Moira Shearer The Ballerina Not The Actress

Photo caption: Moria Shearer as Princess Aurora In The Sleeping Beauty Act II from Moira Shearer Portrait of a Dancer by Pigeon Crowle

Moria Shearer, born Moria King in Dunfermline, Scotland, to a highly artistic family of musicians, found another love dance. A photo of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova sat on Shearer's dressing table. Moria Shearer left Scotland for South Africa. It was here where she took her first dance class, and a passion for ballet was born. 

Shearer's ballet teacher in South Africa was Ethel Lacey, the pupil of Anna Pavlova's teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Shearer was a serious student, and Lacey saw Shearer's talent that she persuaded her parents to enroll her in a school with a teacher known in the ballet world when they moved back to England. 

When Shearer returned to England, she enrolled in Nicolas Legat's ballet school. Legat was a former dancer and teacher of the Imperial Ballet and the Maryinsky. Legat saw her talent, and she further developed her technique and artistry into a stronger dancer from his teaching. Moria Shearer loved her ballet classes which were every day. In three years of studying and training at Legat's school, Shearer's found that she desired to be a good dancer.

When war broke out in Scotland when her family was there, her father advised it wasn't wise to go where the Legat's had evacuated. Shearer was in Glasgow at the time met choreographer Frederick Ashton who worked with Ninette De Valois. It was here her life would change when she moved back to London. She joined Ninette De Valois's Sadler Wells School and Ballet company with fellow dancers Margot Fonteyn, Pamela May, Beryl Grey, Michael Somes, June Brae, and Robert Helpmann later Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin would join them.

Shearer was the understudy for Fonteyn, and when Fonteyn fell ill one day and could not dance her role, Shearer did it instead and got much applause for dancing the role. Soon after that role, Shearer got many parts. She got to dance Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Swanilda, Copellia, and many more. 

 The Russian-trained Italian dancer Leonide Massine came as a guest teacher at the school partnered with her. He always encouraged her in her dancing, and she admired him for his traditions from his training in Russian ballet. The audience loved her dancing as well, and soon she caught the attention of a film director Michael Powell who wanted her in his film The Red Shoes, but she wanted no part because she saw acting would ruin her ballet career. 

It wasn't until she saw Massine and Helpmann were considering being in the film and doing the choreography that she changed her mind and agreed to do the movie. She saw staring with Massine and Helpmann would only help her dancer career.

The film was successful, especially overseas, and she started getting movie offers, but she was greatly disappointed when they weren't ballet parts but acting. When she got interviewed on a Scottish Regional program in 1948 about The Red Shoes film, she confused the interviewer by her lukewarm response to her role in the movie. They thought she would see this as an opportunity to become an actress but were upset she wouldn't leave her ballet life behind.

I don't think the film industry understood the passion Moira Shearer had for ballet. It was like breathing to her. It was a powerful force within in her that compelled her to dance. If you are not a dancer and don't know what that feels like to love and devote yourself to dance, how would the film industry ever comprehend it? She was a dancer, and she only saw herself as a dancer, so she wanted others to see her as a dancer, not an actress. You can feel that when you read her words.

"I think more than anything else in the world I would like to be able some day to dance Giselle really well. To be in fact a great ballerina some day. But I won't be able to dance always and so I think of the stage and I want to learn that technique too, and perhaps some day I'll be able to play in Shaw or Shakespeare. Anyway, it's another ambition a very long way off,  I'm afraid, but still real to me. For that's the best or worst of this life there's always another stage to travel in a dancer's progress."- Quote from Moria Shearer on her Interview

However, even after this interview, the film industry wouldn't give up on her because the success of the Red Shoes film was a box office hit, so they wanted her for other movies but non-ballet roles. Finally, Shearer clarified her reasons for not doing any more films in a letter to the Dancing Times which you can read her words here.

"It is true that I have refused them all (film offers) and this may appear ungracious, but, with one solitary exception,  every offer has been for a straight acting role no dancing has been suggested by any producer either here or in America. The exception was a group of American producers who wished to re-make The Dumb Girl of Portici, in which Anna Pavlova appeared in 1916. I think everyone will realise why I would never consider such a project. If I seriously  thought of accepting any of the other contracts offered it would mean finishing any further career as a dancer, which I certainly have no intention of doing. The ballet means far too much to me and in any case I am only now undergoing the thorough dramatic tuition which I feel is necessary and am therefore far from ready to appear as an actress."- Quote from Moira Shearer to the Dancing Times

Interestingly, she brings that film up that Pavlova stared in because Pavlova herself found that she did not enjoy being an actress she instead just wanted to dance, which is why she only did one film.

I feel that Moira Shearer clarifies how vital ballet is to her and how it's above anything else in her life.

Soon after this letter, Shearer continues dancing roles for Sadler Wells, and she further developed and blossomed as a dancer, so I believe she knew what she was doing and was the master of her fate.

When Margot Fonteyn, who was to play the role of Frederick Ashton's Cinderella, had an accident injuring her ankle Shearer replaced her in the role of Cinderella, and the audience was bewitched by Moria Shearer's take on the character that they believed she was Cinderella. For that fact, the ballet was an enormous success. 

Moria Shearer would continue dancing more roles after that and soon established herself as a great ballerina. When the famous Russian Ballerina Alexandra Danilova visited the ballet company, she gave Shearer praise and encouragement for her dancing. This encouragement only made Shearer even more passionate about ballet and want to work harder as a dancer. 

When dancers married non-dancers, they would sometimes leave their careers. When Moira Shearer fell in love, she married a lover of ballet who fully understood the aspirations of an artist, and he never had her abandon her career as a dancer because he understood her passion for dance. I feel this compassionate shared understanding is why she married this person instead of others. After her marriage, she was back on stage dancing.

I feel ballet was the center of Moria Shearer's life. Nothing could alter or replace it. Her love for the ballet was a strong force, and not even the movie industry could make her waver from dance. She had only a heart for dance.

Photo caption: Moria Shearer as Cinderella in Cinderella Act II from Moira Shearer Portrait of a Dancer by Pigeon Crowle