Yolanda Sonnabend

Yolanda Sonnabend (born 1935) is a British theatre and ballet designer and painter.

Sonnabend was born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),^[1] daughter of a Jewish family with roots in Germany and Russia.^[2] Her older brother Joseph Sonnabend, born in South Africa in 1933, later became a scientist and HIV/AIDS researcher.

She settled in England in 1954 and,^[2] from 1955–60, studied painting and stage design at the Slade School of Fine Art. She subsequently taught at the Camberwell School of Art, the Slade, the Central School and at the Wimbledon School of Art.^[3]

Sonnabend worked as a theatre and ballet designer for the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet, as well as Sadler's Wells, the Oxford Playhouse and Stuttgart Ballet.^[3] She first collaborated with Kenneth MacMillan in 1963 on Symphony and worked with him for over thirty years, including Requiem, My Brother, My Sisters and Valley of Shadows.^[4]

In 2001, Sonnabend won the inaugural Garrick/Milne Prize for theatrical painting and portraiture.

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