SULAMITH MESSERER was already past 70 when she settled in London, and might understandably have felt like resting after a lifetime devoted as ballerina and as teacher to the development of the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow. But she went on to nearly another quarter of a century teaching in Britain and abroad.
The Messerer family made a major contribution to Russian theatre in the 20th century. Sulamith’s older brother Asaf (1903-92) was especially distinguished. A pupil of Mikhail Mordkin (who had starred with both Diaghilev and Pavlova), he was for three decades a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet and became their chief teacher, as well as an occasional choreographer. He pushed technique to a new level: his ten pirouettes and triple tours-en-l’air caused astonishment in Paris when he and Sulamith made a short West European tour in 1932, the first — and for two decades the only one — by Soviet dancers.
There was another older sister, Raisa, who acted in silent films and whose three children all went into ballet. The sons, Alexander and Azari Plisetsky, both had good careers, while the daughter, Maya Plisetskaya, became the great Russian ballerina of her age. Maya was brought up by Sulamith Messerer when Raisa was sent to a gulag.
However, this did not interrupt Messerer’s own career. She had been born in Moscow in 1908, studied at the Bolshoi school under the outstanding classical stars Vasili Tikhomirov and Ekaterina Gerdt, and had graduated into the company in 1926, where she, too, became a principal dancer.
Her first big role, after three years, was Lise in La Fille mal gardée, and some indication of the charm, humour and brilliance she must have developed in the part was given when she presented one of her pupils in a duet from it at a London charity gala in 1983. Roles like this, or Kitri in Don Quixote, offering vivacity and characterisation, were reported to suit her best, although she did undertake a wide variety of ballets. These includ ed The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, where she played the proud, jealous and murderous Zarema, queen of the harem. The harvest pas de deux in Giselle was widely thought her best pure dance role, but her short, wiry physique made her less apt for the big ballerina parts and, although she did tackle them, she was outshone by the Bolshoi’s illustrious stars Marina Semyonova, Olga Lepeshinskaya and, later, Galina Ulanova.
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From about the age of 30, however, she began teaching, and progressed so well that she was given a full-time post when she stopped dancing. She received some guest engagements as a teacher and producer, too, notably in Japan, and when the Bolshoi Ballet played in Tokyo in 1980 she decided to stay in the West with her son Mikhail, who was also a character dancer.
They settled in London and her abilities quickly won her many teaching engagements, with both Royal Ballet companies and their school, and many other schools and companies. She was appointed OBE in 2000. Before leaving Moscow she had been named a People’s Artist of the Russian Republic (in 1962) and awarded a Lenin Prize.
Messerer never retired: even this year, at 95, she was guest teacher for Maurice Béjart’s company in Lausanne. Though frail and bent through age, she could become upright at the barre; she also went swimming every day, having been in her youth four times swimming champion of Russia. She is survived by another brother, Alexander, in Moscow, and by her son Mikhail, who is a guest teacher with the Royal Ballet.
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Sulamith Mikhailovna Messerer, OBE, ballet dancer and teacher, was born on August 27, 1908. She died in London on June 3, 2004, aged 95.