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BISSELL: After you made the move to London when did you start going to performances regularly? What stands out about particular performances or particular artists? PARKINSON: First of all there was a huge sort of change in my life. Suddenly I was channeling all my energies into one thing. It took me a while to accept all of what was going on around me, seeing performances, number one. It was devastating. It was just, you know, fantastic: being in a school that was 100 percent dedicated to dance, as well as having my education there. When I got in the company, it took me two or three years to be able to deal with it in the way that I had to observe very strict discipline. Discipline was something I had learned about from my nuns at the convent. That set me up very well in life, you know. You eat what's in front of you or you go without, that sort of thing. It was an amazing beginning for me. They only had one ballet class a day at the school because so few of us would ever get into a company. I mean how many vacancies open up yearly? Not many. We had to focus very much on our schoolwork so that at the age of sixteen when people were ready to leave, they had a great education, and they could take any turn in life they wanted to take. It's a very good age for that sorting-out process. I mean it broke a lot of hearts, but it was a cruelty to be kind, in a way. BISSELL: In looking back on your training and your performing career, were there particular artists that you emulated, or who were teaching you things through the performances you were seeing? PARKINSON: I had wonderful, wonderful people to look up to. I was surrounded by just incredible dancers who were also wonderful human beings, and it was all very inspiring. I thought Margot Fonteyn was the greatest thing. I loved Svetlana Beriosova, and I thought that I would like to be like her, but I wasn't. She was very, very beautiful, and I loved the way she danced. I wanted to be like that, you know. She was a little bit my idol. BISSELL: Were there particular experiences or artists or things in your training that help you in your work now? PARKINSON: Yes. The basics of my training and the experiences I had watching other dancers have definitely influenced me. But what I have to remember is not to say the one thing you never want to say to a dancer: When I did it, I did such-and-such. It's a mistake I think a lot of people make. You have to adjust your thinking, and be abreast of the times in which you live–aware of where the standards are going, where dance is going, and what the requirements are–which are all extremely different from the kind of environment that I was in at that formative age.
BISSELL: How would you describe those differences today in terms of the kind of training dancers receive? PARKINSON: When I was in the Royal Ballet, it was like being in a nursery school, in the best possible way, without being mollycoddled. You always felt that people were looking out for you and helping you, and you felt very safe. When I left the Royal Ballet, it was like being born: I had to get my own passport, I had to buy my own airline tickets, I had to buy my own toothpaste. Suddenly it was like being out in the real world–especially coming to America where I'd been many times with the Royal. It was definitely a time for finding out who I was. I also became aware of how much I knew and how much I could use. So that was the biggest change in my life, when I broke with the Royal. Technique as such has progressed to the nth degree today. I mean there is no way I could be a dancer today with what I had then, I don't think. They've refined the technique and taken it to an almost ridiculous level: very exciting, very dynamic, very extroverted. In the Royal Ballet it was a little more–not subtle, exactly, but it wasn't as fully bloomed somehow as I feel the dancers are now at a very young age–which is why I love the dancers that I work with so much, because they're so much more independent than I was.
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