Mona Inglesby
| Mona Inglesby | |
|---|---|
Mona Inglesby as 'Giselle' on tour in 1943
|
|
| Born |
Mona Vredenburg 3 May 1918 London, UK |
| Died | 6 October 2006 (aged 88) Bexhill-on-Sea, UK |
| Occupation | Ballerina choreographer Director of International Ballet |
| Spouse(s) | Edwin Derrington 1946–1986 (his death) |
| Children | Peter |
Mona Inglesby (3 May 1918 – 6 October 2006), was a British ballet dancer, choreographer, director of the touring company International Ballet, and the person who saved the Sergeyev Collection for posterity.
Mona Inglesby was born in London of a British mother and a Dutch businessman father, Beatrix Anne Inglesby and Julius Cato Vredenburg. She started dancing very young, and at 12 was accepted into the school of Marie Rambert. This training was supplemented by lessons from Tamara Karsavina and Vera Volkova, both of whom had settled in London after fleeing Bolshevik Russia. She was soon appearing with the Ballet Club (which became Ballet Rambert in 1934) at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate and at 15 she danced the part of Papillon in Mikhail Fokine's Carnaval, alongside such luminaries as Frederick Ashton as Pierrot, Harold Turner as Harlequin, Alicia Markova as Columbine and Antony Tudor as Eusebius. However she became dissatisfied with the Cecchetti method as taught by Rambert and took lessons in the traditional Maryinsky system from Lubov Egorova, Mathilde Kschessinska and Olga Preobrajenska in Paris and Nicholas Legat in London. This strained her relationship with Marie Rambert.
Her association with Ballet Rambert ended when Egorova obtained for her an invitation to dance with de Basil's Original Ballet Russe company in its London season at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1939. Here she danced alongside the "baby ballerinas" Irina Baronova, Tamara Toumanova and Tatiana Riabouchinska, and gained experience of dancing with a company much larger than Ballet Rambert. At the end of that season she was invited to join the company for its Australian tour, but war was looming and she declined. She spent the rest of her dancing career as a principal dancer with International Ballet. The company's repertoire over its 12-year existence contained 22 ballets and Inglesby danced lead parts in most of them, including the classical roles of Giselle, Swanhilda in Coppelia, Aurora in Sleeping Beauty and Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.Ballet Today magazine described her as having 'some remarkable qualities as a dancer; she is exceptionally light, swift and aerial with strong, beautiful feet'.
...
Wikipedia