My mother-in-law, Sara Lemkow, who has died aged 102, was, under the stage name Sara Luzita, an acclaimed dancer for 20 years.
As a dance student in London at the outbreak of the second world war, when the capital’s theatres temporarily closed, Sara was evacuated to Cheltenham. There, she was astonished at the start of 1940 to be invited to join Keith Lester’s new Arts Theatre Ballet. She hurried back to London, and her career took off.
Within months she had joined Ballet Rambert at the same theatre. Marie Rambert was an exacting teacher, wartime conditions were hard, the pay was poor and the bombs rained down, yet Sara thrived.
She danced with Rambert throughout the war, in theatres, factories and ammunition works, and for troops across the UK, and then in Italy and Austria. At one point Ninette de Valois invited her to join the Royal Ballet, but Sara declined, preferring to concentrate on Spanish dance. “What a stupid fool I was,” she recalled.
She took part in Rambert’s groundbreaking 1947-49 tour of Australia and New Zealand, drawing large crowds to her solo recitals. Returning to Europe, she went on to dance in revues and cabaret and on TV and film, often with her partner, the Norwegian actor and dancer Tutte Lemkow. They danced for Benjamin Britten at the Aldeburgh festival, and in John Huston’s Oscar-winning 1952 film Moulin Rouge, in which she can-canned in an eye-catching yellow dress. Sara and Tutte married in 1954, and the birth of their two daughters, Rachel and Becky, portended the end of Sara’s dancing career. Her ballet swansong was as a soloist in Carmen at the Royal Opera House in 1960.
Born in Hanley, Staffordshire, the daughter of Leonard Jacobs, a racing tipster, and his wife, Bessie (nee Page), Sara grew up in Hove, East Sussex, with three brothers. Bessie, unhappy in her marriage, and often without money to pay the rent, threw her energy into encouraging Sara to dance, sitting up late sewing wonderful costumes for her to wear in competitions on Brighton Pier.
At 14 Sara left Lourdes convent school to study ballet with Phyllis Bedells in London. There, mentored by Elsa Brunelleschi, she fell in love with Spanish dance, and adopted the stage name of Sara Luzita. As a student, in 1936 Sara danced in the epic productions of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall and for John Logie Baird’s early ventures in television at the Crystal Palace.
As Sara’s dancing career drew to a close, she and Tutte opened an antiques shop in Camden Passage, north London. Their marriage ended in divorce, but she continued to work as an antiques dealer until the 1990s, on her own and in partnership with Rachel. Sara was always hard-working, sweet-tempered and a loyal friend.
In retirement she lived in Suffolk, then in Ely, Cambridgeshire, where she moved to be closer to Rachel. At the age of 100, she was still playing the castanets.
She is survived by Rachel and Becky, her stepson, Louis, and a granddaughter, Hannah.
