Derra de Moroda, Friderica, 1897-1978

Friderica Derra de Moroda (2 June 1897 – 19 June 1978) was a British dancer, choreographer and dance teacher of Austrian-Hungarian origin. Born in Bratislava, Kingdom of Hungary, she the daughter of a Greek writer and a Hungarian art historian. The family moved to Munich after the death of her father. After a ballet education, she made her debut at the age of 14 on 22 February 1912 as a freelance dancer in the Vienna Secession. In 1914, she went to England and founded her first dance school in London. She took lessons from Enrico Cecchetti for four years (1918-1922) and then performed for the first time in Salzburg in 1923 with a solo dance performance in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum.

In 1936 Derra de Moroda became an English citizen. In that same year, she rediscovered the original manuscript of the Nuova e curiosa scuola de' balli theatrali by Gregorio Lambranzi [fr]. In 1941 she took over the direction and artistic responsibility of the ballet of the National Socialist cultural organization Kraft durch Freude in Berlin, which toured regularly until 1944. Derra de Moroda was interned as an English citizen in a camp on Lake Constance towards the end of the war.

After the death of her sister Minka in December 1950, de Modera inherited the Villa Schmederer [de] and in 1952 she established there a ballet school, which she ran until 1967 and which was attended by the members of the ballet from the Salzburger Landestheater and the solo dancer Margot Werner. From 1960 onwards, Derra de Morodo devoted herself increasingly to dance research and built up an extensive library of dance-specific literature. The estate of the Derra de Moroda Dance Archives is publicly accessible at the Institute for Musicology of the University of Salzburg.

On 15 June 1977 she was the first woman ever to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Salzburg, after being awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1974. Derra de Moroda died in Salzburg at age 81.