The death has been announced of Ninette de Valois aged 102. Born Idris Stannus in County Wicklow in 1898 she joined Diaghilev's Ballet Russe in 1923. After her dancing career was ended by polio when she was 26, she founded an academy which became the Royal Ballet School. Her dance company became the Sadler's Wells Ballet and was renamed the Royal Ballet in 1956 ten years after it moved to the Opera House in Covent Garden. She also founded the Birmingham Royal Ballet. She was created a DBE in 1951. She became the first woman to win the Erasmus Prize Foundation Award in 1974 and in 1992 was appointed to the Order of Merit. Leaba go raibh aici i measc Naoimh na hEireann.