Mary's Curtain Call My Life Has Been On Pointe

The Tiny Dancer Basks in Her Amazing Ballet Memories

- Fleur Guthrie

They were calling her name. A tiny pair of red ballet shoes in the store window that Mary Keeling passed each day as she and her mother walked her brother to school in Cambridge, England.

“I want those and I want to be a dancer,” badgered the then four-year-old, until her mother finally gave in, buying the shoes and enrolling Mary in ballet classes.

Seventy years later, Mary gives a knowing smile and admits the investment paid off.

Until recently, the grandmother-of-two was still working part-time as a ballet teacher. But retirement has given her the chance to reminisce on a career which had a dream start when, at age 12, she was chosen as the first child to dance the part of Clara in The Nutcracker with the English National Ballet.

“It truly was a fairytale,” beams Mary, from her home on Auckland’s North Shore. “In 1957, it was the first time the show had ever been done with children dancing the children’s parts. Hundreds auditioned, so a lot of fuss was made when I got the lead part of Clara for two consecutive years.

“Dance teachers saw I had promise, so I left grammar school to attend a full-time ballet school in London on a scholarship,” she recalls.

During this time, Mary met legendary English ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn and Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev.