Yvonne Mounsey

Yvonne Mounsey (2 September 1919 – 29 September 2012) was a South African-American ballet dancer and teacher. Described as "a dancer of glamour, wit, and striking presence," she spent ten years with the New York City Ballet (1949-1959), where she created important roles in the works of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.

She was then instrumental in the formation of the Johannesbug City Ballet and was influential as an instructor at her own school in Santa Monica, California.

Yvonne Louise Leibbrandt was born on a dairy farm on the outskirts of Pretoria, Transvaal (now Gauteng). She was the middle of three children born to her parents, who bore an ancient German surname and who spoke both Afrikaans and English, as did many residents of Pretoria at the time. Yvonne was raised to be fluent in both languages. When she entered primary school at age 6 or 7, she began taking ballet classes. She begged her parents to send her to England for further training. By 1937, when she was 16, they had saved enough money to grant her wishes.

After a long ocean voyage, Leibbrandt arrived in England and went directly to London. There, she attended technique classes in the studio of Igor Schwezoff before going to Paris to study with famed Russian teachers Olga Preobrajenska and Lubov Egorova.

Back in London, she found her first dancing job with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, which presented operas in English in London and the British provinces. Having grown too tall for the current standard of British ballerinas — at 5'6 1/2" she stood more than six feet on pointe — she auditioned successfully for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, formed in 1937 by Léonide Massine and René Blum after a falling-out with Colonel Wassily de Basil over rights to works created for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

Leibbrandt joined the company in Monaco in the summber of 1939 and took part in performances in Monte Carlo, Nice, and Cannes. World War II broke out when Hitler's troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and operations were suspended. She then headed for Australia, via South Africa, to join the Original Ballet Russe, a separate "Russian" troupe formed by de Basil to compete with the company of Massine and Blum. With that company, Leibbrandt began the second stage of her baller career under the stage name of Irina Zarova. George Balanchine cast her in the second movement of Balustrade (1941), his first setting of Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D.

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