Georgina Parkinson was a ballet mistress

Ballet Master

Ballet Master is the term used for an employee of a ballet company who is responsible for the level of competence of the dancers in their company...

 and a coach at the American Ballet Theatre

American Ballet Theatre

American Ballet Theatre , based in New York City, was one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century. It continues as a leading dance company in the world today...

. Parkinson was born in Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

, England. She was a ballet dancer for The Royal Ballet in the 1960s. Her breakthrough performance was in 1964 with Les Biches

Les Biches

Les biches is a ballet by Francis Poulenc, premiered by the Ballets Russes in 1924. The composer, who was at the time relatively unknown, was asked by Serge Diaghilev to write a piece based on Glazunov's Les Sylphides, written seventeen years earlier...

, and she performed in narrative ballets like Swan Lake

Swan Lake

Swan Lake ballet, op. 20, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, composed 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger...

and Raymonda

Raymonda

Raymonda is a ballet in three acts, four scenes with an apotheosis, choreographed by Marius Petipa, with music by Alexander Glazunov, his opus 57. First presented by the Imperial Ballet at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre on in St. Petersburg, Russia...

. In 1978, she performed character roles at Ballet Theatre. While she went home to London for a year to spend time with her family, she returned to the Theatre as a ballet mistress. She died from complications of cancer.