Ballet dancer ‘going home’

Press, 20 August 1982, Page 8

Ballet dancer ‘going home’

Sherilyn Kennedy last danced before a New Zealand audience when she had just graduated to the-New Zealand Ballet from the National Ballet School. She will return next month — 10 years later — as a principal dancer with the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, which will present a twoweek season in Auckland and Wellington. She is one of two expatriiate New Zealanders “going home” with the company. Ashley Lawrence, as musical director of the Royal Ballet at Cpvent Garden, will travel ahead of the company to rehearse the New Zealand orchestras. He is now in Italy, where the resident company is performing. Ms Kennedy is a tiny, 27-year-old. I interviewed her in between rehearsals at Covent Garden on the day the company was having its innoculations. The dancers leave for New Zealand on September 19. “It's because we are going to Singapore and Bangkok — and Australia — as well as New Zealand,” she explained. The innoculation, the interview, and lunch — a solitary chocolate peanut (“I’m trying to keep my weight down”) were all crammed into her lunch hour in the hectic day’s schedule. It had begun with an hour’s drive in from -the flat at Surrey which she shares with her husband, a motor cycle mechanic. “I’d much rather be in a jam in my car than a sardine in a tube,” she commented. She tours with the company for seven months of the year, enjoying her home and garden whqn she is not away. Sherilyn Kennedy won a Royal Academy of Dance scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in 1973 after she had been in the New Zealand Ballet for about six months. The scholarship allowed her

t "a year's free training." “I thought at first it might j be strange going back to r school, but it was just what I » needed,” she recalled. “I trained under Eileen i Ward for that year, and i danced in • a graduate per- > formance. Ninety-nine per , cent of her class went into . either the resident or touring 1 companies.” In 1978 she became a solo- . ist with the Sadler’s Wells ; Royal Ballet. In September 1980 she was promoted to become a principal dancer. She has danced in many classical ballets, and has “enjoyed them all.” As a soloist, she played the lead dancer in “Les Sylphides” and, in her first year as a principal dancer, the lead in “Giselle.” “I particularly loved 'Sylphides’,” she said. She has also danced the lead in “Paquita,” and in “Swan Lake.” “I found ‘Odette-Odile’ in the company’s new production of ‘Swan Lake' late last year very demanding,” she added. In New Zealand the company will be presenting small one-act ballets, and one two-act ballet, "The Two Pigeons” by Sir Fredericak Ashton. “It’s unfortunate that we’re not doing a full-length ballet, but you can imagine what it would cost, just to take the scenery out,” she said. Sherilyn Kennedy has given no thought yet to what she will do when she leaves the Sadler’s. Wells Royal Ballet — she hopes not until her middle-thirties. “I think you know when the right time to stop has come,” she said. “I’d like to teach, but being a good dancer doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be a good teacher.” — Diana Dekker, London Correspondent