Category: Uncategorized
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As recounted by Alastair Macaulay, the former dance critic for the New York Times, Beryl Grey and Moira Shearer approached Ninette de Valois to pay their respects to her after the memorial service for Marie Rambert in 1975. After they had left to have lunch together de Valois turned to her companion, the…
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Moira Shearer’s mother took her daughter to see the ballet company, Les Ballets Russes, when they appeared at Covent Garden in 1935. There she saw Leonide Massine dance in “La Boutique Fantasque”; she was nine years old and he was 39. When he came to dance with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet early in 1947 at…
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The director Michael Powell, in discussing the evolution of his film, ‘The Red Shoes”, stated that its “salient feature …. is simply Moira Shearer. Before this film could be started it was necessary to find a dancer on the brink of becoming a (prima) ballerina, about 20 years of age; beautiful; exquisite figure and…
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Fred Ashton, the principal choreographer for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, created the three-act ballet, Cinderella, in 1948. It was originally designed to be danced by Sadler’s Wells prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn, but, when she communicated to Ashton that she would not be able to dance every night of the planned rigorous schedule of performances, Ashton,…
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As quoted in several sources, including The New York Times in April 1951, Moira Shearer stated she had “one cardinal aim in her dancing career: “to dance Giselle really well”. Between 1942 and 1953 Shearer made her way up the rankings of the roles in Giselle at Sadler’s Wells. Initially, in 1942 and 43, she…
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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…
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There has been a great deal of speculation that a rivalry developed between Margot Fonteyn and Moira Shearer during the time that they both danced at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, i.e. between 1942 and 1953. Fonteyn wrote in her autobiography that she once felt threatened by Shearer’s meteoric rise within the company. As well…
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Between May 19th, 1941, when Moira Shearer joined The International Ballet in Glasgow for its premiere performance and February 8th ,1942 when she left the company as it completed a week of performances in Sheffield, she probably danced at every performance if not in every ballet. I have records (programmes and newspaper accounts) for 181…
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Probably at some time in 1948, The Sadler’s Wells Ballet, under the auspices of The British Council, received an invitation to participate in the Music Festival to be held in Florence in May 1949. Ninette de Valois, the Sadler’s Wells director accepted the invitation and set about creating the programme. The company would…
Moira Shearer 