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Gifted Australian ballerina and inspirational educator for ballet teachers
In Britain, few did more to keep the fragile art of classical ballet alive than the gifted dancer and supreme educator Rachel Cameron, who has died aged 86. She had a distinguished youthful career in Australia as a ballerina, in companies run by the remnants of Sergei Diaghilev's great Ballets Russes. The Diaghilev connection was strengthened when she came to Britain after the second world war. She worked closely with his great ballerina Tamara Karsavina, developing a syllabus for student ballet teachers at the Royal Academy of Dance in London that continues today.
Born in Brisbane, Queensland, Cameron was spotted as a child scampering among the purple coleus plants by a passerby, who suggested that she take dance classes. Severely ill in childhood, she found the regime of rest that was prescribed infuriating, and would not be denied when her school offered dance lessons. When the family moved to Sydney, Cameron studied with Muriel Sievers, who gave the eager pupil the run of her dance books. "She was wise and intelligent, and she fostered talent," Cameron recalled. "She was well before her time."
Australia was on the international touring circuit. Cameron saw Anna Pavlova, Sybil Thorndike playing St Joan, and the great choreographer Mikhail Fokine rehearsing his Coq d'Or (in Russian, with no concessions to English-speaking dancers). After Diaghilev's death in 1929, his raggle-taggle family of talents had carried their heritage to new audiences, and some settled where they travelled. Edouard Borovansky and Hélène Kirsova, who had danced with Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes, each established a company in Australia that would contribute to the flowering of the nation's ballet. Cameron danced for them both.
She advanced quickly through the ranks; she was a quick study, invaluable if someone was injured. On stage, she married diamond technique to vibrant lyricism, aided by huge, expressive eyes. Her jump was exceptional, her placement unfailingly neat. With the Kirsova Ballet in Sydney, Cameron danced leading roles in classics and in Kirsova's own works, including Faust and The Revolution of the Umbrellas. She was also principal dancer with the Australian Ballet Society in Melbourne, and danced with the visiting Ballet Rambert.
Her performances made a huge impression. When a young man called Keith Parker, who told his friends that Australians simply could not dance ballet, saw Cameron, he immediately changed his mind. Six months after their first meeting, he proposed marriage. Keith was 17, Rachel only 15, and she turned him down. He continued proposing for seven years, until she accepted, and the couple married after the war.
In 1948 they went to Europe, as Cameron wanted to hone her training with distinguished teachers including Olga Preobrajenska and Vera Volkova. They encountered a grim postwar world. Cameron's dancing career never flourished as she had hoped in Britain, but she kept working, in the West End and in small touring companies.
At the same time, she discovered a vocation in education. She successfully assisted Lydia Sokolova, the former Diaghilev ballerina, who recommended Cameron's gleaming technique to Karsavina. Karsavina was developing a syllabus for student teachers at the Royal Academy, designed to help them feel ballet's changing styles in their own bodies so that they could help their pupils. "The academy asked Karsavina to design something that gave depth of technique and an understanding of technical difficulties, and also provided them with an opportunity to dance," Cameron explained. "She amalgamated a great deal of her training and performing experience. The syllabus is almost a history of dance."
Karsavina was a reserved woman. "When she shared anything with you," Cameron noted, "it was a great mark of trust." Despite this, "Karsavina's teaching was pretty hot stuff. She was beautiful. It sounds ridiculous, but you only had to see her slide her feet into fifth and you just melted." After every class, she and Cameron would discuss their students over coffee. Why did one soar and another struggle? How could a student transcend limitations? Cameron's students attest to her unwavering attention.
Cameron was for many years the prime teacher and guardian of the Karsavina syllabus at the Royal Academy, delighted to see "understanding transmitted through the body". She claimed to be able to discern something of the personality of each student, simply by watching how their bodies inhabited the world. Joahne O'Hara, who succeeded her at the academy, said that Cameron "never shouted, but she got everything she wanted out of every student". As a teacher, she believed, "you are there to impart your knowledge so that [students] can make use of it – not to impose your will".
Cameron and her husband were also committed to Montessori education and to training its teachers. From 1957, they ran the Carroll primary school in West Kensington. Cameron taught the youngest children, relishing their curiosity ("like blotting paper"). After Keith's death in 1984, she continued to run the school until her retirement in 1991.
Retirement was a strictly relative term for Cameron. She acted as a guest teacher for companies including the Australian Ballet, Scottish Ballet and Israel's Bat-Dor company. In her 80s, she drove her Ford Fiesta to the south of France after discovering that she was too old to hire a car – she did not intend to let that stop her. Friends and colleagues continued to visit her home in Hampstead and flocked from as far afield as Japan, Israel and Australia to the Royal Opera House in November 2010, when Cameron received the Royal Academy's highest honour, the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation award.
She is survived by her brother Alistair, and her nieces, Alison, Fiona and Christine.
• Rachel Cameron, ballerina and teacher, born 27 March 1924; died 6 March 2011
• David Jays discusses the life and work of Rachel Cameron on Radio 4's Last Word