Roger Wood Collection © ROH Collections Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

Some years ago at a party I was talking to a lady of a certain age who wore a crisp white shirt and tight black skirt and, I could not help but notice, with rather good legs.

As she talked and glanced up at me with a sideways slant from under copper-coloured hair, I slowly recognised a face from my past, one that had adorned my teenaged bedroom wall. Where Rita Heywood and Jane Russell were the objects of my contemporary’s desires, as a ballet student mine were fabulous dancers like Jean Babilee, Sono Osato, Andre Eglevsky and Moira Shearer. “Yes,” she replied to my eventual enquiry. “That’s me.”

I have been lucky enough to meet many living legends but this one was special. Her 1948 Powell/Pressburger film, The Red Shoes, helped shape my future and develop a life long passion for dance. Many in the dance world preferred her later appearance in the Tales of Hoffman (1951) which showed her true technical range as she danced Olympia the doll. But both roles, Olympia and Victoria Page, were vulnerable and beautiful females in the grip of powerful forces over which they had no control, and Shearer, even in later life, always radiated a sensitivity that appeared too fragile to cope with the humdrum of life. But it was this delicacy married to an inner conviction of what was right that first attracted Britain’s dance audiences. “Moira could be like thistledown,” remembers Dame Beryl Grey of her friend, with whom she spent her formative years dancing with Ninette de Valois’ Sadler’s Wells Ballet.
 

But Shearer was also cool and authoritative in Ashton’s Symphonic Variations and effortlessly commanded the virtuoso demands of Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. It was in this role that Shearer danced her farewell to the company at Covent Garden in 1953, aged 27. “Many of us left eventually,” remembers Dame Beryl, “as we felt under employed by Dame Ninette’s need to give Margot (Fonteyn) so much to do.”
 

The daughter of a civil engineer, Moira Shearer King was born at Dunfermline, Fife, on 17 January, 1926. Her first dancing lesson was in Northern Rhodesia and she continued her training aged 10 when the family returned to Dunfermline. She entered Sadler’s Wells School aged 14. Shearer’s professional debut was with Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet in 1941, before joining Sadler’s Wells Ballet a year later. A young intellectual and budding politician called Ludovic Kennedy saw Shearer in the Oscar nominated The Red Shoes, and fell madly in love and his ardent courtship resulted in their marriage in 1950 which in turn produced four children.
 

After her wedding, though she continued to dance at Covent Garden and act on the West End stage, Shearer wholeheartedly embraced her role as a wife and mother. “I used to feel that there was so much more in life than ballet,” she once remarked, “so much ordinary living to do.” In later life, still distinguished by her auburn hair and flawless complexion, Shearer lectured, reviewed books and appeared on stage, radio and television. In 1987 Shearer was persuaded by dancer and actor Christopher Gable to play opposite him as L.S.Lowry’s mother in his company, Northern Ballet Theatre’s ballet, A Simple Man, choreographed by Gillian Lynne.
 

Moira Shearer never lost her physical beauty nor the allure which captivated so many hearts on stage and screen. She is survived by her husband, a son and three daughters. And the world will be a duller place without her.