In this podcast, the dancer and teacher Leo Kersley discusses his formative years in London in the 1930s and the many different companies he eventually worked with during the Second World War, including a stint at the Windmill Theatre. Talking to Patricia Linton, director of Voices of British Ballet, he also mentions how, as a conscientious objector, he was briefly imprisoned at the start of the war. The interview is introduced by Jane Pritchard.

Leo Kersley was born in poverty in Hertfordshire in 1920. His family having moved to London, he studied dance under a number of teachers, including Marie Rambert at the Mercury Theatre in 1934, dancing professionally from time to time. He was a soloist in Ballet Rambert from 1936 to 1939, and in 1939 worked for the Ballet Trois Arts.

On the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, he registered as a conscientious objector and was briefly imprisoned. On his release, during 1940 and 1941 he combined his work in a hospital with dancing for Rambert in the evenings alongside his first wife, Celia Franca. He was a member of Sadler’s Wells Ballet from 1941-1942, and then the International Ballet. He was a member of the Anglo-Polish Ballet from 1942-1943. From 1945 until 1951 Kersley performed with Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. 

In 1952, Kersley went to teach in Denver, Colorado, and in 1953 to Rotterdam in The Netherlands. Whilst there he danced with a number of companies but returned to England in 1959 to set up his own school in Harlow, which he ran until his second wife, Janet Sinclair. With Sinclair, who died in 1999, he published the well-regarded Dictionary of Ballet Terms in 1952.   

Photo

Anne Heaton (as A Serving maid), Leo Kersley (as A Shepherd) in THE GODS GO A'BEGGING; Sadler's Wells Opera Ballet; at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London UK 1946;

Credit : Frank Sharman / Royal Opera House / ArenaPAL.com

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