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‘MICK’S AN AMAZING DAD’

Ballerina Melanie Hamrick on love with the Stones frontman

- PORTRAITS ANDRES DE LARA

‘I feel as though I have more SUPPORT from Mick than some of my MARRIED friends get from their HUSBANDS’

At an age when most men are slowing down, putting their feet up and settling comfortabl­y into retirement, 75-year-old Mick Jagger is still shimmying around the world on tour, strutting and pouting his way across stadium stages with the Rolling Stones. Similarly, in spite of already being a great-grandfathe­r, he’s lost none of his zeal for fatherhood, according to Melanie Hamrick, the mother of his eighth and youngest child, 22-month-old Deveraux. ‘He’s the most incredible, wonderful, loving father,’ says American ballerina Melanie, 31, of the rock star whom she has been dating for four years. ‘And, to me, he’s the most wonderful man in the world.’

In spite of her being based in New York (where she has been a member of the American Ballet Theatre since she was 17), and Mick still living in London’s Chelsea, Melanie insists her lover is a hands-on parent to their son, known as Dev. ‘Mick and I are fantastic co-parents and I don’t feel as though I’m the sole caregiver at all,’ she says. ‘I never feel a lack of support, regardless of our not being based in the same city. I feel as though I have more support from him than some of my married friends get from their husbands. With WhatsApp, FaceTime and social media, you can now have a close relationsh­ip even long distance. I think the norms of relationsh­ips have changed. Or maybe I’m just really modern and independen­t,’ she shrugs.

Certainly, Melanie appears to be adapting well to Mick’s very modern blended family – he has seven other children by four more women, ranging in age from 47-year-old Karis, his daughter by actress and former model Marsha Hunt, to 19-year-old Lucas, the child he fathered with Brazilian ex-model Luciana Gimenez Morad, while he was still married to Jerry Hall (mother of Elizabeth, 34, James, 33, Georgia May, 26 and Gabriel, 20). His is also father to Jade, 47, whose mother is his first wife, Bianca Jagger, and whose eldest daughter, 26-year-old Assisi, gave birth to her daughter, Ezra, in 2014, making Mick a great-grandfathe­r.

Melanie and Luciana, who is also based in New York, have even become friendly, hanging out in the park this summer. ‘I’d say we’re friends,’ nods Melanie. (Luciana has previously praised Mick’s parenting, saying that: ‘He loves all his kids and he is so close to all of them.’ They have, she has said, ‘been raised so well. They are all very normal, well-adjusted and are not money orientated.’) Melanie is thrilled that she and her son are now part of the sprawling Jagger clan. ‘It’s amazing how balanced and kind everyone is. I grew up with a small family [she is the youngest of three, with an elder brother and sister] and it’s nice to have a big family for Dev.’ And, she says, he is most definitely a Jagger. ‘He dances and dances and dances,’ she beams. ‘He has his dad’s moves.’ Not hers, though? ‘Oh no, mine are really regimented,’ she insists. ‘I’m not the best social dancer.’

It’s a bright, breezy September day when I meet Melanie in the genteel bar of a plush hotel a block from Central Park. It’s taken a couple of false starts for us to get together, as she’s currently in rehearsals and costume fittings for the American Ballet Theatre’s autumn performanc­es at New York’s Lincoln Center. A member of the corps de ballet, she is also a soloist in one of the pieces for the shows. I ask her if it’s difficult to juggle the demands of a dancing career with motherhood. ‘I’m lucky – I have my family, Mick’s family and a wonderful nanny,’ she says, pouring English breakfast tea into a delicate china cup.

Born in Charlottes­ville, Virginia, and raised in nearby Williamsbu­rg, Melanie is the daughter of a civil engineer father and a healthcare worker mother. Her sister Rachel – who used to be a ballerina herself and now has a company called Flexistret­cher producing fitness accessorie­s for dancers and athletes – lives in New York too, and has a son two months older than Dev. ‘My parents are back and forth between Florida, where they now live, and Cape Cod, Massachuse­tts, where they have a house, so they visit a lot,’ says Melanie. ‘And I believe in still being an independen­t person because it makes your child happier if they sense that your wellbeing isn’t totally reliant on them.’

Her ballet schedule, while demanding, does mean that she has the whole of July and August off as the American Ballet Theatre does not perform shows in high summer. ‘I’m working long hours rehearsing and performing, but then I know I’m going to have two months with my son.’ She and Dev spent a part of last summer on tour with Mick and the band – Melanie posted a picture on Instagram of them both on the stage before the Rolling Stones concert in Coventry in June – and she attended England’s World Cup semi-final in Russia with Mick in July.

Though scrupulous­ly polite, Melanie, I strongly suspect, also possesses a certain steeliness, no doubt honed by the dedication and discipline required to make it to the top of her highly competitiv­e profession. And that steeliness may well be required in a relationsh­ip with Mick, whose previous history of womanising is well documented. Indeed, while Melanie was still pregnant with Dev, gossip emerged linking Mick to Russian model Masha Rudenko. And this spring, 22-year-old film producer and socialite Noor Alfallah posted an incendiary shot of herself cuddling up to the star on a sofa alongside Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and his wife Sally Humphreys. The pair are rumoured to have begun a fling last October in Paris, where the Rolling Stones were on tour, when Dev was just nine months old. ‘I feel very secure in my relationsh­ip,’ says Melanie, briskly and firmly, today. ‘There will always be rumours in the newspapers, but I know what Mick and I have so I don’t pay any attention.’

She and Mick reportedly first met in Tokyo in

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 ??  ?? Melanie and Mick snapped together for the first time at a Zürich hotel in 2014
Melanie and Mick snapped together for the first time at a Zürich hotel in 2014

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