Diana Gould (dancer)
| Diana Gould | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Diana Rosamond Constance Grace Irene Gould 12 November 1912 Belgravia, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | 25 January 2003 (aged 90) |
| Spouse(s) | Yehudi Menuhin (1947–1999; his death) |
| Children | 3 children; 2 stepchildren |
| Parent(s) | Gerald Gould Evelyn Suart |
Diana Rosamond Constance Grace Irene Gould, later Diana Menuhin, Baroness Menuhin (12 November 1912 – 25 January 2003) was a British ballerina and occasional actress and singer, who is best remembered as the second wife of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. As a dancer, however, she was described by Anna Pavlova as the only English dancer she'd seen who "had a soul", and by Arnold Haskell as "the most musical dancer the English have yet produced".
Gould was born in Belgravia, London in 1912. Her father was Gerald Gould, a civil servant with the Foreign Office, and her mother was the pianist Evelyn Suart. She had an older brother, also Gerard, and a younger sister, Griselda. Her father was of Irish descent but had been brought up in Paris; and her mother had studied in Brussels and Paris. Consequently, Diana was imbued with French culture and language from an early age. Her father died of typhoid fever in 1916, when Diana was aged only three.
In 1920, when she was seven, her mother married again, to Cecil Harcourt, a naval officer who eventually became Second Sea Lord and was knighted as Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt in 1945.
Diana Gould's first taste of the excitement of the dance came when she danced an Irish jig for a school concert, when she was eight. Her mother took her to study with Lubov Egorova in Paris but she returned to London to join Marie Rambert's school at the age of nine, and studied with her for ten years. She was tall for a ballerina of that time (5 feet 8 inches; 173 cm), and a tendency to clumsiness led to the nickname "Clumsina".
When she was 14, she partnered Frederick Ashton and danced the premiere of his first ballet, Leda and the Swan. Sergei Diaghilev noticed her and invited her to join his company, but he died before that plan could come about. These events were said to have been fictionalized in the movie The Red Shoes. The same bad luck happened with Anna Pavlova, who said that Diana was the only English dancer she'd seen who "had a soul". She was engaged to dance with Pavlova's troupe, but Pavlova died before it got off the ground. She continued to dance at Rambert's Ballet Club, and created roles in some Frederick Ashton ballets, including Capriol Suite. She appeared with Antony Tudor in Atalanta of the East and The Planets, and with Ninette de Valois in Bar aux Folies-Bergère. She also danced with Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes.
...
Wikipedia