August 22
Born Today:
Donald MacLeary
British ballet dancer Donald MacLeary (1937-) trained at the Sadler’s Wells ballet school and joined the company in 1954. Just a few years later, he was made a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet at the insistence of Svetlana Beriosova (1932-1998) so that he could be her regular partner. He created roles in ballets by John Cranko (1927-1973) and Kenneth MacMillan (1929-1992) and was ballet master for the company in the mid 1970s and coached principal dancers for roles in the 1980s. When he retired from the company during the 2001-2002 season, he had been with the Royal Ballet for nearly 50 years.