Few people running ballet companies, if any, can have been as generous as Norman Morrice. As a choreographer, he seemed always full of ideas for ballets he would like to make. And these showed much originality in the way they communicated with a wide public. Yet he was prepared, when needed, to take on a job as director which would preclude his creating any choreography. And as director of two leading ballet companies he devoted much of his time and energy to providing opportunities for other would-be dance makers and to helping or guiding them in their tasks. Sadly, he was rarely given the credit he deserved for this.

Born in Mexico in 1931, because his father's work as an engineer took the family there, Morrice grew up in Scotland, cared for by his grandmother, and saw his first ballet there in the form of Swan Lake (at that time the Sadler's Wells company from Covent Garden still toured in Britain). His schoolboy interest heightened, he later said, by the young ballerina's shoulder-strap breaking and revealing more than intended. He decided to take dancing lessons, initially in Mansfield where the family moved. Afterwards he joined the Rambert Ballet School and, rather belatedly, was taken into the Ballet Rambert aged 21.

His dancing was always expressive rather than virtuosic - although he did manage to take the lead male role in the company's production of Bournonville's romantic classic La Sylphide, which made quite heavy demands on technique. It was not until he was in his mid-twenties, however, that he found his true scope, with the creation of his first choreography. This was Two Brothers, a modern-dress dance drama about jealousy within a family. It proved convincing in its expression of emotion, especially as played by Morrice as the younger brother and his colleague John Chesworth as the older.

Marie Rambert had always sought to find new choreographers, but had not spotted Morrice's intelligence and thoughtful approach; so on this occasion it was her associate director David Ellis who heard Morrice's ideas and recommended letting him try them. Two Brothers was successful enough that thereafter Morrice was allowed a premiere each year. His subjects tended to be surprising. In Hazaña (Achievement) a workman - Chesworth - is seen struggling to finish a newly built church by dragging a heavy cross on his own, encouraged or dissuaded by the other characters, up to its position on the roof. Not at all a likely subject for ballet but one that, however improbably, gripped and moved the spectator.

Morrice continued to find unexpected contemporary subjects - or subjects that would later become more topical. A Place in the Desert, for instance, combined two separate issues: the romance between a European and an African, and the effect on a community of building a dam that will flood their village. Perhaps his proudest production, and his best, was That is the Show, invented to Berio's Sinfonia, in which the words inspired sections suggesting the story of Tristan and Isolde but also the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Morrice was equally a pioneer in the design of his ballets, working with the innovative stage artists Ralph Koltai and Nadine Baylis, who were greatly to affect the whole look of dance and other theatre in Britain and Europe. In Realms of Choice, daringly, Morrice had Baylis produce a setting of unspecified design, to which a score was then devised and the movement added last of all, the outcome being a surprisingly coherent exploration of the theme of chance.

Frederick Ashton, when director of the Royal Ballet, was sufficiently impressed by Morrice's work to commission him for their touring company. He created The Tribute, with carnival characters enacting old fertility rites in which a king died and the earth goddess took a new mate. Morrice accepted several invitations also to work with the Batsheva company directed by Jane Dudley in Israel, and later he was to work also with Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers and with the Australian Dance Theatre.

A trip made by Morrice to the US to observe contemporary dance, and to study Martha Graham's technique at her New York school, had a large effect on the development of the Rambert company. The practices of the Netherlands Dance Theatre in combining classical and contemporary styles, and in presenting a repertoire almost entirely of specially created works, were already known in Britain; now Morrice urged that working on similar lines might solve the Rambert company's financial problems and be artistically valuable too.

Since the end of the Second World War Ballet Rambert had gradually introduced a number of old classics that were popular with audiences but necessitated a large-sized corps de ballet. Morrice persuaded Marie Rambert that a smaller company working on the lines of her much earlier Ballet Club (ie, concentrating on new choreography) would be preferable, and to this end the daily classes should alternate classical and contemporary technique. Several choreographers from abroad were to work with the company, among them the American Glen Tetley, and the aim would be for the reduced team of dancers to be all of soloist standard.

When this idea was accepted in 1966, Morrice was appointed associate director, and largely ran the company (which reduced the time he could spend on his making his own ballets) until 1974 when he resigned to concentrate on choreography. During this period he encouraged several of the dancers to make new ballets too, both for repertory presentation and for an ingenious venture called (anagramatically) Bertram Batell's Circus, comprising a complete programme of small works suitable for children (but not exclusively so). They also gave an in-the-round season in the Young Vic Theatre, which presented the need to create work suitable to be seen by an audience close to the dancers.

A totally unexpected demand on Morrice's time came in 1977 when the resignation of Kenneth MacMillan from directing the Royal Ballet (he too wanting to concentrate on his choreography) led to a request for Morrice to take over. He asked Marie Rambert's advice and she suggested that it was his duty to accept. An unfortunate proviso was that he must create no ballets himself for the company. Since he was, uniquely, to take charge without coming up through the ranks, a period for him and the dancers to get used to each other could be justified. But he had always created for dancers with classical training, and the dancers of the touring troupe, had coped perfectly well with The Tribute, so there seems no reason for the restriction to have been indefinite.

Morrice did in fact undertake a substantial and valuable revision of the RB's Swan Lake and Giselle. Those were his only personal stagings, but he also ensured an improved Sleeping Beauty supervised by Ninette de Valois. As for new work, Morrice gave first opportunities to around half a dozen would-be choreographers, most of whom went on to rewarding careers. Also, declaring that he wanted to develop talent within the company, he dispensed with the services of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who had hitherto dominated the cast lists. He did still present a few guest artists for short engagements (and nobody could reasonably object to Gelsey Kirkland, Elisabeth Platel, Mikhail Baryshnikov or Charles Jude), but he largely tried to bring on the younger resident dancers, even though most were not of that same quality.

There was an impression that Morrice did not get full support from some of the top figures at Covent Garden, and in 1986 he left, being succeeded by Anthony Dowell. He had, however, held the post of director for a longer period than either MacMillan or Ashton, and he now took a new engagement teaching choreography to members of the Royal Ballet's senior school and the Royal Academy of Dance. Those who benefited have spoken very highly of the way they were treated, with help but a great degree of scope for their own ideas.

It is unusual for someone in charge of the Royal Ballet to retire without his name appearing in the Honours List, generally for a knighthood, and it has been widely believed that Morrice was offered a reward but did not want to receive it. In recent years less was seen of him in ballet circles, and he had apparently been cautious in his travels since being mugged near his Notting Hill home, where he lived alone. However, he still enjoyed a circle of friends, and had spent Christmas with his sister. A week into the new year he felt unwell. He died quietly in his sleep.

Norman Morrice, choreographer and ballet director, was born on September 10, 1931. He died on January 11, 2007, aged 76