At the age of 88, Mona Inglesby founder and Ballerina of the International Ballet that toured the UK from 1940 to 1953 has died in a nursing home.

Mona Inglesby was born into a wealthy family and studied ballet in England with Margaret Craske (noted Cecchetti teacher), Nikolai Legat and Marie Rambert (whom she disliked) and left her ballet company to study with Mathilde Kschessinskaya.

Her first appearances were with Ballet Club, then Rambert Ballet and Victor Dandre's Russian Ballet in 1939 where she worked with Lubov Egorova her first link with the Imperial Ballet legacy.

Having driven ambulances at the beginning of World War II, she asked her father if he would loan her the money to start a ballet company. She employed the help of Nikolai Sergeyev to stage ballets from the Imperial Ballet repertoire and began to choreograph herself.

Among the dancers who appeared in her company were, Harold Turner, Moira Shearer, Sonia Arova, Maurice Bejart, Nina Tarakanova, Ernest Hewitt and Gerd Larsen and I understand that Stanislav Idzikovski taught for her at the beginning of the company's history.

The International Ballet repertoire included, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Coppelia, Prince Igor and a number of her own works and others. Inglesby's acquisition of the Sergeyev Notation of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet repertoire now housed in the Harvard Library, has been discussed in posts elsewhere.

I never met Mona Inglesby but was always interested in her achievement as she was frequently discussed by older balletomanes that I met. I did meet Errol Addison (a favourite pupil of Cecchetti, Diaghilev dancer, well-known dancer and better known teacher) from her company who would regale his audience of stories about his time with the International Ballet. More recently I have met Herida May who was Lilac Fairy to Inglesby's Aurora when the reconstruction of The Sleeping Beauty by the Kirov was shown in London.