Georgina Parkinson: A dancer in her time/making the blueprint by Bill Bissell

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Georgina Parkinson today as ballet mistress, American Ballet Theater; photo by Roy Round, no date.

Editor's note: a version of this article was originally published in the Fall 2005 issue of Dance Now (UK).

In any dance tradition the living dimension of performance practice inevitably rubs up against fixed notions of so-called "authentic" or "appropriate" interpretations of that tradition. Georgina Parkinson negotiates this collision of interests as part of her work as ballet mistress at American Ballet Theater. Dancing in the dialectic between traditional and contemporary ballet has been a core narrative guiding her remarkable progress as a dance artist.

Parkinson came of age in a time and place that are among the most remarkable in ballet history. Yet she balances her gratitude for being a member of that generation with a refusal to be either nostalgic about it or ignorant of current trends in practice and performance.

A former principal dancer with the Royal Ballet in London, Parkinson was steeped in a particular ballet legacy that shaped her identity as a performer. Her mature artistry was cultivated within a specific lineage commonly referred to as the "Royal" style. Moreover, Parkinson came of age and flourished as a dancer as part of a generation, circa 1955-75, that marked a golden era in British ballet history. Yet the traditions that raised her did not limit her as she entered her second career as a coach and regisseur. To the contrary, they gave her a solid foundation from which to embrace change wholeheartedly.

Parkinson matriculated artistically within the confines of the Royal Ballet family–first as a student at the school and then as a fifteen-year-old member of the company. The arc of her life story as a dancer is one that is both remarkable and, to a certain degree, one shared by thousands of women who enter the ballet world–a young obsession that becomes a career, forged as much from circumstance and good luck as from planning. The important elements of the story are familiar: a young child with parents who recognize their daughter's talents and support her ambitions; a self-critical artist always struggling with her own assessment of her capacities as a dancer; a career dominated by strong artistic directors and choreographers that frequently strands a dancer at the conclusion of her performing career without preparation for ending her stage life and, consequently, renders her unable to answer the questions "What now? What next?" While it includes these familiar attributes, however, Georgina Parkinson's story remains remarkable because it recounts a particular and significant transition, from performing as a principal dancer for a foremost European dance company to assuming duties of ballet mistress at American Ballet Theater.

Despite her extraordinary story, a level-headed attitude comes through in Parkinson's manner, one which echoes the matter-of-fact beginning to her life in dance. As a schoolgirl in postwar Britain, she remembers, it was her feet which first brought her attention at the convent school she was attending in Brighton where her family lived. "The nuns noticed that I had very big insteps," Parkinson recalls. "They'd never seen anybody with insteps like that so they called my mother, who came to the convent. I remember being in the parlor with the nuns, who told me 'Point your feet.' It was decided that I should start to take private lessons because they felt that with such beautiful feet maybe I should dance."

Parkinson began her lessons in the back of a bicycle shop with teacher Audrey Kent who had studied at the Royal Academy of Dancing. Yet ballet didn't occupy all her time. "I was also taking skating lessons, horse riding and I did elocution lessons. I liked all my extracurricular activities." When Parkinson left the convent school in order to attend "a proper grammar school," her mother suggested that she try out for the Sadlers Wells Ballet School (precursor to the Royal Ballet School).

Winifred Edwards, a "great teacher" according to Parkinson, taught the audition class. "I would kill to see what my audition looked like. I mean I cannot imagine! Everybody was there, Dame Ninette de Valois of course–all the hierarchy of British ballet was sitting at a great long table. And a teacher gave us the class, and I was in a little blue Janssen swimming suit."

During this, her first trip to the capital city, Parkinson also saw her first professional ballet performance. Prescient, perhaps, of her own future in working with contemporary ballet and the narrative works of Kenneth MacMillan and Frederick Ashton, she did not see one of the nineteenth-century classics but instead a touring performance of Miss Julie by the Royal Swedish Ballet.

Her life forever altered, Parkinson's other extracurricular activities fell away as the young dancer became obsessed with dance. "I lived in Brighton, and the school was in London, so I went up on the train every day on the 7:11am and came back by about 6:30 pm. And I did that for three or four years, until it was time to take my school certificate. Well, of course, I had to drop all my singing lessons, skating lessons, and piano lessons. It was just dance."