Biography
English dancer Helen Crawford is Ballet Mistress and is a former First Soloist of The Royal Ballet. She trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined the Company in 1999, promoted to First Artist in 2003, Soloist in 2008 and First Soloist in 2009. She retired as a dancer in 2019 and was appointed Ballet Mistress.
Crawford was born in Ipswich and trained at the Linda Shipton School of Ballet before joining The Royal Ballet School. While at the School she danced Clara (The Nutcracker) with the Company in 1993 and solo roles in Raymonda Act III and La Bayadère in the School’s annual matinees.
Her roles with the Company included Lise (La Fille mal gardée), Olga (Onegin), Lilac Fairy (The Sleeping Beauty), Fairy Winter (Cinderella), Myrtha (Giselle), Lescaut’s Mistress and Courtesan (Manon), Harlot (Romeo and Juliet), Olga (Anastasia), Vivandière Doll and Rose Fairy (The Nutcracker), Caroline Beaufort (Frankenstein), Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan and roles in La Valse, Scènes de ballet, Tryst, Qualia, Tales of Beatrix Potter, Requiem, Ondine, Agon, Les Sylphides and Theme and Variations.
Crawford has created roles in several new works, including Wayne McGregor’s Qualia and Liam Scarlett, Will Tuckett and Jonathan Watkins’s ‘Diana and Actaeon’ (Metamorphosis: Titian 2012).