Alexander
Bennett, Choreographer
Having worked as a linguist, intelligence officer and insurance
clerk, Alexander Bennett had a remarkable change of career
when he finished his National Service. Not listening to those
who told him it was impossible, he took ballet training and
went on to become a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet.
What was all the more extraordinary was that he had not danced
a single step until he was 17.
Despite his late start, he went on to dance all the major
male classical roles, first with Ballet Rambert then with
the Royal Ballet’s touring company. His proudest moment
was partnering Margot Fonteyn. After retiring from the stage
he became a teacher, producer and choreographer for a number
of international companies and was working to the last.
Although awaiting surgery for a heart condition, he had recently
worked on a new production of Swan Lake for a Scottish Company.
“He was supposed to have retired but he just couldn’t
give up doing what he loved," says his brother William.
The son of a tram driver, he was born in Edinburgh in 1929.
His parents worked hard to put him and his elder brother through
the fee-paying Trinity Academy. He took his Highers in German,
French and Latin and was a champion of the school's athletics
team. He became passionate about dance while watching Fred
Astaire films at his local cinema. He took up tap dancing
and performed with the Boys’ Brigade but in 1946, he
saw a performance by Sadler’s Wells Ballet in Edinburgh
and was inspired, at the relatively late age of 17, to switch
to ballet. He showed immediate potential and was awarded a
scholarship to Marjory Middleton’s Edinburgh Ballet
Club He had to fight to defer his National Service for nine
months so that he could take up the place.
As a conscript he found himself in the intelligence corps
and learning Russian. He took the opportunity to go to the
ballet as often as he could before being posted to Germany
in 1949.
After demob he was gently dissuaded from pursuing a career
in dance by his parents. He returned to Scotland and for six
months tried to settle into his new job in insurance but he
was unhappy and returned to London to work for the Foreign
Office. He was able to use his languages but his soul lay
in ballet. He arranged ballet lessons with a teacher who encouraged
him to audition for Marie Rambert.
The legendary dame of dance had created Britain’s first
ballet company, Ballet Rambert, and nurtured many of Britain’s
most important choreographers and dancers. She seemed unimpressed
with the handsome and classically proportioned dancer, so
it was a surprise when he received a phone call a few weeks
later that was to alter the course of his life for ever. A
dancer was ill, she explained. Would he consider dancing in
her forthcoming production of Giselle?
Although his professional debut was described in lukewarm
terms, after 18 months of intensive tuition he was winning
praise.
He danced with Ballet Rambert between 1951 and 1956, returning
for a year in 1964. In the interim he danced with the Sadler's
Wells Theatre Ballet (later the Royal Ballet Touring Company)
where, from 1957, he was a principal dancer. In Petipa’s
The Sleeping Beauty, he partnered Margot Fonteyn in the Rose
Adagio.
He stopped dancing in 1965 and took up ballet master posts
with companies in America, South Africa, Iceland and Brazil.
He never married and several years ago he moved back to Edinburgh
to be near his brother. He bought a small house, supposedly
for retirement, but ballet was his life and he continued to
work.
The day he died he had been working on a new version of
Swan Lake, commissioned by Ballet West, a Scottish youth dance
company. His production of The Nutcracker for the company
last year was well received.
Gillian Barton, the school's founder and principal, says
"Alex had just had two of the happiest days of his life
working on the new version of the ballet. He was awaiting
a bypass operation and had been feeling quite low but this
had given him a new lease of life. The day he died we'd had
breakfast and had planned out his next five years with the
company”.
His final work premiered in Stirling on May 16th 2003
Alexander Bennett,
Born Edinburgh, July 27,1929
Died Argyll, February 15th 2003, aged 73
Reproduced by kind permission of The Daily Express
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