NEWCASTLE'S revered ballet matriarch Tessa Maunder, OAM, has celebrated her 90th birthday surrounded by former students, including many she helped reach the world stage.
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The city's doyenne of dance for more than 70 years was honoured yesterday at a luncheon at Crowne Plaza Newcastle, which was attended by 124 guests.
"I'm getting a bit emotional," Miss Maunder said.
"It's wonderful seeing them all, it's exhilarating, I can't believe it.
"One of the ladies told me today that four generations of her family had danced with me."
Internationally renowned Miss Maunder studied ballet under her mother, who established Maunder Dance Academy in the 1930s, and became a teacher at the age of 14.
At her Hobart Road, New Lambton studio, Miss Maunder tutored students including Marilyn Jones OBE, Marilyn Rowe OBE, Robert Curran, Lisa Pavane and Olivia Bell, and travelled regularly to learn new styles of dance and watch past pupils perform with the world's leading ballet companies.
In the 1950s she offered a biennial £500 scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London.
"We've had so many ballerinas become principals and some become artistic directors all over the world, in Munich, Paris, New York - I'm so proud of them all."
Olivia Bell, who will retire after her last show as principal artist with the Australian Ballet in Sydney on November 25, travelled from Melbourne to celebrate with the teacher she had not seen for 20 years.
"Miss Maunder was always demanding the most out of us students, she was so sure about what she wanted as a teacher and it really brought out the best in us," she said of the classes she began aged nine.
Miss Maunder closed her studio in 1996 and is now a guest teacher at Newcastle Dance Academy.
