Henry Danton

[citation needed] Aged 19, he was commissioned from the academy in January 1939 as Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and was promoted to Captain at the outbreak of World War II before being retired from active service in 1940.

In the UK, Danton performed as a soloist in the International Ballet partnering Mona Inglesby in Les Sylphides and Swan Lake 1943–44, and with the Sadler's Wells Ballet 1944–46, where he appeared with Margot Fonteyn, Beryl Grey, and Violetta Elvin in the Rose Adagio and Pamela May in Les Sylphides and created leading roles in a number of works, most notably in Sir Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations partnering Moira Shearer.

[3] Privately educated with Judith Espinosa, he passed the Royal Academy of Dancing's four exams with honours winning the Adeline Genée Silver Medal after just 18 months of classical ballet training although due to wartime metal shortages it was finally awarded in 2019.

[5] As a dancer, Danton appeared with touring ensembles across the UK, Europe, Australasia, and South America partnering ballerinas Svetlana Beriosova, Elsa Marianne von Rosen, Colette Marchand, Celia Franca, Irene Skorik, Lycette Darsonval, Sonia Arova, Mia Slavenska, Lynne Golding, and others.

[7] In 2013, aged 95, Danton continued to teach in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and also worked as a guest teacher at a number of schools and colleges including Belhaven University, where he staged Mikhail Fokine's Les Sylphides in the autumn of 2013.

In 1951, Danton had performed the role of Siegfried with Lynne Golding and the National Ballet Theatre in the first full-length Australian production of Swan Lake, in Melbourne and on tour to every large and medium-sized town in Australia.