Intensive and varied activities in youth as dancer, choreographer and ballet mistress with more than half a dozen British companies would have been enough to ensure that Celia Franca was remembered. But then, aged 30, she crossed the Atlantic to found a national ballet for Canada, leading it to international fame with a notable repertoire and many fine dancers trained in its own school, plus imported stars of the first rank.

Born Celia Franks in London, in 1921 (before there was any such thing as British ballet), she won scholarships to the Guildhall School of Music and then the Royal Academy of Dancing, making her professional debut at barely 15 when she was dared to audition as a tap dancer without having previously studied tap. To her surprise she was accepted for the show Spread it Abroad, and afterwards its choreographer Walter Gore recommended her for Marie Rambert’s school and company. She studied further with such teachers as Antony Tudor, Stanislas Idzikowski and Vera Volkova.

Over the next four years Franca had roles in more than two dozen ballets by Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, Andrée Howard, Tudor and others. Her first big part was as the husband’s former lover in Tudor’s Jardin aux Lilas, a role making excellent use of her special qualities: her striking beauty, dramatic intensity and musical understanding. Her unusually smooth, high-leaping technique was best seen in Les Sylphides.

Uniquely, she was given both the leading women, lady friend and wife to play in Ashton’s Les Masques. Roles were created specially for her in Tudor’s Suite of Airs (initially on television), Gore’s Paris-Soir as the Dope Fiend and Frank Staff’s Peter and the Wolf as the Bird. During this time she made her first choreography: Midas to a score by Elizabeth Lutyens for Les Ballets Trois Arts, and Cancion for the Ballet Guild.

When Ballet Rambert had to close down during the war, Franca danced briefly with International Ballet and was then invited at short notice to join Sadler’s Wells Ballet, replacing the injured June Brae. She quickly acquired roles in Giselle (as Queen of the Wilis), The Rake’s Progress, Les Patineurs, Dante Sonata and other works. Robert Helpmann created the Queen in his surrealist Hamlet on her, and the prostitute in Miracle in the Gor-bals, while Ashton used her as Wrath in the seven deadly sins sequence when he made The Quest, and she had the lead as the spider in Howard’s Le Festin de l’araignée.

She did not, however, go to Covent Garden with the company in 1946, preferring to work with the more creative new Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. She invented two ballets for it, one of which, Khadra, inspired by Persian miniatures, was a popular success.

Thereafter she became ballet mistress of the enterprising small Metropolitan Ballet, dancing with them too and doing choreography for them to dance on television. Standards of performance were high under her control, with seasons at the Empress Hall and Covent Garden. When the company had to close Franca involved herself with performances of new work by Ballet Workshop.

Then came the great change in her career. A group of women in Toronto, encouraged by the success of Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s first US and Canadian tour in 1949, decided that Canada needed its own company and set about raising funds and looking for a director. Ninette de Valois immediately recommended Franca.

In 1950 Franca went over to look at semi-professional and amateur Canadian dance companies and theatre facilities to satisfy herself that a national company would be feasible. She presented “ballet concerts” in Toronto and Montreal to prove that Canadian audiences existed. Supported by Toronto’s leading department store, Eaton’s, she repaid them by working as a filing clerk.

Rehearsals began with just 29 dancers, most of them inexperienced. Their first rehearsal hall had a fine wooden floor, making up for a leaky roof, invasions of pigeons and so little heating that dancers sometimes exercised in their overcoats. By November 1951 they were able to give their first programme, three nights at the Eaton auditorium with 90 per cent of the seats sold. They performed Franca’s Dance of Salome, Les Sylphides, two short showpieces and the Polovtsian dances from Prince Igor — this last chosen to overcome prejudices against male dancers.

From the start, Franca was determined to use Canadian choreographers. That year they comprised Kay Armstrong, from Vancouver, as well as the National Ballet’s leading man David Adams. Franca had a flair for surrounding herself with valuable talent, including George Crum as musical director and two further immigrants from England: the teacher Betty Oliphant, as ballet mistress, the artist and writer Kay Ambrose, who turned her hand to any odd job as well as designing some 30 ballets.

Franca worked immensely hard, dancing leading roles for the first decade as well as teaching, taking rehearsals, planning activities, finding choreographers, designers, composers and watching finances. When she stopped dancing she started, jointly with Oliphant, the exceptionally fine National Ballet School.

Dancers found her demanding yet also kind and helpful. She was acutely aware of what audiences wanted: hence her own productions of the popular classics, her choice of the best living choreographers, and invitations to such dancers as Erik Bruhn and Rudolf Nureyev to partner the home-bred ballerinas Karen Kain and Veronica Tennant. She was able to present the company successfully abroad, including seasons in London and New York. Worn out, she resigned in 1974 but later stood in temporarily between subsequent directors.

Among her many honours, Franca’s work was recognised by appointment as a Companion of the Order of Canada (CC). The National Ballet of Canada, done in collaboration with the photographer Ken Bell, was published 1978.

Her English first husband, a fellow dancer, Leo Kersley, remained a good friend. Two later husbands in Canada, Herbert Anderson and James Morton, died before her.

Celia Franca, CC, ballet dancer, choreographer and director, was born on June 25, 1921. She died on February 19, 2007, aged 85