Dame Monica Mason DBE (born 6 September 1941) is a ballet dancer and has been the director of The Royal Ballet, since 2002.
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Monica Margaret Mason was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1941. A talented dancer, she moved to Britain at the age of 14 to join the Royal Ballet School.
At the age of 16 Mason joined the Royal Ballet as the Company's youngest member, and became a principal dancer in 1968. She worked closely with the choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who created the roles of Lescaut's Mistress in Manon, Calliope Rag in Elite Syncopations, Summer in The Four Seasons and the Midwife in Rituals for her.
Mason was also given the role of the Chosen Maiden in The Rite of Spring that had been originally created by Diaghilev for Lydia Sokolova in the 1920s. Her last leading role was as Nursey in Isadora by Kenneth MacMillan, in 1981, although she continued to appear in mime roles as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet for some time after that.
Following her retirement as a principal dancer, Mason continued to work for the Royal Ballet company and in 1984 she was appointed Principal Répétiteur to the company. In 1991 she became Assistant Director of the company under Sir Anthony Dowell. Following the company's move to its new headquarters at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, Mason replaced Dowell's successor, Ross Stretton, as Director in late 2002.[1] She recently announced her retirement and will leave The Royal Ballet in August 2012[2]
Mason was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002. In the 2008 Birthday Honours she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) .
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