Mari Bicknell

Director of Cambridge Ballet Workshop

Mari Scott Henderson, dancer and choreographer: born London 1 February 1914; Director, Let's Make a Ballet 1950-67; Director, Cambridge Ballet Workshop 1968-85; MBE 1986; married 1936 Peter Bicknell (died 1995; one son, three daughters); died Cambridge 15 March 2003.

For 35 years from 1950 Mari Bicknell's Let's Make a Ballet, later Cambridge Ballet Workshop, occupied an unusual position in the dance world. The performers were children and teenagers but the productions were professional.

Her declared aim was to "produce original ballets, professionally mounted, for the entertainment of audiences of all ages, and through them to educate children in ballet as a theatre art". Noel Annan once described her "dedication to art" – how she always treated the children as professionals. It was this apparent putting of art before education that was her particular contribution, because the involvement in a professional production gave the truly educational experience, both to audience and dancer.

Mari Scott Henderson was born in 1914, in Kensington, London, of Scottish parentage. At her own insistence she was sent to school at Normanhurst Court, near Battle in Sussex (immortalised by her schoolfriend the writer Verily Anderson in Daughters of Divinity, 1960), because of its reputation for dance – Mme Vaccani came down to teach the girls once a week from London.

She began her career studying with Vera Trefilova in Paris, and then with Tamara Karsavina. Later she danced with Sadler's Wells Ballet. In 1936, after her marriage to the architect Peter Bicknell, she began teaching in Cambridge. She was a superb teacher, but in 1950 Britten's "Let's Make an Opera" inspired her to make "Let's Make a Ballet".

A first showing at her home in Cambridge in 1950 prompted George Rylands to suggest that she perform her ballets at the Arts Theatre. In 1952 Mari Bicknell presented Dream Street, Elsie Piddock and The Happy Prince. Let's Make a Ballet finally, in 1968, became Cambridge Ballet Workshop. Her productions were often done on a shoestring and it was her warmth and grace, as well as her vision, which brought support for her work. After a season at the Lyric, Hammersmith (1961), she based her productions for 20 years at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds, later adding a winter season in Cambridge.

Bicknell's choreography was influenced by Kurt Joos, Léonide Massine and Andrée Howard. From Joos she learnt how to build dramatic tension in a scene and to fuse contrasting scenes, from Massine the art of giving the language of classical ballet dramatic meaning, and from Howard the art of English understatement, hinting rather than crudely showing. Her ballets educated audiences and dancers alike in art (Pictures at an Exhibition), music (Dohnanyi Variations, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra) and literature (The Infanta's Birthday).

Her fine musical ear and phrasing led her to collaborate with the best composers and pianists for over 30 ballets. For several seasons Roger Vignoles played for the company's performances, and she commissioned scores from Joseph Horovitz (Les Rats, Through the Looking Glass).

In 1977 there was a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Fitzwilliam Museum and in 1986 she was appointed MBE.

Mari Bicknell was a spellbinding storyteller, both as a choreographer and when describing the story of the forthcoming ballet, either to her dancers or to the many schools she visited around East Anglia. To them she brought both their first experience of ballet and perhaps their first experience of theatre.

Cambridge Ballet Workshop was a company rather than a dance school. Aged from five to 21, the 30 to 40 dancers were drawn from around 300 who attended her classes. Bicknell did not want stage-struck young dancers to become cannon fodder for the corps de ballet. She hoped that real stage experience would put them off for life.

Instead of trying to make everyone look the same, her gift was to encourage each dancer's particular quality and to use it to the full in her choreography. Thus her training encouraged each child to be an artist. It is perhaps not surprising that many of her dancers went on to forge their own work within the fields of music, theatre and dance.

Bicknell never accepted "I can't" as an answer.

Helen Chadwick