Solomon Golding

Hong Kong Ballet (2012-2013)
The Royal Ballet (2013-2017)
San Francisco Ballet (2017-2019)

Solomon Golding was born in Tottenham, North London to a Scottish mother and a Jamaican father. At age six, Golding, his parents, and his four siblings moved to Jamaica and later Ghana. While living in the latter, Golding developed an interest in ballet after seeing a taped video of The Royal Ballet’s production of Romeo and Juliet, starring Carlos Acosta. At age ten, Golding started taking ballet classes back in the UK. He was a founding student at the Lantern Dance Theatre School, founded by his teacher Helen Pettit. He was encouraged by Pettit to audition for The Royal Ballet School’s White Lodge, to which he was offered a full scholarship after only a year of studying ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet School for eight years.

In 2010, Golding was named a finalist in the Young British Dancer of the Year awards and was awarded second prize for the Lynn Seymour Award for Expressive Dance.

After graduating from school, he joined Hong Kong Ballet, where he performed soloist roles. Halfway through his year with the company, he was offered a job with Boston Ballet but wasn’t able to get an American visa.

Golding, jobless, returned to the UK. He asked Kevin O’Hare, the artistic director of The Royal Ballet, to take class and was offered a job shortly after. He thus became the first Black British-born dancer with The Royal Ballet in 2013. His repertoire included Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty (Puss-in-Boots) and Giselle (pas de six); Wayne McGregor’s Connectome, Carbon Life, and Woolf Works; and Christopher Wheeldon’s A Winter’s Tale. He created roles in Hofesh Shechter’s Untouchable and Robert Binet’s Void and Fire.

In 2017, Golding left The Royal Ballet to join San Francisco Ballet, where he remained until 2019.

That same year, Golding established House of Solomon, “an art curation, creative direction and production company.” He has been featured in the September 2018 issue of Tatler Magazine and in fashion films for Selfridges and i-D Magazine.