Sleeping Beauty pas de deux Act 3 | Tchaikovsky | Kaneko, Clarke | L Benjamin AM OBE, Artistic Dir

Fumi Kaneko, ballet **
Reece Clarke, ballet **
Leanne Benjamin AM OBE, ballet artistic director

** Soloist Royal Ballet

Excerpt from the Gala Concert for the 90th Birthday of Maestro Richard Bonynge AC CBE
Courtesy of the Australian High Commissioner
Artistic Director: Rosemary Tuck
Ballet Artistic Director: Leanne Benjamin AM OBE

Introducing the new book Chalet Monet

In the presence of the Australian High Commissioner
His Excellency the Honourable George Brandis QC

Sincerest thanks to The Royal Ballet and its Director, Kevin O'Hare for their invaluable assistance.

Event Sponsor: Elspeth Turner Laing

Special Guests include:
John Copley CBE, theatre and opera producer and director
David Mellor QC, broadcaster, barrister, and former politician

Fumi Kaneko
Japanese dancer Fumi Kaneko is a First Soloist of The Royal Ballet. She joined the Company during the 2010/11 Season and was promoted to First Artist in 2012, Soloist in 2013 and First Soloist in 2018.

Kaneko trained at the Jinushi Kaoru Ballet School, Osaka. She won gold medal at the Varna International Ballet Competition, 2008, and silver medals at the Moscow International Ballet Competition, 2009, and the USA International Ballet Competition, 2010. That year she joined the Jinushi Kaoru Ballet Company, where her roles included Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy (The Nutcracker) and Kitri (Don Quixote).

Reece Clarke
Scottish dancer Reece Clarke is a First Soloist of The Royal Ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet School and graduated into the Company during the 2013/14 Season, and was promoted to First Artist in 2016, Soloist in 2017 and First Soloist in 2020.

Clarke grew up in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire. He and his three elder brothers trained at the Janis Ridley School of Dance in Scotland before joining The Royal Ballet School. Reece entered White Lodge in 2006 – the first time in the School’s history that four boys from the same family have all trained at the School. Awards while at the School included the Young British Dancer of the Year in 2012, the Lynn Seymour Competition in 2013 and an award from the Ballet Association. Awards since joining the Company have included the Emerging Artist Award at the 2016 National Dance Awards.

Leanne Benjamin AM OBE
Australian dancer Leanne Benjamin is a former Principal of The Royal Ballet. She joined The Royal Ballet School at the age of 16 and graduated into Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (later Birmingham Royal Ballet) in 1983. In 1992 she joined The Royal Ballet as a First Soloist and was promoted to Principal at the end of her first Season. Benjamin retired at the end of the 2012/13 Season, after 20 years as a Principal with The Royal Ballet. In 2005 she received an OBE in recognition of her services to dance.
Benjamin was born in Rockhampton in Queensland, Australia, and began dancing at the age of three. After training locally she followed her older sister to study at The Royal Ballet School, and while at the School won the 1980 Adeline Genée gold medal and the 1981 Prix de Lausanne. At Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet she was promoted to principal in 1987; the following year she joined London Festival Ballet as a principal and in 1990 joined Deutsche Oper Ballet.
Benjamin’s wide repertory included Juliet, Manon, the Firebird and Odette/Odile (Swan Lake), among many others, and creating new roles for choreographers including Alastair Marriott, Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. She was one of the last dancers of The Royal Ballet to work with Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Her final performance at the Royal Opera House was as Mary Vetsera in Mayerling on 15 June 2013, a role she first danced with the Company on 10 November 1992. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2016.

Financial Assistance for Artists affected by the COVID-19 crisis:

The Tait Memorial Trust has established an Emergency Relief Fund for Australia/New Zealand Artists to assist our talented young artists who overnight lost 6 months or more of work. Professional artists, some with losses in excess of £40,000, to artists just out of college who had a regular income of £500 to 3,000 per month which has now disappeared. Most, but thankfully not all, of the performing arts companies are claiming force majeur and leaving our awardees with an uncertain future. Currently many of them can’t get any assistance from the U.K. government stimulus package because they are self employed, nor do they qualify for Universal Credit because they are here on restricted visas and have no access to public funds.

To support the Tait Emergency Artist Relief Fund
for performing artists from Australia & New Zealand

CAF Bank Ltd
Tait Memorial Trust
Sort Code: 40 52 40
Account Number: 00028428
CAF Donate: https://bit.ly/CAF_TaitERF

PayPal: https://bit.ly/PayPal_TaitERF

To book: http://taitmemorialtrust.org/events/

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