Georgina Parkinson An interview conducted by Bill Bissell New York City, June 20, 2004

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

BISSELL: How did your childhood, your family and social environment help you find your way to dance?

PARKINSON: Well, it started when I was a very little girl and I went to a small Catholic convent in a place called Rottingdean in Sussex. My parents–we all–lived in Brighton and it was just after the War. I was shuffled off to this incredibly wonderful, homely convent where we used to have ballet class every Tuesday, which I took along with gym classes and all manner of other things. The nuns noticed that I had very big insteps. 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 said, "Point your feet," you know, and I did. God gave me wonderful insteps and it was decided that I should start to take private lessons because they felt that with such beautiful feet maybe I should dance.

This led to weekly classes up in Brighton with a teacher who studied under the Royal Academy of Dancing. She loved me, and I got to like it a lot. But I was also taking skating lessons, and I was horse riding and I did elocution lessons. I liked all of my extracurricular activities, so ballet was included in that. And then I got to be quite promising at dance and I started to take [ballet] exams and passed them really very well. A few years later I had to leave the convent and go to a proper grammar school. My mother said–it was completely her idea–that I should try out for the Sadler's Wells Ballet School [the precursor to the Royal Ballet School]–to aim for the highest, and I can always come down.

So I went up to London. I was eleven and it was my first time ever in London. I was one of 300 girls taking this audition for the School. I had to fill out endless forms saying what were my measurements from my shoulder to my elbow, from my waist to the bottom of my feet, the size of the head, you name it. Then they granted me an audition, and there were 300 of us, all in bathing suits. And three were accepted into the Sadler's Wells Ballet School, which is what it was called then.

BISSELL: Was it a boarding school?

PARKINSON: Well, no, it wasn't. I lived in Brighton, and the school was in London. So I went up on the train every day on the 7:11 and came back by about 6:30. 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, piano lessons. No other extracurricular activities. Just dance, and I became semi-obsessed. When I look back, it's a trait that I do have, that I can focus very well on one thing. Then I had to move up to London because I had to take my end-of-term exam. And my mother put me into digs. I wasn't exactly spoiled as a child, but I didn't dig those digs at all, and I wasn't very happy.

BISSELL: How old were you?

PARKINSON: Eleven. My mother and father moved to London so that I could live at home. We were not at all rich in those days, and my father had fallen on bad times financially. He was a bookmaker and he gambled and he lost all that he ever had. Things were extremely tight and it meant appealing to the School to give me a scholarship because they didn't want me to leave. The school helped with my fees and my train fares and everything.

After you've passed your exam you get moved into the graduate class, and the ballet school lets go anybody that had grown particularly tall or was prone to put on a lot of weight. This was the end of grammar school. I went into the graduate class, and I was fifteen. As luck would have it–with all of these things there's always an element of luck–the company was really hard up for dancers, and so they took me out of the graduate class into the company.

BISSELL: At fifteen?

PARKINSON: Yes, at fifteen. I was underage so on my first tour I had to have a chaperon. So I started way down, I wasn't even on the first step of the ladder: I was groveling underneath it. And that's always hard because when you're at the school, you're one of the best students and you're getting all the perks. Suddenly you're just like a piece of rubbish, and it's just such a shock because nobody sees you. You're just there to be a back swan or something. I made my way quite quickly, actually, into a very nice situation, and I was being used a lot. Then I became a soloist. I was nurtured and looked after in the company at this point. Everybody had their eye on me. That started my career with the Royal Ballet. It was just an incredible journey from that day to this, the way my life has unfolded, and where I am now. What I've had in my life as a dancer is extraordinary.

BISSELL: Going back for a moment, do you recall the name of your teacher in Brighton?

PARKINSON: Yes. Audrey Kent. She taught at the back of the bicycle shop on the main road in Brighton. She had this little sort of space where I would go once a week for the longest time. I went literally from her into the Royal Ballet School.

BISSELL: Her training obviously prepared you well enough.

PARKINSON: It must have. I would kill to see what my audition looked like. I mean I cannot imagine. Everybody was there, you know, 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. I remember, at the audition, that de Valois said to me, "Will the little girl at the back in blue, would you come to the front, please?" I thought, well, this is nice. She asked me to do an arabesque and when I finished said, "Thank you very much, dear," and I went to the back of the class again.

It was a very stiff audition to pass. I was at a little boarding school–a very safe environment. I was always loved and so I was confident in a way. The word "failure" wasn't part of my vocabulary. I wasn't nervous that I might not pass the test. I just went and did it.

BISSELL: Do you remember who taught the audition class?

PARKINSON: Yes, Winifred Edwards. She was a great teacher. She had white hair in a bun just like the quintessential ballet mistress and she had a walking stick and always wore beautiful clothes with a long skirt and everything.

BISSELL: Did you see any performances in Brighton? Were there any touring performances?

PARKINSON: No. When I went up for my audition to London, my mother and I went to see the Royal Swedish Ballet in a theater on Shaftsbury Avenue? It was the first time I'd seen a ballet and the first time I'd been to London. The ballet was Miss Julie, and I was absolutely blown away. It was wonderful. Now it wasn't an obsession from the minute I was born that I had to dance–not at all. It's just that I turned out to be better at that than ice skating or riding a horse or elocution.