Sally Gilmour

Sarah Gilmour (2 November 1921 – 23 May 2004), was a British ballet dancer, and Ballet Rambert's "leading ballerina of the 1940s". The ODNB notes that she was "acclaimed in the 1940s as second only to Margot Fonteyn among British ballerinas".

Early life Sarah Gilmour was born in Sungai Lembing, Malaya (now Malaysia) on 2 November 1921.

Her father, Colin Gilmour, was the Chief Medical Officer there. Aged four or five, she was sent back to boarding school in London, and only visited her parents every two or three years. Her first important role created specifically by her was the title role of Andrée Howard's 1939 Lady into Fox. It became the role with which she was most closely associated. Howard was unable to dance the part herself due to illness, and Marie Rambert suggested Gilmour. Helped by extensive coaching and Nadia Benois' costume designs, she successfully conveyed the transformation from Mrs Tebrick into a wild vixen.

Gilmour returned to London briefly in 1952. Her final performances were in December 1952 at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in Walter Gore's Confessional.

Roles created Maria in Cross-Garter'd (Wendy Toye, 1937) Silvia Tebrick in Lady Into Fox (Andrée Howard, 1939) Anguished girl of Confessional (Walter Gore, 1941), based on the Browning poem Winter Night (Walter Gore, 1948)

Other roles Granddaughter in Cap over Mill Peter in Peter and the Wolf Le Boxing Czernyana Gala Performance

Personal life For some years in the 1940s, she was in a relationship with choreographer Walter Gore. In 1949, she married Dr Allan Wynn (he died in 1987), and they had two sons and one daughter together. They moved to London in 1970, and in 1997 Sally Gilmour, now a widow suffering Alzheimer's disease, returned to Australia.

Gilmour died in Sydney, Australia on 23 May 2004, aged 82.