Margaret Graham Hills, a former member of the Royal Ballet and a renowned ballet teacher for 73 years in London and Los Angeles, passed away peacefully on April 16, 2026 at the age of 97.

Her life story sounds like something out of fiction, but it was all true. She was born in Melton Mowbray in England on July 25, 1928, and knew that she wanted to be a dancer the moment she first saw a dance performance, at the age of 3. Ballet lessons soon followed. During WW2, she continue to dance and attend school, while also working for the Air Raid Precautions (riding her bicycle to transfer messages), delivering sandwiches to returning soldiers at train stations, and tap dancing in shows at military bases.

In 1945, at 16, she was invited to join the Sadler's Wells Ballet (later the Royal Ballet) so she left home and moved to London, alone. As soon as World War II ended and ballets returned to the stage, she performed onstage for the company's first performance in its new incarnation as the Royal Ballet in the Royal Opera House in February 1946. A tragic knee injury ended her promising career as a ballerina but launched her lifelong career as a ballet teacher.

She continued to be fearless. At the age of 21 she was asked by Dame Ninette de Valois to go to Ankara, Turkey to help found the Turkish National Ballet. Her parents and her then boyfriend and later husband, Brian Hills, were completely against this crazy idea, but of course she went. Who could resist such an adventure? So in 1950, again alone, she set off on a journey that involved several flights. She was the lone woman on all of them, ending up on an airplane that, as she said, "appeared to be held together with string!"

In Ankara she learned to speak Turkish so as to be able to teach ballet in the language, she sewed costumes for her students, attended glamorous parties at the British Embassy with visiting dignitaries, musicians, and archaeologists, danced a piece from 'Les Sylphides' at a gala for King Abdullah of Jordan, and even somehow had lunch with the infamous Soviet double agents Burgess and McLean. When asked what she remembered most fondly about her time there, she said, without hesitation "the people." She adored her young students.

After almost a year in Turkey she returned to the UK and married Brian Hills in 1951. Over the next few years she worked as an assistant to Dame Ninette de Valois in the development of the syllabus for the Royal Ballet School, helped write the international ballet syllabus for the Royal Academy of Dance, became an expert in ballet pantomime, and in 1954 was promoted to Senior Ballet Mistress of the Royal Ballet School. Her students included such superstars of the ballet world as Anthony Dowell, Antoinette Sibley, and Georgina Parkinson. In 1957 she became a mother, giving birth to three children over the next seven years.

In 1971 the Hills family moved to Los Angeles when Brian took a position with Mattel toy company, and Margaret's career once again flourished. She started teaching classes and was appointed principal at Stanley Holden Dance Center (where many ballet luminaries attended her classes when they were in town), later became a faculty member in the dance department at UCLA, and, after retirement from UCLA, taught at Westside Ballet Studio in Santa Monica. It seemed that she knew everyone in the ballet world. Whenever she went to a performance, students and former students seemed to appear from nowhere, surprised to see her in her street clothes (one memorably called out "Mrs Hills! I didn't recognize you with your clothes on!" This became a family joke!).

In 1996 she returned to the Royal Opera House for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Ballet, where, with the other dancers who had appeared on that first night in 1946, she was welcomed onstage during a Royal Command performance of Sleeping Beauty, and afterwards met Queen Elizabeth II.

Margaret taught ballet until 2018, when, at 90, she thought perhaps it might be time to stop. Her teaching career had spanned 73 years. Brian died in 2020 and she missed him deeply. Throughout her life she continued to be closely associated with the Royal Academy of Dance which, in 2024, awarded her the prestigious title of Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Dance (FRAD). It was one of her proudest achievements.

Mostly, though, the impression she made on the people she met was that she was just a spectacular person: beautiful, deeply kind, always interested in the stories of everyone she met, mischievously funny, and still fearless (and still sometimes dreaming in Turkish).

Right up until the days before her death she was healthy and active, living at the Canterbury retirement community that she loved, seeing friends (many of them beloved former ballet students) for coffees and lunches, going out to concerts, enjoying family gatherings, and learning about history and physics on audiobooks. She died peacefully and painlessly after complications from an emergency surgery. She was listening to the music of the ballet 'Les Sylphides' as she passed, no doubt dancing in her dreams. She is survived by her children Sarah Susanka, Amanda Hills Podany, and Julian Hills; sons-in-law Al Urzi and Jerry Podany; grandchildren Emily Podany, Nicholas Podany, Grey Babcock, Simone, Fiona, and Sebastian Hills, and great-grandchildren Vivian, Zoe, and James.