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GERD LARSEN, the Norwegian-born ballet dancer who has died aged 81, had a 52-year career with the Royal Ballet during which she transformed from a graceful classical soloist into one of the company's most distinguished character artists and coaches.

For almost four decades she dominated in the roles of mothers, queens, nurses and brothel-keepers at Covent Garden, having not only the classical background to impart dignity to such roles, but also the warm personality to lend them the dramatic significance that eluded lesser performers.

Her excellence caused her to be singled out by the Royal Ballet's two finest choreographers, Sir Frederick Ashton and Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who created for her several prominent character parts of ladies who were of a certain age, and not always from the top drawer.

For Ashton she was the first Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, in Persephone. Working with MacMillan, she created the parts of the roly-poly Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and the hard-drinking Madame in Manon, wearing her padded costumes and ample head-dresses with sang-froid.

She also originated the roles of the mother of the psychotic Marie Vetsera in MacMillan's Mayerling, and of the Nurse in Winter Dreams, his ballet based on Chekhov's play, The Three Sisters.

Gerd Larsen's interpretations of the queen and mother roles of classical ballet at Covent Garden were renowned for their realistic humanity and detailed mime. As the mother in Giselle, she had the unusual distinction of having been taught her central scene by Tamara Karsavina, the legendary ballerina for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, in 1960.

This ensured that a passage of mime created in the original Giselle, and used in the St Petersburg Imperial Ballet, where Karsavina trained, was passed on intact to the Royal Ballet more than a century later; this enhanced its reputation worldwide for authenticity in its texts of classical ballet. And it was this role that Larsen performed on her last appearance on the Covent Garden stage, at the age of 76, shortly before the Royal Opera House closed for redevelopment.

While continuing to perform mime roles into her later years, Gerd Larsen was also the Royal Ballet's senior coach. She was credited by the distinguished American ballerina Gelsey Kirkland with helping her find the key to her own now legendary performances of The Sleeping Beauty with the Royal Ballet in 1986.

Gerd Larsen was also half of a famous ballet partnership, since her husband was the fine virtuoso dancer Harold Turner, a key figure in early British ballet who starred in the Ballet Rambert, the International Ballet and Vic-Wells Ballet - before it evolved into the Sadler's Wells - and then the Royal Ballet. Both previously wed, they married in 1944.

Gerd Larsen was born in Oslo on February 19 1920, and came to England during the Second World War, becoming a British subject. She was trained by Margaret Craske, the pre-eminent teacher of the Italian ballet method of Enrico Cecchetti, who also taught Ashton and Fonteyn.

She made her debut at 17 in Antony Tudor's London Ballet, in his Gala Performance as the French ballerina, in which she was remembered as "jumpy and coquettish, very French". Four years later she joined the International Ballet. She moved to join her husband at the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1944, becoming a soloist 10 years later.

Gerd Larsen continued to coach at the Royal Ballet until the end of the 2000-01 season. Harold Turner died in 1962. They had one daughter.