Anthony Dowell

Anthony Dowell is a retired British ballet dancer and former artistic director of the Royal Ballet who appeared on Broadway in 1980 in Makarova and Company. Born in London, England, on 16 February 1943, he began dance training at the age of five, with his first teacher being June Hampshire. At ten, he enrolled in the Sadler's Wells Ballet School, then situated in Barons Court. The school relocated to White Lodge in Richmond Park in 1955 and became residential, and following the granting of a royal charter to the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1956, it was renamed the Royal Ballet School. Dowell completed the final three years of his studies at the Barons Court studios and upon graduating in 1960 joined the Covent Garden Opera Ballet, moving to The Royal Ballet after one year.

An early champion of Dowell's abilities was the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn, who as guest choreographer with the Royal Ballet gave him a solo variation in his 1962 staging of the pas de six from August Bournonville's Napoli. In 1964, Frederick Ashton selected Dowell to originate the role of Oberon in The Dream, set to Mendelssohn's music and based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. That production also marked the beginning of his celebrated partnership with Antoinette Sibley, who danced Titania. The following year, Dowell appeared in Ashton's Monotones and created the role of Benvolio in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. He was promoted to principal dancer in 1966, and in 1967 worked with Antony Tudor on the leading role in Shadowplay, an experience that broadened his dramatic range.

Among the created roles that defined his career were Troyte in Ashton's Enigma Variations in 1968, Des Grieux in MacMillan's Manon in 1974, and Beliaev in Ashton's A Month in the Country in 1976. In the classical repertory he performed principal roles in Giselle, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, and took on lighter material in La fille mal gardée, Card Game, and Varii Capricci, the last of which Ashton created in 1983 to mark his ongoing partnership with Sibley. Dowell also performed leading roles in works by Jerome Robbins, including Dances at a Gathering and In the Night, and in George Balanchine's Agon, as well as in MacMillan's Song of the Earth and Ashton's Symphonic Variations, Cinderella, and Daphnis and Chloe.

In the early 1970s Dowell also worked as a costume designer, creating stage wear for himself and Sibley in Ashton's Meditation from Thaïs and for dancers in works by MacMillan, Balanchine, and Robbins. Between 1978 and 1980 he took a leave of absence from the Royal Ballet to appear as a guest artist with American Ballet Theatre in New York, where he added roles including Solor in La Bayadère and Basilio in Don Quixote to his repertory and partnered Natalia Makarova in Swan Lake and Gelsey Kirkland in Romeo and Juliet. It was during this period that he made his Broadway appearance in 1980 in Makarova and Company. He also originated the role of Solor in Makarova's staging of La Bayadère that same year.

After his official retirement from the Royal Ballet in 1984, Dowell continued to perform into his fifties, creating the role of Kulygin in MacMillan's Winter Dreams in 1991 alongside Darcey Bussell and appearing in Peter Wright's production of The Nutcracker in 1999. He also took the role of The Mariner in a 1994 BBC Television production of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, choreographed by Will Tuckett for the Dance for the Camera series. Dowell was knighted for his contributions to ballet.