There she studied drama with Elizabeth Sneddon at Natal University, ballet with Eileen Keegan, a gifted teacher who had danced with Anna Pavlova's company, and stagecraft and mime with Dorothea McNair.
In 1945, not long after World War II had ended in Europe, Mr. Judd arranged passage for his daughter on a ship sailing from Cape Town to Southampton.
[5] While still a student at Sadler's Wells, she appeared as a nursemaid to the baby Princess Aurora in the famous production of The Sleeping Beauty mounted for the reopening of the Royal Opera House on 20 February 1946.
[6] The following summer, intent on improving her classical technique, she went to Paris with her friend Elaine Fifield, to study with Olga Preobrajenska, a former star of the Russian Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg.
There, under the guidance of ballet mistress Peggy van Praagh, she worked with Leo Kersley, who became a close friend, Kenneth MacMillan, Peter Darrell, and emergent choreographer John Cranko, a fellow South African.
[7] At this time, she assumed the stage name Nadia Nerina, derived from the delicate, lily-like flowers called nerines, a species native to South Africa.
Cast as the Circus Dancer in Andrée Howard's Mardi Gras, she enjoyed her first big success, winning approval of balletomanes and applause from audiences whenever she appeared.
In 1952, at age 25, she was promoted to principal dancer, having become "a distinctly bright light within the company's remarkably luminous roster of ballerinas, which included Moira Shearer, Margot Fonteyn, Svetlana Beriosova, and Antoinette Sibley.
[11] She was a favorite of Frederick Ashton, chief choreographer of the company, who cast her in new works, such as Homage to the Queen and Birthday Offering, as well as in existing productions of Cinderella, Sylvia, and Ondine.
[12][13] In Homage to the Queen, he made a solo variation for her that included entrechats six and double tours en l'air, feats usually performed by men, and in Birthday Offering, he again exploited her aerial abilities in a series of soaring jumps.
Her acting talent was also admired by Kenneth MacMillan, who in 1956 cast her in his first ballet, Noctambules, a dark tale of a hypnotist in which she played a veiled, aged woman pursued by four suitors when she is restored to her youthful beauty.
On 28 January, she appeared with the Royal Ballet (so called since 1956) in the role with which she would thereafter be most closely identified, that of Lise in Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardée ("the poorly guarded girl").
Besides Nerina in the title role, it starred David Blair as Colas, her sweetheart; Stanley Holden en travestie as her mother, the Widow Simone; and Alexander Grant as Alain, her hapless suitor.
In 1964, she represented Great Britain at the commemoration performance for slain president John F. Kennedy at the White House in Washington, D.C.[22] In 1965, Nerina asked Ashton, then director of the Royal Ballet, to be designated a "guest artist," to enable her to pursue invitations from other companies.