Rowena Jackson, New Zealand’s first prima ballerina, was box office gold: when she toured New Zealand with the Royal Ballet Company in 1959, crowds queued overnight to try to get tickets to see her dance when the box office opened.
It was a triumphant homecoming for the Invercargill-born dancer who, as an 8-year-old in Dunedin, took up dance as a way to restore vitality and strength following a severe attack of bronchitis.
An established star in one of the premier ballet companies, holder of the rare rank of prima ballerina, Jackson literally had the world at her feet ... only to choose to retire later that year.
London’s loss was New Zealand’s gain though, as Jackson trained a new generation of ballerinas and dancers.
Rowena Othlie Jackson was born in 1926, the daughter of William and Lilian Jackson, nee Solomon. After a stint at Waihopai School, in Invercargill, the family moved to Dunedin, where Jackson attended Musselburgh School. Taking up dance soon after moving north, she proved to be a precocious talent.
Under the tuition of Stan Lawson and Rosetta Powell, the young Rowena soon became a regular on the southern dance competition circuit where her technical ability and remarkable flexibility soon marked her out.
In a 1976 documentary on her life, the film-makers unearthed archive footage of a young Rowena Jackson performing a routine which was part dance, part contortion act, which she and her family watched while roaring with laughter.
It was clear she was an emerging talent and the family moved again, to Auckland, so she could continue her dance studies and attend Epsom Girls’ Grammar School.
She wanted to study ballet in France but history intervened: soon after a 1939 benefit fundraising concert, World War 2 broke out, meaning travel to Europe was out of the question.
She continued to dance and in 1941 set a world record for the number of fouettes en tournant sur place (fast turns) performed by a dancer, of 121 — by way of comparison, a dancer is require to do 32 in Swan Lake. That year Jackson won the first Royal Academy of Dance scholarship awarded in New Zealand, although it would be five years before she could take it up.
In 1943 she starred in Country Girl, the first major stage show put on in Auckland during war time. It was a smash hit, especially with US servicemen based in Auckland, and was practically a sellout every night.
"She was absolutely marvellous, even at that young age," producer Frank Poore said.
"She just had that something which made the people love her."
In 1946, Jackson could finally take up her scholarship in London, and she was desperately anxious to make up for lost years. She attended the Sadler’s Wells School and later the same year joined the Sadler’s Wells (now the Royal Ballet) Company as a member of the corps de ballet.
Post-war London was a challenging environment: in 1959 she told the Otago Daily Times that her early lodgings were heated by a small fire, that the wind whistled in through the floorboards, and the school had to rehearse in an old hall rather than its usual surrounds.
"One has to keep up the work because opportunities come very quickly in ballet and you must be at the top of your form."
"It was usually hard for them to reach 34," Jackson told the Gold Coast Bulletin in 2017.
"I went on and got to 80 and I felt embarrassed because everyone was standing looking so I stopped at 86."
"I said who’s that wonderful girl," Chatfield recalled.
"Somebody said ‘Oh she’s new, she’s from New Zealand’ and I said she’s going to go a long way."
At the comparatively old age of 21, Jackson, who had always been a soloist, found the discipline required of being in the corps with younger peers a challenge.
She thought she had got her big break when she was called in as an emergency replacement for an ill soloist. Despite curtain calls and acclaim, she went straight back into the corps for another six months: "Nothing was given to me," she recalled.
She suffered from depression as she battled to make ends meet. Several times she despaired of making a breakthrough, but was encouraged by discovering that the company’s founder, Ninette de Valois, had earmarked her for the Covent Garden company.
However, her depression returned if cast sheets went up and she wasn’t named: at one point Jackson seriously considered taking up nursing. She was talked out of it by de Valois, who asked her if she knew how much pleasure she gave people.
Jackson renewed her efforts and, in 1951, finally made her breakthrough.
Again thanks to illness, Jackson, who was originally scheduled to dance lead in one act, was called in to take on a lead role for the whole ballet. After a troublesome rehearsal period, a severely nervous Jackson took to the stage, to a warm reception.
"I had no breakfast, I went on that afternoon and got through it," she recalled.
"Ninette de Valois said ‘you gave a performance I didn’t expect; I am delighted with you’."
Now established, she danced Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, the title role in Giselle, Blue Bird and Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, and Swanilda and Aurora in Coppelia.
Her slow start in the art form was more than made up for by her rapid promotion to the rarely-awarded rank of prima ballerina in 1954.
Jackson toured extensively with the Royal Ballet, visiting Europe, America and Australia and giving dance recitals in New Zealand in 1954 and 1957.
The following year Jackson married her early admirer, Philip Chatfield. At that stage they had not danced together — Chatfield had to perform with the company’s tallest ballerina, the future Dame Beryl Grey, the matron of honour at their wedding.
But after the wedding the Royal Ballet set out to capitalise on the box office draw of a married couple in principal roles and later that year they starred together in Giselle.
However, Jackson had decided she wanted to settle down. The couple retired from dancing the following year and came back to New Zealand where children Paul (1960) and Rosetta (1961) were born in quick succession.
Also in 1961 Jackson racked up one further ballet milestone, becoming the first dancer to be awarded a Membership of the British Empire.
The family settled in Auckland and ran a variety of businesses, including a coffee lounge, a beauty salon and a grocery store.
Jackson did not miss the life of a dancer but she did miss dancing itself.
A regular guest teacher, in 1972 she became assistant director at the National School of Ballet to her husband, its newly appointed director. Jackson herself was school director from 1975-78.
Although long retired, Jackson had lost little of her technique and none of her passion: in that 1976 film she still dances with precision, and she is shown exhorting a young dancer not to be timid and to show what she can really do — an echo perhaps of advice she wished she might have received herself.
In 1975, Chatfield was appointed artistic director of the perennially cash-strapped New Zealand Ballet, again with Jackson as his associate director (until 1978).
Together they inveigled star dancer Jon Trimmer back to the company and got it back into the black.
After stepping down from the New Zealand Ballet, the couple returned to Auckland, before retiring and moving to the Gold Coast in Queensland in 1994 to be closer to their grandchildren.
They both taught at the Ransley Ballet School for many years and enjoyed a special moment in 2017 when the Royal Ballet toured Australia and invited them as special guests to the Brisbane performance.
"Both were as vibrant as they were as performers and filled with enthusiasm about the performance they watched," Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare said in August.
"She was such an integral part of the blossoming of the Royal Ballet and inspired everyone with her virtuoso technique, energy and agility."
Philip Chatfield died in 2021, aged 93, having been married to Rowena for 63 years.
Rowena Jackson died on August 15, aged 98.
The Royal New Zealand Ballet called her a kind and interested friend of the company, an inspiration to generations of New Zealand dancers, and a performer much-loved by audiences.
"A ballerina in the truest sense of the word." — Mike Houlahan
