My father, Donald McAlpine, who has died aged 91, set up the McAlpine Dance School in south London in the early 1970s with my mother, Phyllida.
Generations of local children and their parents had cause to thank him for his enthusiastic and inclusive teaching style, which focused as much on the artistry of dance and appreciation of music as it did on nurturing technical excellence. His enthusiasm for dance remained undimmed across the years, and he often appeared on stage with his young proteges in the school’s annual shows, even up to the year of his death.
Donald was born and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, where his father, Peter, and mother, Dorothy (nee Litchfield), ran a pub. He went to Auckland grammar school but also attended the local dance school, and at the age of 19 travelled to London to take up a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School.
He had barely started his studies there when Dame Ninette de Valois asked him, in 1949, to join Sadlers Wells Theatre Ballet, where he worked with choreographers including Frederick Ashton and John Cranko before joining the Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet) to become a soloist, in the classics as well as new ballets such as Jack Carter’s The Witch Boy.
At Festival Ballet he met and married Phyllida (nee Porter), a fellow dancer, and they toured the world with the company. After my sister, Fiona, and I came along, in 1964 Donald joined Harlequin Ballet, a Chelsea-based dance company, which gave him the freedom to develop his love for choreography as well as becoming principal dancer. He went on to join the English National Opera in 1970, taking on various dancing and acting roles in each of its operas, mainly at the London Coliseum.
He and Phyllida set up their school in 1972 in Stockwell, eventually moving to new premises in Camberwell in 1993. The success of the school, which is still going, owed much to Donald’s exuberant personality, and the joy he brought to so many young dancers is his real legacy.
He was supremely fit until the end. In 2021 the documentary photographer Steve Reeves photographed him on one of his customary walks on Clapham Common. “I watched as Donald strode up the hill,” he wrote. “He walked without a stick and his posture put mine to shame. It was hard to believe he was 91 and I wondered if it wasn’t too late for me to take up ballet.”
Donald is survived by Phyllida, Fiona and me, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
