Moira Shearer

Moira Shearer had an extremely busy schedule at Covent Garden in April and early May of 1950. She danced in 8 performances of Cinderella and 14 of George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial. Her final performance of Ballet Imperial was a matinee on Saturday May 6th.

Then, the following day, she took a train called The Golden Arrow from London to Paris where she was to join Roland Petit’s company, Les Ballets de Paris, for a short season of his ballet, Carmen.

Petit had put in an urgent request to Ninette de Valois that Shearer be permitted to replace the injured Rene (Zizi) Jeanmaire. Jeanmaire was the lead ballerina in Petit’s small company. She had danced the lead in Carmen throughout its highly successful tours of London, New York and Canada in 1949. However, she injured a leg late in 1949, was forced to undergo an operation and then rest for 6 months.

Both she and Petit appear to have anticipated her return to her role by the spring of 1950 but this was not to be. Shearer was asked to replace her at short notice and the already-printed programmes were modified to include her.

The caption to one of the photographs showing Petit and Shearer rehearsing in Paris on May 10th notes that Jeanmaire had undergone a recent operation. Thus, it seems that she may have re-injured her leg or that she had recovered from the operation more slowly than hoped.
Shearer arrived in Paris on May 7th. Several photographs show her rehearsing with Petit during the following week. In her interview with Dale Harris, the dance historian, Shearer recalls that she danced every night for three weeks. As she was scheduled to dance with the Sadler’s Wells in Giselle at Covent Garden on June 1st, the performances for Carmen must have begun early in the week that she arrived in Paris.
Shearer indicates that, as the role of Carmen had originally been choreographed for Jeanmaire, it presented her with difficulties. Thus, she and Petit continued to rehearse even after the performances had begun.

Moira Shearer and Roland Petit rehearsing Carmen in Paris in May 1950. Photographer unknown.

   She writes “I never thought that I’d attempt to dance this ballet. It was marvellous to do. I was slashed by the French critics but I was pretty good by the end of the season”. Not all the French critics attacked Shearer’s performance. One, addressing the obvious comparison to Jeanmaire and the fact that Petit had choreographed the ballet for her, wrote of Shearer’s first night performance that Petit had chosen well in her. She was “the perfect dancer, expressive, with a fine sensibility which created a Carmen less earthy and impulsive than Jeanmaire’s but which was just as feminine and “frémisante”. He was confident that Shearer would soon make the role her own and dispel any need for comparison to Jeanmaire.

Moira Shearer and Roland Petit rehearsing Carmen in Paris, May 1950. Photographer unknown.

   Shearer was impressed by “Petit’s crazy undisciplined company, free and easy”. She added, “Carmen was a wonderful ballet”.

   The Illustrated London News ran a story on Shearer’s brief sojourn in Paris and noted that “The Red Shoes”, which had been released in France in 1949. had “brought her a strong Continental following”. Picking up on this theme, in his 1976 interview of Shearer Dale Harris asked her whether Petit had chosen her because of the success of “The Red Shoes”. Very gracefully, in light of this impertinent, insensitive question, she replied that she thought he might have done so.

   However, Petit would have been well aware of Shearer’s true abilities for some time. There is a photo of him probably taken on November 26^th, 1947, where he is backstage with de Valois, Fred Ashton, Margot Fonteyn and the French actress, Arletty. To one side in the same photo stand Moira Shearer and Michael Somes in their costumes for the premiere of the ballet, Mamzelle Angot. Petit and Arletty had probably been watching this from the stalls a short time earlier.

Arletty, Roland Petit, Margot Fonteyn, Ninette de Valois, Fred Ashton, Moira Shearer and Michael Somes backstage at Covent Garden, November 26^th 1947. Photographer Mandinian. Published in “Moira Shearer, Portrait of a Dancer”, 1950.

Sources.

Moira Shearer interviewed by Dale Harris in Edinburgh August 29th 1976 and September 1st 1978. Transcript of an audiotape held at the New York City Library, Lincoln Center.

Moira Shearer, Portrait of a Dancer, Pigeon Crowle, London, 1950.