Alan Carter (1920-2009). British dancer, choreographer and director
Alan Carter was born in London in 1920, and studied with Serafina Astafieva and Nicholas Legat. He joined the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1936, becoming a soloist from 1938, the year in which he created the principal role in Frederick Ashton’s Harlequin in the Street.
After war service with the RAF from 1941 to 1946, Carter returned to join Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, for whom he choreographed The Catch in 1946. He subsequently left the company to dance in the Powell and Pressburger 1948 film The Red Shoes, and was invited to form the St James’ Ballet by the Arts Council the same year, which he ran until the company’s closure in 1950. From 1951 until 1953, Carter worked as ballet master at the Empire Cinema, London, and appeared in the films The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), and Gene Kelley’s Invitation to the Dance (1953). From 1954 until 1959 Carter was director of the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich, where he choreographed new versions of The Miraculous Mandarin, The Prince of the Pagodas and Ondine. He worked subsequently in Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, Turkey, Finland, Iran and Iceland, before becoming co-director of Elmhurst Ballet School in Camberley, Surrey, in 1977.

Carter spent much of his later years in Spain, where he developed his skill in painting and drawing images of dancers and dancing. With his wife, fellow dancer June Murthwaite, he returned permanently to Bournemouth, where he died in 2009.