Leanne Benjamin
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Leanne Benjamin
Leanne Faye Benjamin (born 13 July 1964) is a retired Australian ballet dancer who was a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet in London. Early life and training Benjamin was born in Rockhampton, Queensland, to Jill and Bernie Benjamin. Benjamin began ballet lessons at age three at a local dance school, and had attended The Range Convent and High School. In 1980, she was accepted into the Royal Ballet School at age 16. Within a year, she won two prestigious awards, the Adeline Genée Gold Medal and Prix de Lausanne, and trained at the Royal Ballet for two years. One of her teachers was Mona Vangsaae. At her graduation performance, she and Jonathan Cope performed the two lead roles in ''Giselle''. Ballet career In 1983, at age 18, Benjamin joined the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet), and became a principal dancer in 1987. The following year, she joined the London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), directed by Peter Schaufuss, Vangsaae's ...
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Rockhampton
Rockhampton is a city in the Rockhampton Region of Central Queensland, Australia. The population of Rockhampton in June 2021 was 79,967, Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. making it the fourth-largest city in the state outside of the cities of South East Queensland, and the 22nd-largest city in Australia. Today, Rockhampton is an industrial and agricultural centre of the north, and is the regional centre of Central Queensland. Rockhampton is one of the oldest cities in Queensland and in Northern Australia. In 1853, Charles and William Archer came across the Toonooba river, which is now also known as the Fitzroy River, which they claimed in honour of Sir Charles FitzRoy. The Archer brothers took up a run near Gracemere in 1855, and more settlers arrived soon after, enticed by the fertile valleys. The town of Rockhampton was proclaimed in 1858, and surveyed by William Henry Standish, Arthur F Wood and Francis Clarke, the chosen street design closely resembled the Hod ...
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Giselle
''Giselle'' (; ), originally titled ''Giselle, ou les Wilis'' (, ''Giselle, or The Wilis''), is a romantic ballet (" ballet-pantomime") in two acts with music by Adolphe Adam. Considered a masterwork in the classical ballet performance canon, it was first performed by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris on 28 June 1841, with Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi as Giselle. It was an unqualified triumph. It became hugely popular and was staged at once across Europe, Russia, and the United States. The ghost-filled ballet tells the tragic, romantic story of a beautiful young peasant girl named Giselle and a disguised nobleman named Albrecht, who fall in love, but when his true identity is revealed by his rival, Hilarion, Giselle goes mad and dies of heartbreak. After her death, she is summoned from her grave into the vengeful, deadly sisterhood of the Wilis, the ghosts of unmarried women who died after being betrayed by their lo ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company
Morphoses is a ballet company, co-founded in 2007 by Christopher Wheeldon and Lourdes Lopez. Morphoses is a guest resident company at the New York City Center and at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. It was known as Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company until February 2010, when Wheeldon announced that he was leaving the company. Productions City Center, October 1–5, 2008 program one, October 1–3 = ''Polyphonia'' = NY Times
by Roslyn Sulcas, October 2, 2008
**Christopher Wheeldon’s choreography ** Ligeti's eponymous music **costumes by

