Georgina Parkinson: An interview conducted by Bill Bissell, cont.

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BISSELL: How did the invitation to work with American Ballet Theatre come to you?

PARKINSON: Well, it was amazing. I was a principal at the Royal when the invitation came. They were filming The Turning Point. Nora Kaye and Herbert Ross, who were making the film, asked Kenneth MacMillan if he would go to Hollywood and teach Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leslie Brown the pas de deux in Romeo and Juliet for the film. I'd done that ballet quite a lot by this time so Kenneth asked me if I would go in his stead and teach the pas de deux, which I knew backwards and forwards. It wasn't just teaching Misha and Leslie, it was teaching a group of ABT soloists, about four or five of them, who had to learn a little bit of the dance. I got in the studio and I taught the dancers and got on very well with them. It was a wonderful working atmosphere.

Nora Kaye was at that time affiliated with American Ballet Theatre. A little while after that episode, she called me and said, "How would you feel about coming to American Ballet Theatre as the ballet mistress?" Well, my career wasn't where it had been, it was pretty much on the downward slope; I was about thirty-seven, thirty-eight. I had my own wonderful, very particular repertoire at this point. I wasn't doing ballerina roles but I still did many creative roles. Also, Kenneth was creating Mayerling at the time, and I had a wonderful experience working with him on that ballet.

There was a huge discussion that happened at home. My husband and son were living very happily in London. Roy was a photographer and very successful. But it was just an amazing offer. While I'm sure there are people who think ahead, I never thought further than the Royal Ballet. I hadn't made any plans nor did I have any thoughts about what would happen if I stopped dancing. And suddenly, I was confronted with this amazing offer while I was still a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet.

What I finally decided was that I would never get another offer of that caliber again in my life if I didn't take it. I knew that while the timing didn't seem perfect in that I would have liked to have finished my career as a dancer, I knew that this was a career for me. And so Roy and Tobias stayed in London, and I came to America, and I did a year's trial run. Lucia Chase was the director in those days.

It was a very difficult time for me. It was the first time that I ever had to teach class, the first time that I had to be in a room with ballerinas. I mean it was just monumental. I had no idea how to do it, no idea. I mean the company had, you know, Cynthia Gregory, Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, all these people that I had to teach class to. I'd never taught class in my life before then.

BISSELL: That's staggering.

PARKINSON: It was huge. It was devastating. Anyway, after that first year, I don't think I made a really great impression. I would say that I was in a state of shock. I went on tour with the company: I had to teach, and I had to take rehearsals. In many ways I was still a dancer. So I came home after that year, a little bit unsure as to what was going to happen. Then, in 1980, I got a letter from Baryshnikov who was just about to take over ABT. He asked me if I would be interested in being on the staff, and sent me a contract. So I decided that, having made the break for that year, I couldn't really go back to the Royal. It was a strange, strange time for me. It was like being in limbo and I was a little bit frightened and not quite sure where I was going.

Anyway, we decided that making the move would be for the best, and that Tobias and Roy would come to New York with me. We worked on obtaining our Green Cards and in 1980 we all moved to New York. And this began another regime and another way of doing things. It was very hard.

BISSELL: Had you done anything before your Turning Point stint that led MacMillan to ask you to rehearse the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet?

PARKINSON: No. I mean we were great friends, and I think he appreciated me a lot as a dancer, since he used me a lot. He knew that I understood his ballets and performed them well. He must have had confidence in me. I think I acquitted myself very well and I got on very well with the dancers and I was closer to them as a peer. Let's say this opening had opened up for me at the Royal. It would have been so much harder for me to make the transition from dancer to staff when I would be dealing with my own peers. In a way it helped that I was moving to another organization 3,000 miles away where they'd sort of heard of me, they sort of knew who I was but I had no history with them.

BISSELL: In starting the work with ABT were there people that you pulled on as models, with whom you had worked at the Royal?

PARKINSON: Well, the ballet mistress in the Royal Ballet was a completely different sort of ballet mistress–it was a completely different ball game. I think that my breakthrough as a ballet mistress came when I allowed myself to realize who I was, and how much knowledge I had, and how much experience of working with choreographers, and having ballets created on me, and struggling with the classics, and so on. I pulled on all of that, not on particular people. The needs of the dancers here in the States were completely different. That doesn't sound quite true, but that's how I saw it. They were a different breed of dancer.

BISSELL: What do you think accounted for this difference?

PARKINSON: The dancers in New York were more mature, they were hungrier, they were desperate for knowledge; they were from very eclectic backgrounds, all over the world. And they had, believe it or not, a certain confidence that we didn't have–or I didn't have, anyway–in their approach to their work. Many of them had a point of view that I later learned could be discussed. I was learning every minute of the day, and trying to figure out how to do the job the best I could. I grew enormously. I became attached to the dancers I was working for as I slowly recognized their needs. I recognized that they wanted respect for who they were. I found it really important to cultivate that and deal with them, each one, differently.

BISSELL: As a ballet mistress do you feel there is a danger of seeing particular roles through the lens of how you performed them?

PARKINSON: It's a terrible risk and you can't do that, not in my opinion. Very often there are some dancers that manage very well and have their own points of view. You can see that and discuss it with them. If they really believe in what they're doing, if they've really thought it through, I'll let them do it and see how I feel, if it works or if it doesn't. Of course, I keep the steps as they were taught to me. Yet, I think ballet becomes stale and dated if I'm asking dancers to do things the way I did it.

BISSELL: Can you comment on the transition of letting go of being a dancer?

PARKINSON: It wasn't that I still wanted to dance. When I went to ABT in '78, the Royal Ballet came to New York–came to America–with Mayerling. They asked me if I would be available to do my role as the Empress Elizabeth. So I went to Lucia Chase, and I asked permission to be absent, and I went to L.A., where I did performances with the Royal. Then I joined them in Chicago. But I felt somewhat estranged. It was like I'd left the fold. Not that they were not friendly–they were. But it was different: I wasn't one of them anymore. In a funny sort of way, without my realizing it, that helped me complete the transition.

I was so fortunate to have had this opportunity. Although I still loved dancing, it wasn't painful for me to leave it. I still did class. I still worked. But the performing aspect of it I was fine with leaving. I think I was very fortunate in that respect–that I wasn't holding onto being famous, for example. I had to join the unemployment line during layoffs like everybody else. Those sorts of things bring you down to earth. I made this adjustment over a period of years of getting over myself.