Although initially only in the corps de ballet for this work, MacMillan was unexpectedly promoted to the male lead because of injuries to all the eligible company principals. The success of the piece encouraged Ashton to revive his 1933 Les Rendezvous. He was cast by Frederick Ashton, de Valois' principal choreographer, in a leading role in a new ballet, Valses nobles et sentimentales, in October 1946.
In April 1946 MacMillan was a founder member, and quickly made progress. With the main company now resident at Covent Garden, de Valois established a smaller ensemble to perform at Sadler's Wells and act as a training ground for young dancers and choreographers. At first he was a non-dancing extra, and later he was promoted to a small dancing role. In 1946, while still a student, MacMillan appeared in the production of The Sleeping Beauty with which Webster and de Valois reopened the opera house. He set about building the opera company from scratch but persuaded de Valois to make Covent Garden the main base for her ballet company. When David Webster was appointed chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden at the end of the war, his assignment was to establish permanent opera and ballet companies for the house. Ninette de Valois, who recruited and encouraged the young MacMillan He saw his first performances of ballets, given by Ninette de Valois' Sadler's Wells company, at the New Theatre in London. With her help, MacMillan, aged fifteen, secured admission to the Sadler's Wells Ballet School (later the Royal Ballet School). When the grammar school returned to Great Yarmouth in 1944 MacMillan found a new ballet teacher, Phyllis Adams.
His obituarist in The Times suggests that the feeling of being an outsider, displayed in many of MacMillan's ballets, had its roots in his childhood. His father was a distant figure, and the boy's only close family relationship was with an elder sister. In 1942 his mother died, which caused him acute and lasting distress. He had already had lessons in Scottish dancing in Dunfermline and tap dancing in Great Yarmouth, and he took to ballet immediately. In Retford, MacMillan was introduced to ballet by a local dance teacher, Jean Thomas. As Great Yarmouth was a target for German air raids in the Second World War, the school was evacuated to Retford in Nottinghamshire. After attending a local primary school, Kenneth studied from 1940 at Great Yarmouth Grammar School, to which he won a scholarship. In search of work he moved with his family to his wife's home town, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. His father had served in the army in the First World War, and suffered permanent physical and mental damage. MacMillan was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, the youngest of four surviving children of William MacMillan (1891–1946), who was a labourer and, from time to time, cook, and his wife, Edith (1888–1942) née Shreeve. 1.6 Royal Ballet: principal choreographer 1977–92.His creations for the Stuttgart Ballet and the Deutsche Opera ballet include some of his most frequently revived works. In addition to his work for ballet companies he was active in television, musicals, non-musical drama, and opera.Īlthough he is mainly associated with the Royal Ballet, MacMillan frequently considered himself an outsider there and felt driven to work with other companies throughout his career as choreographer. After this he worked entirely as a choreographer he created ten full-length ballets and more than fifty one-act pieces.
In the late 1940s, MacMillan built a successful career as a dancer, but, plagued by stage fright, he abandoned it while still in his twenties. The director of Sadler's Wells Ballet, Ninette de Valois, accepted him as a student and then a member of her company. He was also associate director of the American Ballet Theatre from 1984 to 1989, and artistic associate of the Houston Ballet from 1989 to 1992.įrom a family with no background of ballet or music, MacMillan was determined from an early age to become a dancer. Earlier he had served as director of ballet for the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Sir Kenneth MacMillan (11 December 1929 – 29 October 1992) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer who was artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London between 19, and its principal choreographer from 1977 until his death.
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