100 stories: Lesley Collier

As part of our centenary year, we are featuring 100 stories that make up The Royal Ballet School’s past, present and future. Today, we share the story of alum

As part of our centenary year, we are featuring 100 stories that make up The Royal Ballet School’s past, present and future. Today, we share the story of former Principal and rèpetiteur at The Royal Ballet Lesley Collier CBE. 

Lesley was born in Orpington, Kent and joined The Royal Ballet School at White Lodge aged 11. After graduating from Upper School, she joined The Royal Ballet in 1965 and was promoted to Principal in 1972. She excelled and was lauded for her musicality and rapid footwork. Notably, Frederick Ashton choreographed Rhapsody on her and acclaimed dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1980.  

After a 30-year performance career, she retired in 1995 and returned to the School as a Ballet Mistress. In 2000, she became a coach with The Royal Ballet. 

Lesley Collier in Frederick Ashton’s ‘Birthday Offering’

Lesley Collier coaches 2016 School graduates Kaho and Francisco in the ‘Rhapsody’ pas de deux, created on Mikhail Baryshnikov and herself by Frederick Ashton.

Lesley is featured in Strength and Grace: Portraits of The Royal Ballet School, a landmark coffee-table book featuring portraits of prominent School alumni and the diversity of their impact in ballet and beyond, with photography by Rick Guest and Olivia Pomp, and interviews by Sarah Crompton. Here is an excerpt of Lesley talking about earning a spot at White Lodge and training with Dame Ninette de Valois: 

A magazine subscription took Lesley Collier to The Royal Ballet School. Growing up in Kent, she was a pupil of Irene Ayres who told her mother that Girl magazine was running a competition for a scholarship to The Royal Ballet School.  

She bought the magazine, entered the contest, and won an audition and ultimately a place. ‘I must have been about 10’, she says. ‘I utterly knew inside myself that I wanted to dance, and wanted to be a ballerina. I just loved dancing.’ 

Her first memory of White Lodge is the blue staircase in the entrance hall. ‘It seemed so huge. I’d never been in a house like that before. But when I went back for a reunion as an adult, I couldn’t believe how normal it looked.’ 

Students stand at the barre in white tunics. Leslie is pictured in the foreground, looking towards the camera.

Lesley Collier (centre) with fellow students at White Lodge drinking milk

Collier joined in the very early years of White Lodge, yet people had already begun to touch the statue of Fonteyn for luck. She was also there at one of the moments when the style of teaching began to change. ‘I remember Madam, Dame Ninette de Valois, went to Russia and she came back and talked to us about how the girls were trained in port de bras, and how they had to imagine they were holding oranges in their hands.  

‘It was so interesting. Then Nora Roche arrived and began to teach us in the Cecchetti Method. She was a wonderful teacher, giving us all fantastic épaulement, but as a child you don’t really understand anything about the actual technique. You just absorb everything.’ In her graduate year, Collier was taught by de Valois. She was very keen on footwork and batterie.  

‘I loved that. I’ve obviously got one of those quick nervous systems that responds to that kind of work. Brain to feet, nothing in between.’ Collier still treasures the letter that de Valois wrote to her on her retirement from The Royal Ballet in 1995. It reads: ‘I can remember you in the year I took the graduate class and I said then ‘She will always be one of my favourites because of her feet!’ You had lovely feet and you know how to use them, in fact I was conceited enough to compare them with mine! Indeed, as a dancer you were very like me and therefore I took a special interest in you.’ 

‘It’s such a flattering comparison,’ Collier says, ‘I feel I have so much to be grateful to her for.’

Read the rest of Lesley’s story and more alumni interviews in Strength and Grace: Portraits of The Royal Ballet School, available online or in-person at The Royal Ballet School. 

Lesley Collier by Rick Guest and Olivia Pomp

Catja Christensen is the Marketing and Communications Executive at The Royal Ballet School and joined the School in 2025. She enjoys interviewing students, staff and guest artists for news stories and crafting eye-catching newsletters.