Sally Gilmour
	Gilmour in ‘Lady into Fox’ "She ranks only below Margot Fonteyn in general importance." Even with the clue that this was written in the 1940s, I don't think many people today would guess the name of the dancer in question. In fact it was Sally Gilmour, for years the leading dancer of Marie Rambert's company: renowned for the dramatic truth of her interpretations, she created roles in two of the most outstanding narrative ballets of her time. Gilmour was born in Malaya in 1921. Her family moved to Singapore three years later, and it was there she had her first dance lessons - unusually, at the insistence of her father, who was determined that she would be a dancer. It was there, too, that she saw Pavlova, and when she came to London at the age of eight it was with another great Russian, Tamara Karsavina, that she started her serious dance training. After three years she joined the Rambert School, and joined the company, as was then the norm, in her mid-teens. Still only 17, she created the leading role in Andrée Howard's ballet Lady into Fox, and according to C. W. Beaumont - not someone given to hyperbole - "sprang into fame overnight" thanks to the extraordinary sensitivity of her portrayal of the happy young woman whose distress at the sight of a hunted fox changes her into a wild vixen longing for freedom. Gilmour as ‘Giselle’ When Rambert decided to mount Giselle in 1946, it was Gilmour she chose for the title role. Her success was astonishing: one critic wrote "Spessivtzeva, Markova, Ulanova, Chauviré and Sally Gilmour stand head and shoulders above all others of this century's interpreters", and Beaumont described her performance as "unequalled by any English dancer of her generation". The next year Howard made another great role for her in The Sailor's Return, based - like Lady into Fox - on a novel by David Garnett, and telling of how a sailor married a Negro princess and brought her home to his English village, where race-hatred eventually destroyed her. Both of these Howard roles are preserved on film. The fourth role for which Gilmour is most remembered was in Walter Gore's Confessional, which she helped to revive for the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet a few years ago; but she was also a memorable Caroline in Lilac Garden and danced in many pieces by Tudor, Ashton and others. She retired from the stage in 1953, after a career of the greatest distinction. Although others were more technically accomplished than she, her fame rests on her expressiveness: as Peter Williams wrote, "Never was she just portraying the person in each role she created: she became that person". Sally Gilmour died in Sydney on May 24th, 2004
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