Dame Catherine Margaret Mary Scott, DBE, AC (26 April 1922 – 24 February 2019) was a South African-born pioneering ballet dancer who found fame as a teacher, choreographer, and school administrator in Australia.
[3] Despite the outbreak of war with Germany in September 1939, soon after her arrival in England, Scott decided to remain in London and continue her dance training.
[4] Promoted to principal dancer in 1943, Scott spent five more years with Ballet Rambert, dancing leading and supporting roles in the repertory, including audience favourites such as Michel Fokine's Les Sylphides and Antony Tudor's Jardin aux Lilas as well as new works by Andrée Howard, Frank Staff, and Walter Gore.
In 1951, she tried her hand at original choreography, setting Apollon Musagète to the Igor Stravinsky score for Laurel Martyn's Victorian Ballet Guild.
She returned to London in 1952 and was one of six dancers invited by John Cranko to perform his works at the Kenton Theatre in Henley-on-Thames and at the Aldeburgh Festival.
For the next two years she taught classes and managed the school of Paul Hammond and his wife Peggy Sager while they were on tour with the Borovansky Ballet.
In 1990, she danced as Aunt Sophy in a gala performance of The Nutcracker, produced in her honour by Robert Ray, and she showed herself to be a talented actress in a non-dancing role in the play In the Body of the Son by Nicholas Rowe, presented at the Darwin Festival in 1995.
[15][16] Scott met Derek Denton, a doctor at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, in 1947, when she and her friend Sally Gilmour went there to deliver flowers received after the triumphant opening night of Ballet Rambert.
[17] Late in life, she established the Dame Margaret Scott Fund for Choreography, which assisted the creation of Alexei Ratmansky's surrealistic Cinderella, an outstanding success that played to sold-out houses in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide in 2013 and 2014.
Over the years, Scott had been a part-time student of teaching methods at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), where she eventually gained a graduate diploma in visual and performing arts in 2000.