Mona Inglesby (1918-2006).

After studying with Margaret Craske, Marie Rambert and Lubov Egorova, Mona Inglesby danced with Rambert's Ballet Club and at London's Covent Garden with Victor Dandre's Russian Ballet. Helped by her father's money--he was a munitions manufacturer--she founded International Ballet (not to be confused with the American troupe Ballet Internationale), which gave its first performance in 1941 and its last in 1953. It was a large-scale, privately-subsidized company--about 80 dancers at its peak--and specialized in the full-length classics, all faithfully staged by Nicholas Sergeyev from his Stepanov notations of the Petipa originals.

Inglesby was prima ballerina of her own company, and her dancing career ended with it. She had a certain technique and was perhaps better than her harshest critics suggested. But her true importance was in introducing huge audiences all over Britain to the likes of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, and, even more significantly, in rescuing the Sergeyev/Stepanov archive from Paris. Finding no buyers in Britain, she eventually sold it for a modest sum to Harvard University, where it has been used by The Royal Ballet and the Kirov in helping to reconstruct the Petipa originals.