This piece is part of Ballet.co's Jackson 2002 Competition coverage. The competition ran from the 15th to the 30th June 2002 and you can find detail of all our coverage on the: Jackson Reports index page SB Reviews

Before we spoke at the breakfast table in Jackson, my memory of Galina Samsova was limited to a U.S. tour of the New London Ballet, when Samsova and Andre Prokovsky performed at the Oakland Paramount Theater with Margot Fonteyn as guest artist.

English audiences who remember her probably are aware that Mme Samsova was a native of Kiev Whose training in the Ukraine was given by a Leningrad graduate in the same class at Semyenova and Ulanova. Her departure from Russia was the result of her first marriage to a Canadian she met and married in Kiev "We applied and I didn’t know whether my visa would come through or not. Seven months later, I had my visa and an exit permit, which I think was valid for three days."

Immigrating to Canada in 1960, she joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1961 when founding director Celia Franca was still active, where she danced with Earl Kraul and David Adams. During a break in 1963, she went to London for classes and wound up dancing in Paris.

Raymond de Lorrain, the nephew of the Marquis de Cuevas, mounted a production of Cinderella after the de Cuevas Company disappeared into ballet history. "I danced seven days a week for a month," Samsova said with a smile. "It was a very successful production and was danced four months in Paris. Jacqueline de Ribes was the financial sponsor," a woman well recorded in Vogue’s fashion pages at the time. "It was the kind of thing that doesn’t happen any more. She used to say she borrowed a costume from the production when she didn’t know what to wear."

This production coincided with the First Paris Festival, then directed by Jean Robin. "I got a gold medal for my Cinderella performances and Rudolph Nureyev also received a gold. The Royal Ballet appeared in Paris and Margot Fonteyn received the Prix de Paris and Svetlana Beriosova the Critics’ Award."

Samsova returned to Canada where she appeared with the National Ballet in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet.

During her month with the Cinderella production several directors approached her to dance, and In 1964 Samsova started a ten-year association with the London Festival Ballet, managed by Julian Braunschwig. This affiliation made Samsova consider London her home. She remembers John Gilpin not as only a very good dancer "and good friend," but too small for them to develop a partnership.

In 1974 Samsova and Andre Prokovsky formed The New London Ballet after an initial partnership, which took them to Marseilles and South Africa. "We clicked sufficiently that Andre left Balanchine and New York City Ballet." Prokovsky, who was born in Paris of Russian parentage, is, According to Samsova, "one of the few choreographers who is interested in creating full-length works." {I may have mentioned that three or four of his works are represented in the Auditorium with costumes by the British-based designer Peter Farmer.} Samsova said his current work, a ballet to the subject of Turandot, is scheduled to be premiered shortly in Canton, China.

The New London Ballet, like other companies in Samsova’s career, was a touring ensemble of a dozen dancers, "fourteen if you include Andre and me." After four years of existence, it folded because of the demands of the musicians’ union. "We had a dozen dancers, but were required in London to use double that number of musicians. We simply could not afford that."

Before moving north to the Scottish Ballet, Samsova danced with the Royal Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1978, though first as a guest in 1977.

Peter Darrell invited her to appear with the Scottish Ballet where she danced with the late Paul Russell, who had been a principal with Dance Theatre of Harlem and a soloist with San Francisco Ballet In the early and mid-Eighty’s. "I danced in a Colette-based ballet called "Cherie" and young Patrick Bissell was one of my partners."

During her directorship of Scottish Ballet, 1990-1997, Samsova began her sub-career as international competition juror. Moscow in 1994 was her first, followed by the Lifar in Kiev. "My first Paris competition was when Makarova was on the jury and Tamara Rojo received a gold medal. I invited Rojo to dance with the Scottish Ballet. She then moved on to London and the English National Ballet, which was a logical step in her career."

Samsova served as a juror for the first Shanghai Competition, and has been to Nagoya three times. Her first time in Jackson, she finds it "wonderful the way you are looked after." My hostess, Ellen Maclean, is so helpful, but not at all intrusive." The dancing level she finds very good, the standard very high but says "Some years the dancing is much better." Also, she likes the idea of one juror representing a country, "It means that decisions are not stacked."

Samsova also remarked that the new choreography round is intended to display the dancer’s versatility. "We don’t have to give a choreographic award."

"I don’t miss performing at all," she remarked with a smile. "I danced until I was 54 and then ‘enough is enough’. My body was not wanting to do what my brain was saying.’

This is not saying that after leaving the directorship of the Scottish Ballet, Galina Samsova has been idle. "I teach company class for The Royal Ballet twice a year. I don’t have the patience to instruct children. Then I teach at the Ballet in Rome for Carla Fracci perhaps a bit longer."

Samsova’s most recent accomplishment was to oversee a BBC filming of The Royal Swedish Ballet production of Swan Lake in Stockholm in May. "It was one mounted originally for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet with Peter Wright."

While she claims she tries to limit herself, it’s apparent Galina Samsova knows how to keep busy.