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 Donald Macleary | |||||||
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'Probably the best partner in the world today'; 'probably the finest partner one could possibly work with'. The first quote comes from Lynn Seymour, the second from Monica Mason, and they were both talking about Donald Macleary. He was a fine dancer and created many roles, especially for Kenneth MacMillan, but somehow when people talk about him it is as a partner - and particularly as the long-term partner of Svetlana Beriosova - that he is remembered. From 1951, when he joined the school, until the present day, Macleary has spent his entire career in the Royal Ballet organisation. He is Scottish: born in Glasgow in 1937, he spent his childhood in the north of Scotland, far from any possibility of seeing live ballet. It was the Red Shoes film that made him realise that he wanted to dance, but he had no ballet training until he was accepted by the Royal Ballet School when he was 13. In 1954 he joined the then Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, and moved quickly upwards, becoming a soloist the next year - still only 18. Kenneth MacMillan was still dancing with the company at that time, and he gave MacLeary a role in every ballet he created for them. In The Burrow he danced with Lynn Seymour, and they danced together in the classics as well; but his talent for partnering was being noticed by Ninette de Valois, and in 1959 he moved to the Covent Garden company as Beriosova's principal partner. It was this partnership that Macleary saw as 'without any question' the most important part of his career. For those who never saw them together, every photograph shows how well they complemented each other: the harmony of their line and the rapport between them rivalled the celebrated Sibley/Dowell duo. Macleary danced often with other ballerinas - Merle Park and Monica Mason, for instance - and although he was very much in the danseur noble tradition he also danced Colas a few times, and he was the Royal Ballet's first Apollo. On a guest appearance with Scottish Ballet he even danced the lead in Napoli - a rare excursion into Bournonville for a Royal Ballet star. He was one of the original few Romeos for MacMillan, and although he wasn't cast in the later dramatic pieces, he created several more MacMillan roles in ballets such as Symphony, Diversions and Elite Syncopations. In 1976 Macleary was offered the position of ballet master to the company, and took the decision to retire from dancing - though he came back on occasion to provide support in an emergency. These days his job is described as Principal Répétiteur and he is rarely in the public eye. He has always believed that a dancer should have a life outside ballet, and in his own case that takes the form of a parallel career in the world of show-jumping - a skill he sees as not totally dissimilar from that required to partner a ballerina!
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