Dancer and movie star Moira Shearer was born on this date 100 years ago. The striking Scottish ballerina with fiery red hair first earned recognition through her work with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, but soon achieved world fame through her appearances, in Technicolor, in indelible Powell-Pressburger classics such as “The Tales of Hoffmann” and “The Red Shoes.”

Once seen, who can forget the surreal sequence in which her life-like mechanized doll, Olympia, is dismembered and dismantled before our very eyes, mostly through the magic of practical effects? Zombie maestro George A. Romero, director of “Night of the Living Dead,” cited “The Tales of Hoffmann” as his favorite film of all time, and the one that set him on a career of making movies.

And then of course, there’s “The Red Shoes,” choreographed by Robert Helpmann, who seemed to devote his cinematic career to refining nightmare fuel, up to and including his appearance as the Child Catcher in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Robert Helpmann and Hans Christian Anderson – what could possibly go wrong?

Join me for music from “The Tales of Hoffmann” and “The Red Shoes,” as well as selections from two of Shearer’s ballet triumphs at the Sadler’s Wells, “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Coppélia” (the latter based on the same E.T.A. Hoffmann short story that inspired the doll sequence in the Powell-Pressburger adaptation of Offenbach’s opera).

Strap on your demonic dancing shoes. It’s an hour of music for Moira Shearer on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/