Melissa Hamilton is promoted to Principal dancer of The Royal Ballet
By Ashley Woodfield (Head of Ballet Press)
Thursday 12 December 2024
Director of The Royal Ballet, Kevin O’Hare today announces that he has promoted Melissa Hamilton to Principal dancer, the highest rank in the Company. This promotion will take effect from 1 January 2025.
“It fills me with immense joy that I have been promoted to Principal dancer with The Royal Ballet. I am thrilled to be entering into a new, exciting chapter with this special company, in a position that I hold in the highest regard.”
Since joining the Company in 2007, Melissa has performed many celebrated roles including in heritage works by Kenneth MacMillan, most recently in Manon and Requiem. She has worked with today's leading choreographers including Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon, Kyle Abraham and Robert Binet. She recently performed the role of Toby in the European premiere of McGregor’s acclaimed ballet MADDADDAM inspired by the dystopian novels of Margaret Atwood.
Hamilton is currently performing the role of The Fairy Godmother in Ashton’s Cinderella. Later this Season she will dance in George Balanchine’s Serenade and will perform the lead role in MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.
“I am thrilled to promote Melissa to Principal dancer. She has created so many roles in ballets commissioned for the Company in recent years as well as excelling in the works of George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon. During 2024 Melissa reprised and debuted in many Principal roles bringing her exceptional physicality and dramatic intensity to them. With her distinctive qualities she has carved out a unique role within the Company. I know that our audiences will be delighted with this announcement, and she is very deserving of this promotion.”
Melissa was born in Belfast and grew up in Dromore, County Down. She began dancing aged four and trained at the Jennifer Bullick School of Ballet. Aged 16 she trained at the Elmhurst School of Dance for two years and then privately for one year. She won the 2007 Youth American Grand Prix and that year joined The Royal Ballet as an Artist. She was promoted to First Artist in 2009, Soloist in 2010 and First Soloist in 2013. She created a role in Wayne McGregor’s Infra in 2008 and has since created several roles for McGregor, including in Untitled, 2023, Yugen, Woolf Works, Limen, Carbon Life, Acis and Galatea and The Dante Project. She also created roles in Robert Binet's Dark with Excessive Bright and Kyle Abraham's Optional Family: A Divertissement. In the 2015/16 and 2016/17 Seasons she took a leave of absence from The Royal Ballet to dance with Semperoper Ballett, Dresden as a Principal, making role debuts as Nikiya, Princess Aurora and Odette/Odile.
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