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 aim…
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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 choreographic engagements….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 public alike. Sibley…
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 Crisp. She explains…
Podcast » John Tooley
If ever a job needed diplomacy it must be as General Director of the Royal Opera House, a post John Tooley held from 1970 until 1988. He was also Assistant…
Podcast » John Craxton
For over half a century, John Craxton was a major force in the visual arts of this country. From the late 1940s on, his main source of inspiration had been…
Podcast » Noel Bronley
Noel Bronley was a member of International Ballet from 1946 until it closed in 1953. Little remembered now, at the time International Ballet was a very large undertaking of over…
The dance writer, and former dancer, Deborah Weiss is joined in the studio for a special Voices of British Ballet round table discussion. Anita Landa, Pamela Hart, Joyce Lyndon and…
Podcast » Brenda Hamlyn
Natalie Steed talks to Brenda Hamlyn-Bencini about training under Marie Rambert, the post-war dance scene and touring Germany with ENSA in the immediate aftermath of WWII. At 92, Brenda Hamlyn-Bencini…
Podcast » Beryl Grey
Beryl Grey talks to Frank Freeman about her early training, first with Madeleine Sharp and then with Phyllis Bedells before going to the Sadler’s Wells School at the age of…
Podcast » Dudley Simpson
This self-effacing, straightforward man with a twinkle in his eye is known for his compositions for many TV dramas in the 1960s and 70s, including Doctor Who. Perhaps surprisingly, this…
Podcast » Clement Crisp
Critic and writer Clement Crisp gives a succinct and vivid summing up of the debt British ballet owes to Constant Lambert, not just as the conductor for the Vic-Wells and…
Podcast » Gillian Lynne
The great choreographer and director Gillian Lynne tells Lynn Wallis how it was a giant, but ultimately rewarding step, to leave Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1951. We have a ten-minute…
Podcast » Pauline Clayden
Pauline Clayden was born in 1922. Here she talks to Patricia Linton about her student days, and moves on to her dancing life up until joining the Sadler’s Wells Ballet…
Podcast » Lynn Seymour
In any history of The Royal Ballet, a special place must be reserved for Lynn Seymour, as the dance actress par excellence. Here she tells Alastair Macaulay about her initial…
Podcast » Lilian Hochhauser
For decades the Hochhauser name has been synonymous with the visits to London of the greatest Russian ballet companies and musicians. In conversation with Hilary Condron, Lilian Hochhauser explains how…
Podcast » Pineapple Poll
Gerald Dowler hosts a special episode about the comic ballet Pineapple Poll created for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and its creators John Cranko and Charles Mackerras. Pineapple Poll,…
Podcast » Anita Landa
From a start in Flamenco, Greek dancing and a bit of ballet, Anita Landa describes here not only how her dancing life took off, but how Festival Ballet started. The…
Podcast » Barbara Fewster
Here Barbara Fewster tells us about working at The Royal Ballet School. Her voice has a mixture of authority and kindness which will be remembered by literally thousands of students…
Podcast » Donald MacLeary
In this podcast featuring Donald MacLeary, the ballerina Darcey Bussell makes a fascinating and full introduction to her friend and mentor. She stresses the importance of a coach who is…
Podcast » Joseph Horowitz
Joseph Horovitz explains that his early enthusiasm was for the visual arts, and that it was only from about the age of 19 that he turned seriously to music. After…
Podcast » Lucette Aldous
You can hear in her voice how much Lucette Aldous appreciated and revelled in every step of her way from Ballet Rambert to Festival Ballet and The Royal Ballet. With…
Podcast » Mary Clarke
It is thanks to her godson, Jerome Monahan, that we have this evocative and informative clip of Mary Clarke. Writer extraordinaire on all aspects of ballet, she hated the sound…
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…
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….
Podcast » Romayne Grigorova
Romayne Grigorova had a long, distinguished career in ballet and the theatre. Here, in conversation with Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, she focuses on her…
Podcast » Marcia Haydée
In April 2017, Marcia Haydée was in Stuttgart for a week to celebrate her 80th birthday. Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, knew this was her…
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…
Podcast » Ernest Tomlinson
In this no-nonsense, down-to-earth account of writing music for Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of Aladdin, choreographed by Laverne Meyer in 1974, composer Ernest Tomlinson talks to Patricia Linton, founder and…
Podcast » David Vaughan
David Vaughan – unparalleled writer on the choreography of Frederick Ashton – catches moments and movements from The Royal Ballet’s history. In this interview for Voices of British Ballet, which…
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…
Podcast » Violetta Elvin
Violetta Elvin was one of Frederick Ashton’s favourite ballerinas. She was born Violetta Prokhorova in Russia. Here, in this interview with Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British…
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 Post-Impressionists’, organized…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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 Fonteyn…
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…
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 such…
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…
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…
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 with his…
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 solo variations…