Belinda Wright (1929-2007).

A beautifully romantic British ballerina, Belinda Wright died in April. She had a style very much in the Cecchetti tradition of Alicia Markova fast, feathery, and often ethereal, yet backed with superb technical precision.

Born in Lancashire, she studied with Marie Rambert and in Paris with Olga Preobrajenska, and she joined Ballet Rambert in 1946. She was soon partnered by John Gilpin, and in 1949 they joined Roland Petit's Ballets de Paris, where she danced the Fonteyn role in Les Demoiselles de la Nuit. She returned to Britain in 1952 to join London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), where she met her mentor Anton Dolin and resumed her partnership with Gilpin.

Among the finest Giselles of her generation, Wright also excelled in Dolin's The Pas de Quatre. Replacing Markova, she created Vision of Marguerite with Gilpin and Oleg Briansky for Frederick Ashton. During the 1964-65 season she joined her second husband, Jelko Yuresha, in what became the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and they toured internationally. Her last performance was in Tokyo in 1977--dancing, of course, Giselle.