Moira Shearer

Moira Shearer King, Lady Kennedy (17 January 1926 – 31 January 2006), was an internationally renowned Scottish ballet dancer and actress. She was famous for her performances in Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffman (1951) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960). She has been portrayed on screen by Shannon Davidson in the award-winning short film Òran na h-Eala (2022) which explores her life-changing decision to appear in The Red Shoes. Early life She was born Moira Shearer King at Morton Lodge in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, in 1926, the only child of civil engineer Harold Charles King and Margaret Crawford Reid, née Shearer. In 1931 her family moved to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, where her father worked as a civil engineer and where she received her first dancing training under a former pupil of Enrico Cecchetti, focussed on the Russian dance curriculum. When she returned to Britain with her parents in 1936, her mother took her to the London studio of the Russian ballet master Nicholas Legat. The studio manager, assuming that Shearer was a beginner, referred them to Flora Fairbairn, a well-regarded teacher of young dancers starting out. Three months later, by chance, Legat saw Shearer dance in a private recital and reportedly remarked, "This is no beginner," and accepted her as a pupil. Dance career At Legat's studio she met the dancer and choreographer Mona Inglesby, who gave Shearer a part in her new ballet Endymion, presented at an all star matinee at the Cambridge Theatre in 1938. After three years at the Legat studio, she joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. After the outbreak of World War II, her parents took her to live in Scotland. She joined Mona Inglesby's International Ballet for its 1941 provincial tour and West End season before moving on to Sadler's Wells in 1942.