In Conversation with Melissa Hamilton … (In Person and via Zoom)
Royal Ballet Principal Melissa Hamilton joins Graham Watts In Conversation.
Photo: Andre Uspenski
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DATE : Monday 8th September 2025, at 7:30pm 🇬🇧
VENUE : Royal Ballet Upper School, 46 Floral St, London WC2E 9DA
INTERVIEWER : dance writer Graham Watts
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Melissa Hamilton is a Principal of The Royal Ballet. She joined the Company in 2007 as an Artist and was promoted to First Artist in 2009, Soloist in 2010, First Soloist in 2013 and Principal in 2024. She created a role in Wayne McGregor’s Infra in 2008 and has since created several roles for McGregor, including in MADDADDAM, Untitled, 2023, Yugen, Woolf Works, Limen, Carbon Life, Human Seasons, Acis and Galatea and The Dante Project. She has 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.
Hamilton 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 with Masha Mukhamedov in Athens. She won the 2007 Youth American Grand Prix and that year entered The Royal Ballet.
In 2024 she co-founded Hamilton Christou Productions with husband, Michael Christou.
On 17 - 18 September 2025 Melissa brings her unmissable star-studded ballet gala to Dublin
