Ronald Hynd
ChoreographerBiography
Ronald Hynd was born in London, England, in 1931. He trained at the Rambert School, becoming a principal dancer in Ballet Rambert before joining The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 1954, where he rose through the ranks to principal.
As a dancer, Mr Hynd performed all the leading roles in the classical repertoire, most often with the British ballerina Annette Page, to whom he was married for 60 years, until her death in 2017.
On retiring from dancing, Ronald Hynd’s choreographic career began. His most famous ballet, The Merry Widow, has been performed by 21 of the world’s most prestigious companies in great opera houses across the globe. Created for the Australian Ballet in 1975, it has been performed in the Americas by American Ballet Theatre, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; Houston Ballet; Pacific Northwest Ballet; Joffrey Ballet; the National Ballet of Canada; Ballet de Santiago, Chile; Ballet Sodre in Montevideo; and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. In Europe, The Merry Widow has been performed at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan; and by the Royal Danish Ballet, the Vienna State Ballet and the Hungarian State Ballet.
Mr Hynd was Ballet Director at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1970 to 1973, and again from 1984 to 1986, and he has also had a very long and close relationship with English National Ballet. Productions he has created there include The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Coppélia.
Other full-length works include Rosalinda, presented by the Deutsche Oper Berlin and English National Ballet; Papillon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ludwig II and Le Diable a Quatre.
One-act ballets include The Seasons, Les Valses, Wendekreise, Liaisons Amoureuses, The Sanguine Fan, Fanfare, In a Summer Garden and Pasiphae.
In 2020, Mr Hynd was presented with The Royal Ballet Governors’ Award for services to British Ballet. In 2022, he won the Dance Critics’ Award for lifetime achievement. In 1991, he devised and choreographed a special production of Sylvia for ‘Serenade to a Princess’ to celebrate the 30th birthday of Diana, Princess of Wales.