Maina Gielgud A.O.

Trained by the great Russians including Tamara Karsavina and Lubov Egorova, and later Rosella Hightower, Maina Gielgud has had an incredibly diverse career creating works with Maurice Bejart’s XXth Century Ballet, performing all the great classical ballets as a principal with London Festival Ballet and Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet, and being partnered by Rudolf Nureyev in The Sleeping Beauty and Don Quixote with the Ballet de Marseille. She then pursued a career for several years as an international guest artist.

She was Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet (1983-1997) and the Royal Danish Ballet (1997-1999). In 2014, she was appointed Artistic Adviser at the Hungarian National Ballet. Free-lancing since 1999, she stages works (her own highly acclaimed The Sleeping Beauty and Giselle for several companies such as The Australian Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Boston Ballet and Ballet du Rhin), made a comeback as a dancer and actress in Béjart’s L’Heure Exquise, and guest teaches and coaches around the world.

She recently restaged her production of Giselle for The Australian Ballet and staged a new production of Coppelia for Christine Walsh’s Australian Conservatoire of Ballet. In Budapest February 2016, she restaged Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon for the Hungarian National Ballet.