Brenda Last achieved distinction as a ballerina with The Royal Ballet, but this was after a successful and multi-facetted career in many theatrical disciplines. Here, she tells Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, about her early training with teachers such as Tamara Karsavina, Vera Volkova and Lydia Kyasht, winning the Royal Academy of Dance’s Adeline Genée Gold Medal at the age of 16, and performing at the Edinburgh International Festival and in television before joining The Royal Ballet School. After that, she performed at Stratford-upon-Avon (as the leading dancer in Toad of Toad Hall) and then was asked by Elizabeth West to join Western Theatre Ballet as a founder member. Last talks about the early years of the company with Elizabeth West and Peter Darrell, and about Maurice Béjart, with whom she worked in Brussels.
The interview, which was recorded in 2010, is introduced by former Royal Ballet principal Stephen Jefferies in conversation with Natalie Steed.
Brenda Last was born in South London in 1938. Recovering from a childhood illness, she started dance classes and became passionate about dance. She trained with Biddy Pinchard at Brixton Hill, and studied with such notable teachers as Tamara Karsavina, Vera Volkova and Lydia Kyasht before winning the Royal Academy of Dance’s Adeline Genée Gold Medal at the age of 16. She then went to The Royal Ballet School for a year, having already performed at the Edinburgh International Festival and worked in television. She was then the leading dancer in Toad of Toad Hall at Stratford-upon-Avon.
In 1957 Elizabeth West, with whom she had already worked in Edinburgh, asked Last to join her and Peter Darrell to become one of the founder members of Western Theatre Ballet. This was a pioneering company that specialised in dramatic works with contemporary themes, fusing classical and modern dance. She remained with the company until 1963, when Ninette de Valois saw her performing and asked her to join The Royal Ballet Touring Company. After two years in the corps de ballet, she was promoted to the rank of principal dancer. She stayed with the touring company because she relished the amount of performances it afforded – she once calculated that during her career, she danced the role of Lise in Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardee 101 times. She eventually became ballet mistress for the company in 1974.
In 1977, Last unexpectedly became director of the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo, following the sudden death of David Blair, a former Royal Ballet colleague who had just taken up the position there. In 1980, Last returned to London to teach at the London Contemporary Dance School, where she stayed for 14 years. During this period of time she also worked extensively with the Noriko Kobayashi Ballet in Tokyo, where she staged works by Ashton and de Valois, among others. She has also worked with the Royal New Zealand Ballet and The Australian Ballet, as well as English National Ballet and Scottish Ballet.
Brenda Last, who was married to the musician, conductor and accompanist Stephen Lade until his death in 2022, has served on the Arts Council Dance Panel and as a trustee of The Royal Ballet Benevolent Fund. She is vice president of the British Ballet Organisation, having previously been director of Training there. She was appointed an OBE for her services to dance in 2012
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