15 Facts About Georgina Parkinson

Georgina Parkinson was an English ballet dancer and ballet mistress.

Georgina Parkinson joined The Royal Ballet in 1957 and was promoted to principal dancer in 1962.

Georgina Parkinson performed character roles with the American Ballet Theatre.

Georgina Parkinson went to a convent school in Rottingdean, where she took weekly ballet classes.

Georgina Parkinson trained with a local teacher before entering the Sadler's Wells Ballet School on scholarship, after an audition with Ninette de Valois, the founder of The Royal Ballet.

Georgina Parkinson joined The Royal Ballet in 1957, at age 19.

Georgina Parkinson created roles in some of Kenneth MacMillan's earlier works, including Symphony and as Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet, in which she later danced the title role.

In 1967, Georgina Parkinson was requested by MacMillan, who had become a close friend, to withdraw from the Royal Ballet's Canadian tour to take over as the lead in his new work Anastasia with the Berlin Opera Ballet, the company he was directing, as Lynn Seymour was injured.

Georgina Parkinson learned the part within two and a half weeks in an apartment.

Ultimately, Seymour decided to perform despite MacMillan's anger and Georgina Parkinson had to mediate between them.

Georgina Parkinson had danced in the Royal Ballet premieres of Balanchine's Apollo, and as the episode from the past in Tudor's Jardin aux lilas.

Georgina Parkinson was asked to teach MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet to Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leslie Browne, for Herbert Ross' 1977 film The Turning Point.

In 1978, Nora Kaye, a former ballet dancer and Herbert Ross' wife, invited Georgina Parkinson to teach classes at the American Ballet Theatre.

Georgina Parkinson returned to London in 1979 to stay with her family, before moving to New York in 1980 to assume the position permanently.

Georgina Parkinson created the role of Mrs Harriman in Tharp's Everlast and the soldier's mother in Ratmansky's On the Dnieper.