Dame
Antoinette Sibley trained at the Arts Educational and Royal Ballet Schools,
dancing Swanhilda in Coppélia at the first ever Royal Ballet School’s
Performance. Upon graduating from the School in 1956 she joined The Royal
Ballet and was promoted to Soloist in 1959, and Principal in 1960.
Dame Antoinette became one of the leading ballerinas of her generation
and danced throughout the world, working with many of the great choreographers
of the time - Jerome Robbins, Dame Ninette de Valois, Sir Robert Helpmann,
Andrée Howard, Léonide Massine, Antony Tudor, John Cranko,
and especially Sir Frederick Ashton and Sir Kenneth MacMillan and danced
many times with Rudolf Nureyev including creating Friday’s Child
in Ashton’s Jazz Calender and dancing in Robbin’s London version
of Dances at a Gathering. Her famous partnership with Anthony Dowell,
which began with Ashton’s The Dream in 1964, became one of the greatest
partnerships of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
In 1976, she made her film debut in Herbert Ross’ The Turning Point
dancing with Baryshnikov. The same year, Collins published ‘Sibley
and Dowell’. This was followed in 1981 by Dance Books Ltd’s
Antoinette Sibley and in 1987 by a biography, Reflections of a Ballerina,
by Barbara Newman, published by Hutchinsons.
In 1988, she appeared for the last time in a full-length ballet in the
role of Manon, partnered by Anthony Dowell. She now frequently coaches
the principal dancers of The Royal Ballet in many roles, which she either
created or for which she was most noted.
On Dame Margot Fonteyn’s death in 1991 Dame Antoinette was elected
President of the Royal Academy of Dancing, as it was then known, and has
since been actively involved in the creation of the new Graded Syllabus
7 and 8, in promoting the Academy internationally and in the RAD’s
annual conferences. She was awarded a CBE in 1973 and a DBE in the 1996
New Years Honours List.