Proud Galleries is thrilled to announce the upcoming exhibition A Life with The Royal Ballet by ex-dancer and celebrated British photographer Colin Jones. Featuring never-before seen vintage prints, this intimate photographic portrait, taken over the past fifty years, presents a unique and extraordinary perspective of life with the world's most famous and fêted ballet company.

Born in 1936, the son of an East London printer, Jones’ creative life has followed an unorthodox path. When he was sixteen the Festival Ballet came to Jones’ school to recruit new dancers. A natural athlete, he found he was also a talented dancer and, with encouragement from his ballet teacher, applied for and won a coveted scholarship to The Royal Ballet School in 1953. He deferred his place for one year due to National Service, before finally joining the school in 1954 where he would spend the next ten years. By chance, this was same time that choreographer Kenneth MacMillan was creating some of his most pivotal and controversially new ballets, inspired by the young ballerina Lynn Seymour, whom Jones later married.

It was whilst on tour in Australia in 1958 that Jones bought his first camera while running an errand for Dame Margot Fonteyn. Obsessed with capturing his work life, Jones photographed his fellow dancers both on and off stage, his close friendships with people such as Rudolf Nureyev, Dame Ninette de Valois and of course Lynn Seymour, allowed him to document the golden era of The Royal Ballet with delicacy and candour.

Following the phenomenal critical and public acclaim received by 2011’s Fifty Years of The Royal Ballet, this exhibition documents life with the Royal Ballet, captured with marvellous intimacy and wit.