Her mother, Joanna Catarina, née Wijnschenk-Dom,[1] was from the Netherlands but was of Polish, German, French and Indian extraction; she had trained as a dance instructor at Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's school in Switzerland.

[4] In Copenhagen, she had private lessons with Asta Mollerup[4] but was refused entry to the Royal Danish Ballet school because of weak ankles, so the family moved to Paris.

[1][7][8] From 1938 to 1940, she played many leading roles in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo which were choreographed for her by Léonide Massine.

[1] In the late 1930s Theilade also choreographed several works for the Royal Danish Ballet, including Psyche in 1936 and Orbits in 1938, for which she was decorated by the king.

[1] She was dismissed from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1940 after meeting and marrying her first husband, Piet Loopuyt, a Dutch financier, in Brazil.

In 1965, she settled in Denmark, producing Græsstrået, one of the earliest ballets for television, by composer Else Marie Pade and author El Forman.

After running into financial difficulties at Thurø, she and her second husband, Arne Buchter-Larsen, accepted an invitation to set up a three-year course of study in Lyon, the Académie de Ballet Nini Theilade.