Moira Shearer, 80, Thrilled Audiences in ‘The Red Shoes’

Moira Shearer, who died on Tuesday at 80, was a strikingly beautiful leading ballerina with the Sadler’s Wells (later the Royal) Ballet in London. She was best known for her performance in the film “The Red Shoes,” which won her the heart of the writer and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy, whom she married in 1950.At one time in the mid-1940s, Shearer was compared to the great Margot Fonteyn. In such roles as Cinderella, Odette in “Swan Lake” and Mam’zelle Angot, she enthralled audiences with her flawless technique, light elegance of style and copper-colored hair: “No other leading dancer, not even Fonteyn or Markova,” wrote the poet James Kirkup, “demonstrated such intelligence in her dancing and such profound musicality as did Shearer, at least among British dancers.” There was, he observed, “something intensely warm and human in her dancing,” reminiscent of the style of the “classic ballerina assoluta.”In 1947, when she was 21, she was persuaded to take the lead role in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s film “The Red Shoes,” and was enchanting as Victoria Page, the young ballerina torn between a struggling composer and a powerful impresario. Released in 1948, it won four Oscar nominations and made Shearer one of the most widely known ballerinas in history.Her success led to leading roles in other films, such as “The Tales of Hoffmann” (1951), “The Man Who Loved Redheads” (1955), and “Black Tights” (1960). But her absence from regular stage performances caused her dancing to suffer, and she never regained the form she had shown in her early career. Instead, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to being a wife to Mr. Kennedy and mother to their four children, though she continued to appear at Covent Garden and later became a competent stage actress, as well as a writer, broadcaster and lecturer.The daughter of a civil engineer, Moira Shearer King was born at Dunfermline, Fife, in Scotland, on January 17 1926. It was her mother who pushed her into ballet; she had her first dancing lessons in Northern Rhodesia where her family moved when she was a child. The family returned to Scotland when she was 10. At 14 she entered the Sadler’s Wells School.But, as she admitted later: “I never wanted to be a dancer. When you’re 10 you don’t have much say in the matter. I suppose I did enjoy it in a way – I don’t blame Mama at all – but I think what one does should be one’s own choice.”Shearer was launched by Mona Inglesby’s new International Ballet in 1941, but a year later she rejoined the Sadler’s Wells organization and, until 1945, was one of the band of young dancers that helped to sustain the ballet on its wartime tours.Shearer was first in the corps de ballet of Ninette de Valois’s “Orpheus and Eurydice” in 1943. Within two years she was dancing major classic roles. The next year she appeared in Robert Helpmann’s “Miracle in the Gorbals” and as Odette in “Swan Lake,” a performance that, according to one critic, “made the audience gasp.”At Covent Garden in 1946, she appeared with Margot Fonteyn and Pamela May in Frederick Ashton’s “Symphonic Variations.” When his three-act “Cinderella” was launched in December 1948, she was the first to dance the title role, with Michael Somes as the Prince and Ashton and Helpmann as the Ugly Sisters. She also danced the cancan with Leonide Massine in his “Boutique Fantasque” during the 1948-49 season.By that time she had made her film debut in “The Red Shoes.” In later life she sometimes declared she had been ill-advised to take the part, feeling it had lost her the interest of the professional ballet world. At other times, though, she said she much preferred to be out of ballet and enjoying family life: “I used to feel that there was so much more in life than dancing – so much ordinary living to do.”It is possible, of course, that she forgot that it was through the film that she captured the heart of Mr. Kennedy, who was persuaded to see it by his mother, even though he had no interest in ballet. As he recalled, “here was this apparition with the reddest of red hair, a figure like an hourglass, blue-green eyes the size of saucers, the prettiest of noses and a most pleasing voice. And as if that weren’t enough, she danced with a grace and lightness that were breathtaking; and her death under the wheels of a train in Monte Carlo station was almost more than one could bear.”Mr. Kennedy fell deeply in love. By good fortune, he was later given two complimentary tickets to the Sadler’s Wells-Old Vic Ball. When he arrived he found that Shearer and Ralph Richardson were presenting the prizes. Though they had not been formally introduced, Kennedy eventually plucked up courage to approach her. “I walked boldly up, gabbled my name and said, in a rush, ‘Would you like to dance?'”By the time they reached the dance floor, he was beginning to wish he was anywhere else: “I put one hand in hers and the other round her waist. Oh, boy! Then she said, ‘Before we start, I must tell you something.’ What could it be? ‘I don’t dance very well.’ We set off, and within a step or two it was clear she couldn’t dance for toffee.” So began a courtship that ended in their marriage in 1950.After their marriage, Shearer danced occasionally at Covent Garden, toured America with the ballet in 1950, and also appeared with other companies.Her last scheduled Covent Garden appearance was as Princess Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty” in 1953.The following year she danced at the Edinburgh Festival in Stravinsky’s “Soldier’s Tale,” with Robert Helpmann, and played Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Films still occupied her. She appeared in “The Story of Three Loves” in 1953 and was the star of “The Man Who Loved Redheads,” a Terence Rattigan comedy, in 1955. She then returned to the stage as an actress and toured for six months as Sally Bowles (replacing Dorothy Tutin) in Isherwood’s “I Am a Camera.” After this she joined the Bristol Old Vic for a year and played in “A Man of Distinction” at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957.During the 1970s, she lectured widely. In 1972 she hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Edinburgh. She was, for a short time in 1973, an announcer on BBC Radio 3 and was a reader on the “BBC’s Book at Bedtime.”In 1977 she played Madame Ranevsky in Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh.In later years she became a reviewer of books on ballet and other theatrical subjects in the Daily Telegraph and wrote biographies of the choreographer George Balanchine (who had been a great admirer) and the actress Ellen Terry.Shearer enjoyed listening to music and watching rugby and boxing, a sport that she claimed had much in common with the ballet, “though we never bashed each other quite so much!”Even in old age, Shearer kept her good looks, youthful appearance, slight figure, and auburn hair. She always looked elegant, despite the fact that she claimed to be uninterested in fashion.In later life, she left Scotland and settled in Wiltshire, where she is survived by her husband and their son and three daughters.

Moira Shearer, 80, Thrilled Audiences in ‘The Red Shoes’

Moira Shearer, 80, Thrilled Audiences in ‘The Red Shoes’

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