By Margaret Crosby

Last updated 15:52, Wednesday, 30 April 2008

IT was a red-letter day for Rosehill Youth Theatre this week when a star of the Royal Ballet of New Zealand turned up at rehearsals to offer a few dance tips.

Ballerina Cassandra Wilson was born in New Zealand and her family live in Auckland, but her roots are in Whitehaven.

Cassandra, 24, is visiting the town as guest of her great uncle, Ray Devlin, and his daughter, Louise, of Low Moresby.

Cassandra’s mother is Maxine, third daughter of Doris Scurr, nee Devlin, who was born at 67 Fell View Avenue, Woodhouse and who emigrated with her family in the 1960. Maxine was just 10 at the time and lived in Australia for three years before moving to New Zealand.

Cassandra is having a holiday in England visiting friends in Birmingham and London and couldn’t return home tomorrow without seeing members of her grandmother Doris’s family in West Cumbria.

Doris’s 84-year-old brother, Edward, her sister, Kathleen, and her brother, Ray, and their respective families are all in Whitehaven. Doris has five children and 10 grandchildren, all of whom live in New Zealand.

Cassandra said: “I think Whitehaven is wonderful and the lakes area is breathtaking. I have been skimming rocks with my relatives!’’

Ray has given her a taste of the area’s coalmining history. His grandaughter, Sunny, six, as a member of the Rosehill Youth Theatre, took her to rehearsals for Cinderella which is being performed in December.

Cassandra, who has danced in the classical ballet, Cinderella, was happy to teach a short dance routine to the cast’s five ‘fairies’.

It is four years since Cassandra last visited the UK, when she was with the New Zealand ballet’s tour of Romeo and Juliet, in which she played one of Juliet’s friends. She has a British passport.

She was educated in Auckland before joining the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington when she was 16. Three years later she was accepted for the NZ Royal Ballet, despite tough competition. She is one of 32 ballerinas and prefers contemporary dance to the classics.

She became a full time Royal New Zealand Ballet company member in 2003 and has toured China and Australia with them and is hoping she can join the company on a possible UK tour next year.

She has a brother, Jesse, who is a barrister.