Roy Round
Photographer whose elegant shots of ballet dancers were achieved using his persuasive charm
ROY ROUND, who has died aged 88, made his name as a fashion photographer in the 1950s, but soon developed an unusual specialism as a photographer of dance, deploying his considerable personal charm to win the trust of some notoriously temperamental ballet dancers.
Gelsey Kirkland, considered one of the greatest dancers of all time, was a particular challenge. Round later recalled that it took him five hours to coax her into a single pose. Natalia Makarova expressed her displeasure at his work “in what can only be called an uninhibited way”, and was never asked again. Margot Fonteyn, on the other hand, was endlessly considerate and became a loyal friend.
Memorable moments were also captured at rehearsals, such as those for Le Corsaire at the Royal Opera House in 1961, with Nureyev, newly defected from Russia, in the title role. “Nureyev was due to enter the stage in a jeté from the wings,” wrote Round. “Suddenly I saw this figure leaping higher than seemed at all possible, speed in his limbs, fire in his eyes, and I clicked my camera as he hovered in mid-air before descending once more to solid earth. He collided with the world like a comet.”
Round photographed the star of the Bolshoi, Maya Plisetskaya, in his studio during a tour of the West, after she had personally reassured Khrushchev that she was a patriot, and had no intention of defecting as other dancers had done. She posed in a mink stole for a portrait in the Pre-raphaelite style, reluctantly returning the stole after the shoot.
Having cultivated good relations with the Bolshoi, Round was deemed an acceptable visitor to Moscow in 1966. He had been commissioned by Vanity Fair to photograph models wearing fake fur, but the suspicious Soviets allowed only one other person to accompany him. The model chosen for the task was Joanna Lumley, whose first test shots had been taken by Round.
Maya Plisetskaya, at whose flat they duly called, was decidedly uneasy about the encounter, fearful of the KGB whose agents dogged their every move. A particularly soulful and romantic photograph of Joanna Lumley was nevertheless taken in the cavernous central hall of Komsomolskaya Metro Station, with its mosaic ceiling and chandeliers.
Another of Round’s subjects was Tamara Karsavina, whom he visited at her house in Hampstead. The original Firebird in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, who had danced with Nijinsky, the regal old lady declined to be photographed, but offered tea as a consolation. Round so charmed her that he was invited back and, by way of a compromise, permitted to photograph any room in her house, with her as a mere “detail in it”. He set to work and, drawing ever closer, achieved the portraits he had originally intended.
Ever inventive, Round once persuaded the “demonic” stage designer Ian Spurling to pose for him in what seemed to be the perfect setting: a dilapidated, empty house in Belgravia. The front door was ajar and they entered the house without seeking permission. Spurling habitually wore heavy white make-up and dark glasses and possessed only two outfits, “Kit A” and “Kit B”. Both were entirely black and held together by safety pins, the only variation being that “Kit A” was finished off by a black beret, and “Kit B” by a black fedora. A white dove was permanently on his shoulder.
The pair made their way to a room on the upper floor and, as Spurling was posing beside a white marble fireplace, they heard footsteps on the stairs. Round hurriedly hid behind the door and, through the crack, saw two workmen in overalls, staring speechlessly at the scene. While Spurling stood immobile, the dove on his shoulder began to flap its wings, causing the men to run downstairs and into the street as if their lives depended on it.
Ballet had been an interest since his youth, but Round’s main work was as a fashion photographer, with assignments for Vanity Fair, About Town, Flair, The Sunday Times and other journals. He travelled constantly, including twice-yearly trips to photograph the Paris collections.
He was equally well known for his portraits of celebrities, such as those of a relaxed Sean Connery, basking in the success of Dr No, or of a coyly seductive Raquel Welch, after she had been cast as Lust Incarnate in the Peter Cook-dudley Moore comedy, Bedazzled.
Success had come early for Round, who by the late 1950s was at the very top of his profession, ranked with such well-known names as Tony Armstrong-jones and Terence Donovan. He was staggered when Armstrong-jones, a close friend, warned him that his engagement to Princess Margaret would be announced the following morning; Round was unaware that they had even been seeing each other.
Roy Round was born in Peckham on January 28 1929, in the house, on Dragon Road, previously occupied by his grandfather. Family members were mainly employed “in the print” on Fleet Street, including his father, Arthur, who was a delivery driver for The Daily Telegraph. Roy went to school locally, and learned to box, but his life was changed when a supply teacher taught a science lesson about photography in which he described the intricacies of optics and of the various chemical processes.
As a National Serviceman in the RAF, Round was posted to a Mosquito squadron in Egypt, where he took aerial photographs for Military Intelligence. He then studied photography at Regent Street Polytechnic, and served an apprenticeship at the Peter Clarke Studios, off Sloane Street, where Roger Moore came to model sweaters.
Aged 22, Round was established in a studio of his own off the King’s Road. When his photographs of a young dancer from Sadler’s Wells were published with an accompanying article, it caught the attention of the ballet world, and Round was invited back. His immersion in the ballet world included his marriage in 1959 to Georgina “George” Parkinson, a star of the Royal Ballet, who was considered the most beautiful ballerina of her day.
In 1980, the couple moved to New York on George’s appointment as ballet mistress at the American Ballet Theater. Round soon re-established himself, and his ultimate achievement was to document two golden ages of dance on two continents – those of the Royal Ballet in the 1960s and 1970s, and of the American Ballet Theater from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Round About the Ballet, published in 2004, is a collection of the photographs from his time in America.
He returned to England in 2012 and at the time of his death was a resident of Denville Hall, the actors’ retirement home. Georgina Parkinson died in 2009, after fifty years of marriage. Their only son, the theatre producer Tobias Round, is married to the former Royal Ballet principal Leanne Benjamin.