A ballet star was killed hours before he was due to perform when his motorbike was hit by a minicab driver distracted by a hands-free mobile phone call, a court was told.
Jonathan Ollivier, 38, who was best known for playing the lead role in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, was hit by Abdul Qayyum, who had both earphones in at the time of the collision in Clerkenwell, central London.
Ollivier, a noted actor as well as a dancer, had been due to give his final performance of last summer, playing the lead role of Luca in Bourne’s The Car Man at Sadler’s Wells theatre.
Jonathan Ollivier in Swan Lake
Bourne, one of the world’s leading choreographers, described Ollivier as “one of the most charismatic and powerful dancers of this