Leslie Edwards
	Reading about Leslie Edwards for this piece, I came across an article which spoke of his long career, of the hundreds of times he had played Catalabutte in Sleeping Beauty, and of the roles that would always be associated with him. All true, as we know: the amazing thing is that this was written in 1956, when his 'long career' was a mere 23 years old and had nearly forty years left to run. Leslie Edwards was born in 1916, and studied with Marie Rambert after leaving school at the age of 15. He danced occasionally for Rambert until Ninette de Valois, needing an extra boy, borrowed him and gave him his first role for the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1933, taking him into the company later that year. In 1935 he returned to Ballet Rambert for a couple of years (appearing in the first cast of Tudor's Lilac Garden), but apart from that his entire career was spent with the Royal Ballet. For us who remember him only from recent years, it's hard to imagine the days when, for instance, he was in the corps de ballet of the first cast of Ashton's Les Patineurs; much easier to see him as one of the three lawyers in de Valois' 1940 The Prospect Before Us (with Michael Somes as one of the others). In the same year Edwards played the Duke in a revival of Coppélia - the first of the very many authoritative character roles that were to make up his chief contribution to the company's history. Like so many others, Edwards lost two years of his career to the Services during the war, but returned, after being invalided out, to add many more creations to his growing list. Helpmann, Massine, de Valois, Cranko and MacMillan all made use of his abilities, and Ashton made a succession of roles for him, ranging from Margot Fonteyn's Chauffeur in Les Sirènes to the one in which he will undoubtedly be best remembered, as the farmer Thomas in La Fille mal Gardée. His last Ashton creation was the cello-playing Basil G. Nevinson in Enigma Variations, in 1967 - he spent most of this ballet sitting down, but was still playing it, and still hopping about quite happily in the finale, when he was well over 70. In addition to his dancing, Edwards at various times taught at the Royal Ballet School amd acted as ballet master to the Royal Opera. More importantly, he was for many years the director of the Royal Ballet Choreographic Group, watching over the first attempts of generations of young hopefuls. Only de Valois herself can boast a longer association with the company, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone will ever surpass Edwards' dancing record. When the Sadler's Wells Ballet moved to Covent Garden after the war, Edwards played Catalabutte on the opening night; and to countless people it will always seem slightly strange to see anyone else in the role, or as the Master of Ceremonies in Swan Lake. Many dancers have had more glamorous careers and more public fame, but none has served the company more faithfully.
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