Anne Heaton’s career coincided with an upsurge in creative talent at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Observant and wide ranging she reflects on many things, not least the enigmatic choreographer, Andrée Howard. In this interview, which was recorded in 2003, she is talking to Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet. The interview is introduced by Monica Mason.

Anne Heaton was born in Rawalpindi, India, in 1930. She studied with Janet Cranmore in Birmingham from 1937 until 1943, and then with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. Her debut was with the Sadler’s Wells Opera in 1945 in a production of The Bartered Bride, and she became a soloist with Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet (SWTB) in 1946. That year, Heaton created roles in two ballets by Andrée Howard, Assembly Ball and Mardi Gras, and also in Celia Franca’s Khadra. In 1947, she created a role in Frederick Ashton’s Valses Nobles et sentimentales. She transferred to Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden in 1948, where she specialised in romantic roles, for example, in Les Sylphides and Giselle. She performed again with SWTB when it was renamed The Royal Ballet Touring Company, creating the roles of the Woman in Kenneth MacMillan’s The Burrow in 1958 and the Wife in The Invitation in 1960. A foot injury caused her to resign from The Royal Ballet in 1959, but she continued to dance intermittently until 1962. Following her retirement from the stage, Heaton taught at the Arts Educational School and, from time to time, she staged ballets, including Giselle in Tehran in 1971. Having married Royal Ballet principal dancer John Field, who later became director of The Royal Ballet Touring Company, she co-directed the British Ballet Organization with him from 1984 until 1991. Field died in 1991 and Heaton in 2020.

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