''LIKE all self-respecting dancers, I am chasing a rainbow,'' said young ballerina Marilyn Jones in an interview with the Herald in 1963. ''The chase is the thing. Once you arrive, it means you've had it.''
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But at 71, and after an illustrious career, Jones is yet to have her final curtain call. A founding member of the Australian Ballet in 1962, she has a lead part in its production of Stephen Baynes's Elegy, which has its debut performance in Melbourne this week.
Hers is a ''character role'', but it will still call on her talent to rouse an audience to tears.
''I play a woman reflecting on her life before she dies,'' Jones says. ''I understand the role, because when you do get older, you're not as frightened of death … My character's transition is one of calmness, I think, and reflection.''
The ballet is a collaboration with Victorian Opera, whose singers will perform onstage.
Jones says she expects it could be a tearful experience, not least because she will be dancing with her daughter-in-law, Kirsty Martin, wife of her younger son Damien Welch.
''It's particularly special for me to be with Kirsty,'' Jones says. ''I've danced with my sons before, but not her.''
Love and family have shaped Jones's career, which has not been without its operatic moments.
After dancing from the age of four in the garage-cum-studio of acclaimed Newcastle ballet teacher Tessa Maunder, Jones won a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London. She was 16. A year later she was accepted into the company and at 21 became prima ballerina in the Marquis de Cuevas ballet in Monte Carlo.
An engagement to dancer Georges Goviloff ended dramatically when she changed her mind and he threw the antique emerald and gold ring he had given her into the lake at Lausanne.
Despite the prospect of a dazzling career in Europe, Jones returned to Australia to marry new flame and dance partner Garth Welch.
''I was very torn. I guess in some ways I gave up an international career, but I ended up marrying and having two sons, two beautiful sons,'' she said.
She danced all the major roles in the Australian Ballet's reportoire, breaking only briefly to have Stanton in 1969. In 1972 she was awarded an OBE, and retired to have Damien. She returned to the Australian Ballet after she and Welch divorced and later become its artistic director.
''It was hard for a long time. We didn't get workers' comp or maternity leave or anything like that, so you danced injured, right up until you couldn't. That was just part of it,'' she said.
At one time she was earning $90 a week and paying rent of $80.
Both sons decided to try to become ballet dancers in their final year at school, despite having no previous training.
''It was an incredibly late decision for both of them,'' Jones said.
Stanton is now a choreographer and artistic director at the Houston Ballet and Damien is also choreographing, having retired as a principal with the Australian Ballet in 2009.
The bond shared by mother and sons was celebrated in Stanton's 1991 ballet Of Blessed Memory, in which Jones played the lead, aged 51.
''That role reflected a different phase in my life, where you've had your children, and then they leave you, because they're going on to that next period of adulthood and parenthood.''
Jones says she won't be disappointed if her grandchildren don't become dancers. ''Absolutely not … I wish sometimes that one [of my sons] had become a builder and the other a lawyer. Those are the things I need!''
Jones no longer takes barre classes, and says she has become ''lazy''. But her schedule suggests she is still very active. She lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW, coaches ballet occasionally for different companies, and has had a series of guest roles since hanging up her pointe shoes in 1997, including as the elder Clara in the Australian Ballet's Nutcracker: The Story of Clara in 2009.
She is also heavily involved in the Australian Institute of Classical Dance, an assessment and fund-raising body she founded in 1991 after winning an arts grant of $50,000. The morning after the final performance of Elegy, she will fly to Sydney to help conduct a dance fund-raiser for underprivileged children. ''The institute is for everyone, not just the stars, but to help everyone enjoy ballet.''
No longer driven to chasing rainbows, Jones says she still takes pleasure in interpreting music through dance - ''but I have other things in my life now''.
