BERYL GREY TO DANCE WITH BOLSHOI BALLET

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28451, 4 December 1957, Page 2

BERYL GREY TO DANCE WITH BOLSHOI BALLET

Beryl Grey, a former prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet, has been learning to speak Russian. She started to study the language when the Bolshoi Ballet visited London last year. Now her knowledge of it is coming in very useful. Next month, Miss Grey will travel by air to Russia to give four performances in Moscow, two in Leningrad, and one in Kiev. She will become the first British ballerina to dance on the stage of the Bolshoi Ballet.

She will dance two roles Odette-Odile and Giselle. At present she does not know the name of her partner, but he will probably be Nikolai Fadeyechev, aged 23, who danced with Ulanova in Swan Lake and Giselle at Covent Garden. Khrushchev’s Favourite Beryl Grey has already won at least one Russian admirer. Mr Khrushchev picked her out as his favourite dancer during his visit to Britain in 1956. Several months later, she walked out of Covent Garden ballet to end a 20-year association with the famous Sadler's Wells (now Royal Ballet) company. Since then, she has toured the world as a most successful free-lance dancer.

Behind her split with the Royal Ballet was the fact that she was the only prima ballerina for whom no new role was created on this year’s American tour. Tallest Dancer It seems that her height presented difficulties for the choreographers. At sft 7in, Miss Grey is the tallest of Britain’s best dancers. Miss Grey, who has been ranked second only to Dame Margot Fonteyn in Britain, started to

train for the ballet at the age of four. At six, she won a silver medal for dancing; at nine, she was offered a scholarship in the school of the old Sadlers I Wells Ballet. On her fifteenth birthday she! danced the entire dual role of Odette-Odile in a full-length per-! formance of Swan Lake at London's New Theatre. She also became the youngest girl to dance; the part at the Royal Operal House, Covent Garden. I Miss Grey married Dr. Sven Svenson, a Swedish osteopath, in 1950. They have a three-year-old son, Ingvar. Dr. Svenson, 20 years his wife’s senior, will accompany her to Moscow. I