Stanley Holden, an acclaimed character dancer in Britain's Royal Ballet who went on to teach generations of dancers in Southern California, has died. He was 79. Holden died Friday at Los Robles Hospital Medical Center in Thousand Oaks from complications of heart problems and colon cancer, according to his stepdaughter, Mimi Stabile.
Holden was born in the slums of London in 1928. His mother encouraged him to try ballet lessons when he was 13. At 16, he was accepted into the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, which later became the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden.
For the Royal Ballet, Holden created roles in John Cranko's "Harlequin in April" (1951) and Frederick Ashton's "La Fille Mal Gardee" (1960) and "Enigma Variations" (1968). He retired in 1969 after dancing the travesty role of Widow Simone in "Fille" at the Royal Opera House. He moved to Los Angeles in 1970 to become director of the Academy of Dance at the Music Center.
He left after a year to establish his Stanley Holden Dance Center on Pico Boulevard, where he taught for nearly 30 years and was sought out by ballet luminaries including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland and Natalia Makarova, as well as film stars such as Juliet Prowse
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