Classical ballerina best known for 'Red Shoes' (2024)

Moira Shearer: Moira Shearer, who has died at the age of 80, was a ballerina of the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet in its first years at Covent Garden over whom only Margot Fonteyn took precedence.

By starring in the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film The Red Shoes (1948), she became, for a while, the best known dancer in Britain and United States. As a result, she was able to popularise ballet at that time more than any of her colleagues. Even today, people of all ages admit being drawn to the ballet "because I saw The Red Shoes".

The success and enduring popularity of that film should not, however, overshadow a career that encompassed a comparatively brief, yet distinguished, sojourn in the world of classical ballet, as well as fine achievements as an actor, film star, lecturer, writer and speaker of poetry.

Her other films were Powell and Pressburger's The Tales Of Hoffmann (1950), in which the quality of her dancing, is probably best preserved; The Story Of Three Loves (1952); The Man Who Loved Redheads (1954); Michael Powell's controversial Peeping Tom (1960); and Terence Young's ballet film 1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs (Black Tights, 1961) with choreography by Roland Petit.

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She was born Moira Shearer King in Dunfermline, Fife. The family moved to Northern Rhodesia, where she had her first dancing lessons as a child. Later in Britain, she trained first with Flora Fairbairn, then with Nicholas Legat and, after his death in 1937, with his widow Nadine Nicolayeva.

She joined the Sadler's Well school in 1940, and a year later made her professional debut with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet. She was immediately noticed for her classic style and exceptional beauty - features of porcelain delicacy and flame- coloured hair. By 1942 she had joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet and promotion came quickly. By 1944 she was a principal of the company, dancing a wide variety of roles, but it was the move of the company to the Royal Opera House in 1946 that set the seal on Shearer's right to the ballerina title.

In the opening production of The Sleeping Beauty, she followed Fonteyn and Pamela May in the role of Princess Aurora and immediately won a huge following of her own. Shearer's first Aurora came early in March 1946, and in April she was to create, alongside Fonteyn and May, one of the three ballerina roles in Symphonic Variations.

The Red Shoes came in 1948 and the writer Ludovic Kennedy was among the many men entranced by her performance. "She danced with a grace and lightness that were breathtaking," he recalled. He managed to meet her at a Sadler's Wells ball and he asked her to dance. They married in 1950.

Shearer also worked with Leonide Massine, when he came to Sadler's Wells in 1947. She was a can-can dancer with him in La Boutique Fantasque, a Jota dancer in The Three- cornered Hat and created the role of the Aristocrat in his new version of Mam'zelle Angot. She also worked with George Balanchine when his Ballet Imperial, entered the Sadler's Wells repertory in 1950. Fonteyn was cast first for the ballerina role but it was Shearer, who followed her, whose speed of footwork came nearest to capturing Balanchine's virtuoso choreography.

The period of working with him left such lasting memories that, more than 30 years later, Shearer wrote Balletmaster: a Dancer's View of George Balanchine (1986).

In 1952 she became a guest artist with the Sadler's Wells Ballet. By now she wanted to make a new career as an actor. She toured as Sally Bowles in I Am A Camera and appeared as Titania in an Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, first at the 1954 Edinburgh festival and then on tour in north America. In 1955 she joined the Bristol Old Vic, where she appeared, notably, as Shaw's Major Barbara. At the 1957 Edinburgh festival and in a subsequent tour, she played opposite Anton Walbrook in Walter Hasenclever's A Man of Distinction, a collaboration remembered in theatrical memoirs for the total lack of sympathy, even of communication, between those two stars.

In 1977 she was back in the theatre as Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, a year later she was Judith Bliss in Hay Fever. She appeared in a number of other productions. She later lectured on ballet history in the US and on the Queen Elizabeth II liner and gave poetry and prose recitals, often with her husband. She wrote book reviews and in 1998 she published a biography of Ellen Terry.

She is survived by her husband, three daughters and a son.

Moira Shearer born January 17th, 1926; died January 31st, 2006

Classical ballerina best known for 'Red Shoes' (2024)
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