"Miss Page is unable to dance tonight...or, indeed, any other night."

Moira Shearer died on Tuesday at the age of 80 in Oxford, England. Cast as Vicky Page in Powell and Pressburger's 1948 film The Red Shoes, Moira Shearer was my first exposure to ballet, the first ballet dancer I ever saw. I was so young the first time I saw The Red Shoes that years later all I could remember of it was the row of red pointe shoes and the cane that rapped the floor smartly when it had found the perfect pair.

While Moira Shearer danced with the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, now the Royal Ballet, in some of the most important roles in British ballet, made several other films, acted, wrote, and lectured, it is for her performance in The Red Shoes that she will be remembered.

See Moira Shearer in two other Michael Powell films:
The Tales of Hoffman and Peeping Tom