Lincoln took up the position as Ballet Mistress in 1984 at the urging of Merle Park, then Director of the School. "I didn't even have to think," Lincoln remembers. "I was still in the same building! I stopped dancing one day and became ballet mistress of the Royal Ballet School the next. I took to it very easily." From the start, her experience was different from performing. Yet, she asserts, "I wasn't intimidated. I had an idea of what I wanted to produce, be it in the repertoire classes at the school or for the school performances. I didn't always achieve it, but I had a vision of how I thought things should look. And that's what inspired me."
During her ten years as Ballet Mistress at the Royal Ballet School, Lincoln came into fairly regular contact with Ashton and Ninette de Valois when these already legendary figures mounted their work on senior students. "I was very lucky to work with Sir Fred," Lincoln recalls. "He used to come in and I would sit with him as he rehearsed his work on the students. It was a very different thing sitting on the other side of rehearsal, as opposed to being a dancer. I got to know what it was about, however, and I felt very privileged."
While Ballet Mistress at the School, Lincoln also had the opportunity at the school to work with Ninette de Valois-"Madam." This included producing a staging of The Rake's Progress at the ROH for the graduating class in 1991-twenty three years after her own matriculation in that work. Lincoln doubts that de Valois felt "there were many ballets that she actually wanted or felt would endure the test of time. Many years ago London City Ballet was going to do The Rake's Progress and Madam asked me if I would put it on for her. She was going to come in at the last minute and clean it up or change it as she felt necessary. I felt very flattered that she asked me. Unfortunately, the project fell through and now, of course, she's gone and I wonder if her choreographic legacy will disappear. Preservation of choreography is a very fragile pursuit but nothing is possible without a concentrated level of attention that has great integrity."
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Julie Lincoln as Ballet Mistress at the Royal Ballet School with Ninette de Valois, rehearsing The Rake's Progress in 1991 for that year's graduation performance. In the performance Sarah Wildor danced the role of the Betrayed Girl; photograph by Leslie Spatt.
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Lincoln's tenure as Ballet Mistress with the Royal Ballet School led to her gradual transformation from dancer into someone with a larger view of helping new performers to mature. In the course of this change, she not only gained experience in restaging works by Ashton and de Valois but also worked with MacMillan as well. According to Lincoln, "I spent a lot of time with Kenneth at the school and eventually he allowed me to produce his ballets. As I began to rehearse the ballets I gradually got to know them from the inside out."
Lincoln left her position as Ballet Mistress at the Royal Ballet School in 1994. "Eleven years as a ballet mistress anywhere is long enough," she says. "I also thought that the school probably needed a change. My priorities were starting to conflict with those of some of my colleagues. Of course, I was very grateful for those years."
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