Vanessa Palmer

Vanessa was born in Rochford and studied at The Royal Ballet School. She danced in the Czardas in Swan Lake at the 1987 School performance, Winter in Kenneth MacMillan’s Four Seasons in 1988 and the Gypsy Girl in Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons in 1989. She joined The Royal Ballet in August 1989 and was promoted to First Artist in September 1993 and Soloist in September 1999.

Since joining the Company she has danced a wide range of corps de ballet roles as well as featured roles such as the woman in the ‘Now Nothing’ section of David Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café, the Second Solo Girl in Galanteries; the street dancer Mercedes in Don Quixote, an Act II solo swan in Swan Lake, the Lead Hungarian in Raymonda Act III, the Queen of the Wilis, the Peasant Pas de Six and Berthe in Giselle; the Maid in MacMillan’s Winter Dreams, a Courtesan and Lescaut’s Mistress in Manon, a Harlot in Romeo and Juliet; Katia in Ashton’s A Month in the Country, a Red Girl in Les Patineurs, Winifred Norbury in Enigma Variations, Scènes de ballet and the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, Mrs Grose in William Tuckett’s The Turn of the Screw, Prayer in De Valois’ Coppélia, the Nurse in John Cranko’s Onegin, Jiří Kylián’s Sinfonietta, the Diamond Fairy in Natalia Makarova’s The Sleeping Beauty, second solo shade in La Bayadère and La Neige in David Bintlet’s Les Saisons. In the 2005/2006 Season she made her debut as the Yellow Couple in Ashton’s La Valse and the Nurse in Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.

She danced in the company premiere of Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove and during the 1998 Dance Bites tour she appeared for the first time in William Forsythe’s
In the middle somewhat elevated. During the 1999 tour she performed one of the four girls in Fearful Symmetries at Sadler’s Wells.

She has also created the role of Tribe member in Robert Garland’s Spring Rites (Linbury 2004).

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