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Wendy Ellis Somes (born 6 December 1951) is a former principal ballerina with the Royal Ballet in London, and is now a worldwide producer of the Sir Frederick Ashton ballets Cinderella and Symphonic Variations.
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She was born as Wendy Rose Ellis in Blackburn, and received her early training at the Carlotta School of Dance, later winning a British Ballet Organization scholarship. In 1963 she was selected to study at the Royal Ballet School, and moved to London with her parents to continue training. She started there in 1963 and joined the Royal Ballet in 1970.
Early career at the Royal Ballet
Initially part of the corps de ballet, Ellis quickly progressed to solo roles such as Princess Florine in Sleeping Beauty, the Young Girl in Ashton's The Two Pigeons and Lise in another Ashton ballet, La fille mal gardée. It was during this time that she met and fell in love with her future husband Michael Somes.
Ellis later danced many leading roles in Royal Ballet productions, notably ballets by Ashton (Cinderella, La fille mal gardée, Symphonic Variations, The Dream, Enigma Variations, A Month in the Country, Façade) and Sir Kenneth MacMillan (Romeo and Juliet, Mayerling, Gloria), with the role of Princess Stephanie in Mayerling , and her role in Gloria , created for her by MacMillan. She retired from dancing in 1990.
Career as a ballet producer
After retiring, Ellis began to work more closely with Somes on ballet production. Somes and Ashton had been friends and collaborators since before World War II in 1939, and Somes had staged many of Ashton's ballets at the Royal Ballet and elsewhere after his retirement from classical dancing in 1961 (he continued in character roles for a number of years after). Ashton bequeathed his Cinderella and Symphonic Variations to Somes on his death in 1988. Ellis and Somes together staged Cinderella with the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm, and Symphonic Variations with American Ballet Theatre in New York. Somes subsequently willed his Ashton ballets to Ellis, and they passed to her on his death in 1994.
Ellis has since produced Ashton's Cinderella with the New National Theatre in Tokyo, the Royal Ballet itself (creating a new production with designers Toer van Schayk and Christine Haworth ), the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago and Los Angeles , the Polish National Ballet in Warsaw, Ballet West in Salt Lake City, Boston Ballet in Boston and American Ballet Theatre in New York. She has also produced Symphonic Variations with the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, the Royal Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet in San Francisco, the Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London, Sarasota Ballet in Sarasota, Florida, Australian Ballet in Sydney, Australia and Ballett am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Media
Ellis was part of the 1978 South Bank Show television documentary about Mayerling.
At the invitation of Margot Fonteyn, Ellis featured in the 1979 BBC Television series "The Magic of Dance" hosted by Fonteyn, performing Lise in an excerpt from Ashton's La fille mal gardée.
Ellis also appeared as an interviewee in the 2005 Tony Palmer film about Fonteyn, entitled "Margot".