Petal Ashmole Winstanley is a renowned Perth-born ballerina who went off to London at 18 to follow her dream. Her career reached illustrious heights but along the way she endured personal hardship with three husbands she nursed through devastating illness which called on great inner strength and courage.
“I sit here in beautiful Perth and can hardly believe it is almost 60 years since I landed in London,” Petal tells Have a Go News. “Now I’m back in Perth. We Australians it seems return to our roots. People like Sir Robert Helpmann, Barry Humphries and Germaine Greer all have done so after heading overseas early on.
“I feel there comes a time in your life when you have weathered your challenges and come up for air and that’s the point when only family will do.”
Petal has certainly had a busy life. Her powerful new memoir, Get Up Dress Up Show Up Lessons in Love and Surmounting Grief, describes the many situations, both personal and professional, she has faced in her 78 years.
In her book, launched at the WA Ballet Centre in Maylands last month, Petal shares her extraordinary life, as a ballet dancer, traveller, adventurer, ballet teacher and choreographer, wife and partner.
She was lucky enough to fall in love and marry three times, first to Michael Brown, a fellow creative and dancer, who Petal nursed while he was dying of AIDS; then to prodigiously talented fellow dancer David Ashmole who she met at Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet.
After 30 years together, living between Melbourne and London (the couple married in Perth in 1985), David was diagnosed with cancer and Petal tells of their time in hospice care and David’s final weeks. Later, she was brave enough to try online dating and met architect Simon Winstanley, ending up nursing him with a serious illness through Covid years, while living in Scotland.
Why did she write such a powerful book, about surviving grief and riding the highs of performing on the highest level as a ballerina?
“The real reason I wrote it was because when I found myself at the gates of hell when I lost David. The thing I found most comforting was to read about other people’s experience of loss and what they had been through and what spoke to me was: you’re not the only one, Petal.
“Other people go through deep loss and it seemed to me that they don’t remain broken forever. And that was really the reason I wrote the book, because, as you will have read my three husbands had terrible deaths, very brutal and very traumatising for me.
“And it was my hope that if anyone else should go through what I went through, actually reading my book might make them feel better. Because grief is such a lonely place and it’s such hard work and reading about other people’s experiences helped me considerably.
“Also, as I wrote, I felt as though I was being heard. And I think that’s very important for the grieving process because once you feel heard you feel less alone and that others are listening to you.
“That was the reason for the book, I did not intend to write a ballet book. Ballet was very much a part of my life and, of course, I couldn’t ignore it. In the depths of despair ballet was my career. It was my great love that actually kept me upright.”
Petal was born in Perth in 1946. An early passion for ballet was matched with natural talent and hard work under Madame Kira Bousloff at the WA Ballet. After rejection by the Australian Ballet School early on, she resolved to try her luck in London.
“The Australian Ballet School rejecting me was devastating for me at the time but thank God, they did because they pushed me into a world that gave me a wonderful career albeit, very difficult at the beginning. Because nobody knew who I was and I had to bang on doors.”
Encouraged by her mother, Petal set sail for London in the swinging 60s, as soon as she turned 18. After working with London Dance Theatre, PACT Ballet and The Royal Winnipeg Ballet she joined Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet, later promoted to the rank of soloist.
After retiring as a dancer in 1984, Petal was appointed assistant to the artistic director of the Australian Ballet and created her first full-length ballet, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, with the company in 1988.
She went on to choreograph several other works and spent 10 years teaching some of the world’s finest young dancers at The Royal Ballet School in London.
Settling in Perth earlier this year and reunited with her beloved dog after quarantine, Petal says she doesn’t teach ballet class anymore but is there to coach.
“I love it but, you know, it’s important that we pass the baton on and there are young teachers who need to be in the studio teaching technique.
“But there’s very much a place for people of my generation to pass on the finer detail and the heritage of work.
“I’m back living in Perth, the jewel of Australia, with my family and with my roots really. Because I was one of the earliest members of the WA Ballet it means a lot to actually return to that place. I’m at a beautiful stage of my life and, when you come up for air after the trauma has dissolved, your heart is open and you are free again.
“And the memories of the people you loved and lost – and I had three of them one after the other – their memory remains bittersweet and, of course, I love talking about them and thinking about them.”
Get Up Dress Up Show Up Lessons in Love and Surmounting Grief by Petal Ashmole Winstanley ($32.99, Grosvenor House Publishing) is available in all good bookshops.
