Moira Shearer (1926-2006).

With the groundbreaking 1948 movie The Red Shoes, she probably inspired more girls to dream of ballerinadom than anyone since Anna Pavlova. And yet it was a dream that eluded its Scottish-born star Moira Shearer herself. It was a film, she confided to me in a Dance Magazine interview in the 1960s, that she never wanted to make. Although it was the beginning of a promising film career, it also proved the beginning of the end of her serious dance aspirations.

With her red hair and commanding personality, she was a dancer of delicacy, style, and musicality. She made her debut with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet in 1941, and joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet a year later. She instantly caught the eye of Frederick Ashton, who created the role of Pride for her in his ballet The Quest. As a schoolboy seeing her then, I was bewitched. So was Ashton, who also put her into Symphonic Variations in 1946, and two years later cast her as his first Cinderella.

She danced, with charm and almost infinite promise, the roles of Aurora, Odette/Odile, Giselle, and Swanilda. In 1948 Massine created the lead role for her in Clock Symphony, and two years later she was the favorite interpreter for Balanchine (she wrote a biography of him after his death) in his Ballet Imperial. In Paris Roland Petit revived his Carmen for her. Yet her career, peaking early, never matched that of the company's senior ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. During the early 1950s she drifted away from ballet, concentrating on movies, the theater, and later writing. But Moira crossed the dance sky like a comet ... never to be forgotten.