I didn’t call my parents as I didn’t want to worry them. I cried to my flatmates instead. We were sitting in the apartment throwing ideas around when Bess said, ‘Don’t worry, Mary. I’ve got an idea.’
‘What?’ I said between my tears.
‘My brother Ben is going to Paris to see some friends next weekend. You should go with him. It’s just for a weekend,’ Bess said.
‘Paris? Why? How can that help?’ I asked.
‘Well, you go with him and just have a fun weekend. You’ll love Paris! It’s such a glorious city. Then when you come back through customs they will ask whether you are travelling for business or pleasure. Just tell them you’re going to work in a bar. They’ll give you a visa for six months.’
I was desperate enough to try anything. Ben kindly agreed to the plan and I flew with him to Paris. He and his friends were very kind to me but they did their own thing. I had no money and just wandered along the Seine, around Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Yes, it was a magnificent city, but it was also very cold, and always at the back of my mind was the worry about whether the scheme would work.
When I arrived back in London, I told the customs officer I was ‘going to work at a barre’ – a small twist of words as I didn’t want to tell a complete lie. He casually stamped my passport and suddenly I had a working-holiday visa.
The next day I hurried back to London Festival Ballet and handed my passport to the company manager, John Smith, with the new visa, hoping the company would want to keep me on. I knew I had to convince him, because we’d be touring Australia in July. So I said very confidently, ‘My father will get me a working visa when we go on our Australian tour. He will have the right one organised by the time we come back to London.’
Mr Smith looked at me a little uncertainly. I quickly added, ‘Trust me. My father will know what to do.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Mr Smith replied. ‘But for now, you have your temporary visa and can stay with us until the end of the Australian tour. Now, go on – get to class.’
I skipped out of there on a high, ran to the dressing room and took my place in the studio at the barre. Everyone looked at me in surprise, smiling. That evening I called my parents at last to explain.
‘Don’t worry, darling. We’ll sort this out by the time you get here,’ Neil George said. ‘We can’t wait to see you, by the way. Everyone will be coming to see you dance!’
I felt like a great weight had been lifted from me – for now, anyway. Dad had influential contacts in Queensland, and I had faith he could do it. In my mind, Dad could do anything.
The next five weeks of rehearsals went by in a flash. Life with London Festival Ballet was a whirlwind of excitement compared to the RBS. I loved Betty’s classes. She had a wicked sense of humour. She’d sing tunes from old musicals or operas with terrific abandon. ‘Mary McGregor,’ she’d drawl at me, or ‘Mary MacKillop’. I knew Mary MacKillop was an Australian nun in line for sainthood, but I never asked her who Mary McGregor was, and I didn’t care either, as long as she liked me. I knew I could learn a lot from her. She demanded we attend optional Saturday classes and I was never going to miss one. She rarely had a weekend off.
One day she said to me, ‘Do you want to improve your footwork, McGregor?’
‘Of course!’ I replied.
‘Then take that crap off your ankles,’ she said, looking down at my ankle warmers with a grin. Of course, quick smart, I did.
There was no one like Betty. She had a marvellous relationship with Nureyev, and with all the senior dancers. Sometimes I watched their rehearsals, listening to her critiques and tuition. Tell any classical dancer you worked with ‘Betty’ and they know who you are referring to. She was at every performance, and was always on tour with us. She was single all her life but we were her family, and she was like a surrogate mother to me.
In the two years before I joined Festival Ballet, Beryl Grey had commissioned Nureyev to stage a new interpretation of The Sleeping Beauty in 1975. This led to some big London seasons with him for the company, which often showcased popular classical ballets and drew large crowds. The next ballet Mrs Grey had commissioned from Nureyev was the Romeo and Juliet that had led me to audition for London Festival Ballet in the first place. This production was to be part of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations and, lucky for me, required a huge cast.
Soon after I rejoined the company I read the casting for Romeo and Juliet and was thrilled to learn I was to be one of the four servant girls in the Montague family. I was only in the corps de ballet but it was an important role. I think I’d shown my teachers and now Nureyev that character dancing was my strength. I was a natural actress, and there was good opportunity to show that in Romeo and Juliet.
In addition, I was also covering one of Juliet’s friends and a court lady, so I was busy from that day forward. We were in a new studio at Jay Mews in Kensington and it was an exciting time to be at London Festival Ballet, with Nureyev as guest star as well as the choreographer. I’d heard so much about this talented man – his charisma, his passion, his sensual style – and I was now seeing it for myself. The fact that he was a Russian defector made him seem even more daring and mysterious. The whole company was alight with anticipation. Romeo and Juliet was set to open on 2 May 1977 at the London Coliseum as part of the Nureyev Festival, and the whole world would be watching.
Rudolf was funny, hardworking and brilliant all at the same time. He had a larger-than-life vision. His dancing, of course, is legendary, and seeing him in action was awe-inspiring. In Romeo and Juliet there were spectacular sword-fighting scenes that required weeks of rehearsal. A specialist sword expert was brought in to coach the dancers, and occasionally there were minor accidents. A few times, Rudolf would get frustrated and had the foulest mouth I’d ever heard. He wanted the scenes to be intense and realistic, and one day when the boys weren’t paying enough attention, he let rip at them and threw a chair at a mirror, which cracked.
His temper aside, Rudolf was a creative genius. Some rehearsals involved huge, long silk flags carried by the boys who were acrobats. The flags were thrown a long distance across the studio and caught, in a realistic recreation of the famous flag-throwing in Siena, Italy. We dancers had to dodge them. In true Rudolf style, the flags he commissioned for our production were even larger than real life!
We would watch Rudolf in rehearsal with Patricia Ruanne, who had the role of Juliet, and Betty as Juliet’s nurse. It was truly special and formative to be surrounded by such inspiring artists.
Scottie was playing a Capulet servant, so we were both involved for the whole ballet. We were fitted with the most sumptuous and colourful costumes of heavy velvet, even for the servants. I’d never seen anything like them. My wig for the court lady was close to a foot high.
Rudolf got to know me very early on. His big Italian masseur, Luigi Pignotti, became interested in me and flirted outrageously in an innocent but hilarious way. His infatuation became a running joke in the company. He was always running after Rudolf with cups of tea or massage oil, and I would sometimes chat to him in the wings.
On opening night, I was nervous but excited. We had been screamed at regularly by Rudolf and were very well rehearsed. I stood near the stage manager calling the show, waiting to go on, and when it was our turn, we just burst out of the wings. Our piece was pretty physical and there was a lot of strenuous dancing, partnering with four boys, and then the huge fight scene. Our change from servants to court ladies was very quick, so we had to do it standing in the wings, and then on we went again. While we weren’t in pointe shoes, our deep-red velvet dresses had a very long train which you had to take care of. Every time we turned, we had to grab it with a full fist and yank it around, using our shoulder, and hope no one was standing on it. Often one of the clumsy boys was, so you’d have to swoop your neck back elegantly, glare at the boy and mouth, ‘Off, off, you!’