John Cyril Cranko was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet.
12 Facts About John Cranko
2.
John Cranko received his early ballet training in Cape Town under the leading South African ballet teacher and director, Dulcie Howes, of the University of Cape Town Ballet School.
3.
John Cranko moved to London, studying with the Sadler's Wells Ballet School in 1946 and dancing his first role with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in November 1947.
4.
In January 1954, Sadler's Wells Ballet announced that John Cranko was collaborating with Benjamin Britten to create a ballet.
5.
John Cranko devised a draft scenario for a work he originally called The Green Serpent, fusing elements drawn from King Lear, Beauty and the Beast and the oriental tale published by Madame d'Aulnoy as Serpentin Vert.
6.
John Cranko wrote and developed a musical revue Cranks, which opened in London in December 1955, moved to St Martin's Theatre in the West End the following March, and ran for 223 performances.
7.
John Cranko followed the format of Cranks with a new revue New Cranks opening at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith on 26 April 1960 with music by David Lee and a cast including Gillian Lynne, Carole Shelley and Bernard Cribbins, but it failed to have the same impact.
8.
In 1960, John Cranko directed the first production of Benjamin Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the Aldeburgh Festival.
9.
John Cranko's work was a major contribution to the international success of German ballet beginning with a guest performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1969.
10.
In 1973, John Cranko choked to death after suffering an allergic reaction to a sleeping pill he took during a transatlantic charter flight from Philadelphia to Stuttgart, two days after the company completed a successful tour of the United States at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
11.
The flight made an emergency landing in Dublin where John Cranko was pronounced dead upon arrival at a hospital.
12.
John Cranko was buried at a small cemetery near Castle Solitude in Stuttgart.