Podcast » Antoinette Sibley
Antoinette Sibley talks with Alastair Macaulay. Her wonderful mix of enthusiasm, appreciation and practicality typify the glorious mercurial talent that has beguiled a generation of dancers and...
decade » 1950s
Podcast » Violette Verdy
This interview with Violette Verdy is introduced by the dance critic and historian Alastair Macaulay. Violette Verdy’s laughter and intelligence shine through in this discussion with Clement...
Timeline Event » 1950 – Sadler’s Wells Ballet dances George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial for the first time
Originally created for American Ballet Caravan, George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial was performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet for the first time at the Royal Opera House in 1950. Danced to Pyotr...
Timeline Event » 1950 – Dance and Dancers magazine established by Peter Williams
Four years after the launch of Ballet Today magazine, another important publication, Dance and Dancers, was added to the magazine stalls. Published by Philip Dosse and edited by Peter Williams, it...
Timeline Event » 1951 – Ballet Workshop established
Marie Rambert’s daughter, Angela, established Ballet Workshop, along with her husband, David Ellis in 1951. The aim of Ballet Workshop was to give space and time for new and experimental works to...
Midsummer Watch was Peter Darrell’s first ballet, made for Ballet Workshop at the Mercury Theatre and the Festival of Britain. The story is of Zoe, Phoebe and the Shepherds in a charmingly...
Pineapple Poll is an exuberant, comic ballet in three scenes, with choreography by John Cranko, music by Sir Arthur Sullivan (arranged by Charles Mackerras), and sets and costumes designed by Osbert...
Taking Maurice Ravel’s sumptuous score for Mikhail Fokine’s 1912 ballet (since lost), Frederick Ashton created Daphnis and Chloë for Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1951 as a vehicle for Margot...
London Festival Ballet gave its first season at the newly opened Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank in 1952, where it continued to appear regularly, often twice a year, until well into the...
Timeline Event » 1954 – Premiere of John Cranko’s The Lady and the Fool by Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet
The Lady and the Fool, first performed by Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in 1954, was a collaboration between John Cranko and Charles Mackerras. As with Pineapple Poll, the music for the ballet was...
Timeline Event » 1954 – Sadler’s Wells Ballet dances Mikhail Fokine’s The Firebird for the first time
The acquisition in 1954 of The Firebird, one of the greatest works created for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, was a major step in connecting the Sadler’s Wells Ballet with its Ballets Russes...
Timeline Event » 1955 – Premiere of Kenneth MacMillan’s Danses concertantes by Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet
Kenneth MacMillan’s first major work, Danses concertantes saw the choreographer counter the trend in the company for dance-dramas with a plotless work that matched Igor Stravinsky’s edgy music...
Timeline Event » 1955 – Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet is expanded and later becomes The Royal Ballet Touring Company
Peggy van Praagh left the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in the summer of 1955. With this development and the understanding that it was increasingly difficult for the Covent Garden troupe to tour...
Timeline Event » 1955 – Rudolf and Joan Benesh present The Benesh System (now the Benesh Movement Notation)
Rudolf Benesh was born in 1916 and became a qualified accountant, having also read Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art and Music. He married Joan Rothwell in 1949. Rothwell was born in Liverpool in...
Etudes is a ballet of mounting excitement as choreographer Harald Lander takes the audience and the dancers through the progress of classical dance technique culminating in a spectacular finale of...
Created by Frederick Ashton to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Birthday Offering is a one-act divertissement for seven ballerinas and their partners, and includes...
Set to Malcolm Arnold’s engaging music, Kenneth MacMillan’s Solitaire, created for Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in 1956, is a light-hearted treatment of the theme of the outsider, which became...
Timeline Event » 1956 – The Sadler’s Wells Ballet Companies and School became The Royal Ballet, The Royal Ballet Touring Company and The Royal Ballet School
In the autumn of 1956, Ninette de Valois’ companies and school received the Royal Charter, bringing all three entities under the one title of The Royal Ballet, with HM The Queen as Patron and HRH...
Timeline Event » 1957 – Western Theatre Ballet established
Peter Darrell, an original member of Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, left the company in 1947 to dance in musicals whilst choreographing for Marie Rambert’s Ballet Workshop amongst other...
In The Prisoners, Peter Darrell’s work for Western Theatre Ballet in 1957, two convicts escape from prison, one to his death, and the other to a life of enslavement to his friend’s wife. The...
Timeline Event » 1957 – London Festival Ballet dances Jack Carter’s The Witch Boy for the first time
Jack Carter’s The Witch Boy, originally created for the Ballet der Lage Landen in 1956, was first performed by London Festival Ballet at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, in 1957. The music was by...
Timeline Event » 1958 – Premiere of Norman Morrice’s Two Brothers by Ballet Rambert
First performed by Ballet Rambert at the Marlow Theatre, Canterbury, in 1958, Two Brothers was the first work choreographed for Ballet Rambert by Norman Morrice. It was performed in modern dress and...
Timeline Event » 1959 – Harlequin Ballet founded
A small-scale touring company ran by John and Barbara Gregory (née Vernon), who trained with the Russian ballet dancers Nicholas and Nadine Legat. The Harlequin Ballet fulfilled John Gregory’s...
Grace Note » …and on: Fashion & Ballet in Step
Fashion and ballet have a symbiotic relationship, each drawing on the other. Twice a year, fashion designers must cast around for hot influences. These might come from anywhere but time and again,...
Grace Note » 1970s: Adapting Adaptations
Many ballets adapt themes and short stories from other media. But the challenges and problems of adaptation are not confined to ballet. Adapt or die is a rule of life. Of art, too. We can’t go on...
Grace Note » 1950s: Charles Mackerras and Pineapple Poll
Pineapple Poll was a ray of sunlight at the start of the 1950s. It is entirely in the spirit of Diaghilev – a fusion of dance, music and design. CHARLES MACKERRAS (b. Schenectady, New York, 17...
Grace Note » 1940s onwards: The Wartime Quartet
It wasn’t only in ballet that women were leading British ballet forward. But in philosophy too, four redoubtable women change the face of the subject. G. E. M. Anscombe (1919 – 2001),...
Grace Note » 1920s – 1950s: Neo-Romanticism and After
According to Virginia Woolf, ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’. The event from 1910 she was referring to was the famous exhibition entitled ‘Manet and the...