Ballet dancer, ballet teacher
Died aged 78
Sara Neil was the first director of the New Zealand School of Dance, formerly known as the National School of Ballet.
The school opened in February 1967 in the Empire Theatre in Marion St, Wellington.
It began with nine fulltime students - eight females and one male - and four part-time students. It was funded by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the New Zealand Ballet Trust, primarily to prepare students for employment by the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
But, as Miss Neil warned at the time, ballet training was no guarantee of a job in New Zealand, or overseas.
"A successful career as a professional dancer is in the lap of the Gods anywhere," she said.
Another result of the school would be the effectiveness of healthy competition, Neil believed.
"No one will be able to rest on their laurels", she said in a Herald interview in 1966.
"If dancers already working look over their shoulders and see a group of fresh young talent looming up behind them, it can do nothing but good for ballet standards".
The alternative to local ballet training at that time was to travel to Britain, an expensive exercise for personal and financial reasons - something Neil had experienced.
Born in Wellington as Doreen Brown, she completed her early ballet training under Phyllis Oliver and Dorothy Daniels. In 1949 she was awarded a Government bursary, and studied for 14 months in England at the Royal Ballet School before joining the Sadler's Wells ballet company.
She was recognised as a technically excellent dancer, with a marked personality in her performances. Choreographer Kenneth MacMillan created a polka solo for her in his ballet Solitaire, and she enjoyed the limelight this afforded her.
In 1956 Neil married fellow dancer Walter Trevor, and the couple returned to New Zealand where they set up a dance studio in Wellington. Neil danced with the New Zealand Ballet Company's first major national tour in 1960.
During her tenure at the National School of Ballet, she was joined as director by some of New Zealand's best known dancers, including Russell Kerr and Rowena Jackson Chatfield. In 1982 the school changed its name to the New Zealand School of Dance, but the company was forced to move premises several times, eventually becoming part of Te Whaea: National Dance and Drama Centre, in the old Wellington Show Buildings, in 1998.
The New Zealand School of Dance now has about 60 students studying fulltime, and is recognised as one of the southern hemisphere's leading dance institutions.
After retiring from the School of Dance, Neil continued her career in ballet. She returned to Britain, where she taught at White Lodge, the lower school of the Royal Ballet School, and was a director of the Hammond Dance School in Chester.
Sara Neil died in England on January 9. She and her husband had two children.