Wayne McGregor
Wayne McGregor, CBE (born 12 March 1970) is a multi award-winning British choreographer and director. He is the Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor and Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet. McGregor was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 2011 for Services to Dance. Biography McGregor was born in Stockport, England, in 1970. He studied dance at Bretton Hall College of the University of Leeds and at the José Limon School in New York. In 1992 he was appointed Choreographer-in-Residence at The Place, London, and in the same year he founded his own company, Random Dance (now Company Wayne McGregor). Company Wayne McGregor was invited to be the first Resident Company at the new Sadler's Wells in 2002. Appointed in 2006, McGregor is the first Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet from a contemporary dance background. In 2021, McGregor was announced as the Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale until 2024. McGregor is Professor of Chor ...
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Christopher Wheeldon
Christopher Peter Wheeldon OBE (born 22 March 1973) is an English international choreographer of contemporary ballet. Life and career Born in Yeovil, Somerset, to an engineer and a physical therapist, Wheeldon began training to be a ballet dancer at the age of 8. He attended the Royal Ballet School between the ages of 11 and 18. In 1991, Wheeldon joined the Royal Ballet, London; and in that same year, he won the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne competition. In 1993, at the age of 19, Wheeldon moved to New York City to join the New York City Ballet. Wheeldon was named Soloist in 1998.Brown, Mark. "Ballet world abuzz at British choreographer's huge gamble,"
''Manchester Guardian'', 5 January 2007.
Wheeldon began choreographing for the New York City Ballet in 199 ...
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Frederick Ashton
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (17 September 190418 August 1988) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue. Determined to be a dancer despite the opposition of his conventional middle-class family, Ashton was accepted as a pupil by Léonide Massine and then by Marie Rambert. In 1926 Rambert encouraged him to try his hand at choreography, and though he continued to dance professionally, with success, it was as a choreographer that he became famous. Ashton was chief choreographer to Ninette de Valois, from 1935 until her retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970. Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are ''Façade'' (1931), '' Symphonic Varia ...
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Ninette De Valois
Dame Ninette de Valois (born Edris Stannus; 6 June 1898 – 8 March 2001) was an Irish-born British dancer, teacher, choreographer, and director of classical ballet. Most notably, she danced professionally with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, later establishing the Royal Ballet, one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century and one of the leading ballet companies in the world. She also established the Royal Ballet School and the touring company which became the Birmingham Royal Ballet. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of ballet and as the "godmother" of English and Irish ballet. Life Early life and family Ninette de Valois was born as Edris Stannus on 6 June 1898 at Baltyboys House, an 18th-century manor house near the town of Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland, then still part of the United Kingdom. A member of a gentry family, she was the second daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stannus DSO,Montgomery-Massingber ...
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Mayerling (ballet)
''Mayerling'' is a ballet choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan to the music of Franz Liszt, arranged by John Lanchbery, scenario by Gillian Freeman and designed by Nicholas Georgiadis. The ballet is based on the Mayerling incident, a series of events surrounding the apparent murder–suicide of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria (21 August 1858 – 30 January 1889) and his lover, Baroness Mary Vetsera (19 March 1871 – 30 January 1889). The ballet premiered on 14 February 1978, at the Royal Opera House, danced by The Royal Ballet, with David Wall as Prince Rudolf and Lynn Seymour as Vetsera. Synopsis ] ''Prologue: The cemetery at Heiligenkreuz, Lower Austria, Heiligenkreuz before dawn'' Act I ''Scene 1: The ballroom at the Hofburg Palace, Vienna'' A ball to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary and Princess Stephanie of Belgium is in full swing. Rudolf flirts shamelessly with Stephanie's sister, Princess Louise, offending both ...
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Mary Vetsera
Baroness Marie Alexandrine "Mary" von Vetsera (19 March 1871 – 30 January 1889) was an Austrian noblewoman and the mistress of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria. Vetsera and the crown prince were found dead at his hunting lodge in Mayerling on 30 January 1889, following an apparent murder-suicide, which is known as the Mayerling incident. Family and early life Marie Alexandrine "Mary" ''Freiin'' von Vetsera was born on 19 March 1871 as the third child and second daughter of Albin ''Freiherr'' von Vetsera (1825–1887), an Austrian diplomat from Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary (present day Bratislava, Slovakia),Markus, George, ''Crime at Mayerling: The Life and Death of Mary Vetsera'', Ariadne Press, 1995, p. 23. and his wife, born Eleni "Hélène" Baltazzi (1847–1925), member of a wealthy family from Chios, Greece (then part of the Ottoman Empire). Albin Vetsera had been the guardian of the orphaned Baltazzi children and married the eldest daughter. He was raised to the rank of ' ...
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Different Drummer (ballet)
''Different Drummer'' is a one-act ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan in 1984 for the Royal Ballet. The music is by Anton Webern ( Passacaglia for orchestra, Op. 1) and Arnold Schoenberg (''Verklärte Nacht''). The story is based on the play ''Woyzeck'' by Georg Büchner. The first performance was on 24 February 1984, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden."Different Drummer"
Royal Opera House Collections Online, retrieved 8 October 2014


Original cast

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Kenneth MacMillan
Sir Kenneth MacMillan (11 December 192929 October 1992) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer who was artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London between 1970 and 1977, and its principal choreographer from 1977 until his death. Earlier he had served as director of ballet for the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. 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. From a family with no background of ballet or music, MacMillan was determined from an early age to become a dancer. The director of Sadler's Wells Ballet, Ninette de Valois, accepted him as a student and then a member of her company. 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. After this he worked entirely as a choreographer; he created ten full-length ballets and more than fifty one-act pieces. In addition to his work for bal ...
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