Derek Rencher

Besides Kelly himself, and such musical theater dancers as Carol Haney and Tommy Rall, the cast included international ballet stars Igor Yousekevitch, Claire Sombert, Tamara Toumanova, Diana Adams, David Paltenghi, and Claude Bessy.

[2] Within two years, Rencher had been recruited by Ninette de Valois into the Sadler's Wells Ballet, mainly because of his impressive height, trim physique, noble bearing, and remarkably good looks.

[5] In his long career with the Royal Ballet, he won acclaim particularly for his powerful stage presence and for his versatility as a mime, as he was able to convey villainy, authority, and comedy with equal effectiveness.

He often played a neglected or unlikeable "other man" in romantic triangles alongside the great actress-ballerinas Svetlana Beriosova, Natalia Makarova, and Lynn Seymour, to whom he provided strong but courteous emotional opposition.

His Von Rothbart in Swan Lake was a formidable evil force; his High Brahmin in La Bayadère was aloof and complex, not merely a melodramatic villain; and his Kostchei in The Firebird was inhumanly frightening.

As one of the suitors of the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella, he was highly amusingly in a small role that usually went unnoticed, and he gave a hilarious performance as a gigantic, bonneted Mrs. Pettitoes, the old sow who is the mother of Pigling Bland in The Tales of Beatrix Potter.

In addition to these roles, his repertory included character parts in The Sleeping Beauty, Sylvia, Giselle, and The Nutcracker, as well as in Ashton's Les Illuminations, Helpmann's Hamlet, Cranko's The Lady and the Fool, and Léonide Massine's Mam'zelle Angot.