📍Vancouver, BC, Canada
1945 – 1954“I was born Berta Lynn Springbett in Wainwright, Alberta, in March 1939, and grew up in western Canada; my father was a dentist, and my brother became an athlete who ran for Canada. We moved to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, where I began dancing lessons at six, and then to Vancouver, a city of mountains, forests and sea, where I spent the rest of my childhood. I loved to dance more than anything; it made me want to cry from loving it so much. In Vancouver I studied with Nicolai Svetlanoff, who had trained at the Imperial Ballet School in Russia and who admired the creative intelligence I brought to my dancing, and at other schools in the city. I won first prize in the solo dance competitions of the Vancouver Ballet Society three years in a row, and in 1953, at fourteen, I danced at the Canadian Ballet Festival in Ottawa. That year, when the Sadler's Wells Ballet came to Vancouver on tour, I auditioned for Frederick Ashton, and I was given a scholarship to the Sadler's Wells Ballet School in London. I left Canada for London in 1954, at fifteen. I joined the company in 1956, and Kenneth MacMillan created some of his greatest roles for me, including Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, though Margot Fonteyn danced the premiere. Ashton made A Month in the Country and the Isadora Duncan waltzes for me. I became one of the greatest dramatic ballerinas of my time, and later directed the Bavarian State Ballet. Canada remembers the girl from Wainwright and Vancouver who became a star in London.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today