By Sara Valle
Petal Ashmole arrived in London during the Swinging Sixties. The Beatles were playing on the radio, women wore flowers in their hair, Carnaby Street boutiques were it, and women’s rights featured in everybody’s table talk.
Ashmole came to the British capital having never travelled before, with a strong Australian accent that over the years has mellowed into hardly a twang.
“London at that time was where every young person wanted to be,” says Ashmole, now 77. “Skirts got shorter, men’s hair got longer, everybody loved everybody – or you pretended to or said you did.”
Ashmole was 18 when she moved to London all the way from Perth, Australia. Now, sitting at a coffee shop in Shepherd’s Bush, she recalls her family being outraged at the idea of her sailing all the way to the UK.
“I look back on it and I think it was an incredibly brave thing do to, but I was fearless,” she says, her lips underneath her trademark red lipstick breaking into a smile.
“Every time they said ‘well, ballet is a lovely hobby, but why don’t you become a nurse and do something sensible?’, my mother would say ‘don’t listen, be a ballerina’. So, I left Australia with wings, and I don’t remember being afraid,” says Ashmole.
Ashmole worked a couple jobs on the side to build her life in Kangaroo Valley – the nickname for Earl’s Court because of the affluence of Aussies.
“I had quite a few years of a big learning curve. I was talented, but then in London I found there were a lot of people equally as talented.”
After a few years, she got her first ballet contract. And at 25, she landed a contract as a soloist at Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet that took her touring around the world for 11 years.
“Life feels more vivid in the company of Petal – it always bursts into Technicolor,” says Rachel Hollings, an Artistic Administrator at The Royal Ballet and Ashmole’s close friend.
Hollings and Ashmole met when the latter started working at The Royal Ballet as a teacher in 2000.
“She’s a real soul sister and we talk frequently about life and the universe together. We’ve been there for each other during good and tough times,” Rachel adds.
Ashmole’s life has been a constant uphill full of joy and accomplishments, but also tragic and demanding. During her years in the ballet industry, she also found and lost love three times.
Michael Brown, her first love, died of AIDS at the hospice in Mildmay Mission in East London in 1990.
Her second husband, fellow ballet dancer David Ashmole, died of a sudden cancer in 2009.
“I felt empty. I felt I had a longing inside of me because I was living without love; I was living without intimacy. For a long time, I decided ‘well that’s the way my life is, I’ll deal with it’. But the truth is, if you’ve had love, you know what you’re missing.”
Ashmole said one of the things that kept her upright is love in all its forms. She met her third husband, Simon Winstanly, a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) architect, when both were 70. “We met and fell madly in love,” she says, her blue eyes bright.
She retired to focus on herself and their relationship. But a few years after, she lost Simon to cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, she says she felt the whole world was grieving with her.
“She’s incredibly resilient,” says Samira Sadi, a repetiteur at the Royal Opera House and Ashmole’s life-long friend. “She’s never become a victim. She’s never been sorry for herself. She’s always managed to pick herself up and remain strong.”
Ashmole says: “There is an element of tolerance to it. When the worst happens and then it keeps happening, you either go into utter despair – which I certainly knocked on that door – or you build up a resistance. I guess it depends on how much you value your life and how much you’ve been loved.”
Now she’s writing about it all in her upcoming autobiographical book, Get Up, Dress Up, Show Up: Lessons in Love and Surmounting Grief – this is also her motto in life.
“I chose good men to love me, so I had good love,” Ashmole says. “That set me up well to deal with losing them.”
Listen to Petal Ashmole’s full story:
Petal Ashmole’s book is available on Amazon.
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