Grace Notes

To provide cultural context to the developments in ballet and dance during the twentieth century

The title Grace Notes is a nod to the musical practice of embellishment and also to Arthur Bliss, who used the words to describe his Grace Notes on Ballet in Peter Noble’s book British Ballet (Skelton Robinson 1949).

Ballet does not live in a bubble. Our embellishments, these essays, hope to show some of the wider social and artistic context within which ballet has its place.

John Singer Sargent in his studio, with his painting Madame X. ca. 1884. Photographs of artists in their Paris studios, 1880-1890. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Fin de Siecle: Sargent and Madame X

By Alex Rooney, artist

Madame X scandalised late 19th Century Parisienne society by being painted with a slipped shoulder strap. Yet only a few years later Isadora Duncan danced in diaphanous dresses to great acclaim. More than a 100 years on, Christopher Wheeldon...

Photograph of Marius Petipa, 1899 Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division

Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker

By Voices of British Ballet

In his own training Petipa combined elements of both French and Italian traditions. From this heritage he did much not only to create the Russian school from which his great ballets flowed, but also to form the basis on which Serge Diaghilev and the...

Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet dancer and choreographer, with the composer Joseph-Maurice Ravel playing a piano together. France, early 20th century © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Credit:© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Early 1900s: Diaghilev and Music – The Road of Genius

By Stephen Johnson, composer, writer and broadcaster

Diaghilev – genius or promoter of self? In addition to being central or crucial to the history of ballet in the 20th Century, Diaghilev was also intimately involved with musical developments of the time. ‘Improvement’, wrote William Blake,...

T.S. Eliot; Virginia Woolf by Lady Ottoline Morrell vintage snapshot print, June 1924 3 5/8 in. x 3 in. (93 mm x 75 mm) image size Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Dame Helen Gardner Bequest, 2003

1920s: T. S. Eliot and Modernism: Of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot and Modernism (with some reference to the Ballets Russes).

By John Venning, former Head of English at St Pauls School

T S Eliot was a, if not the, major figure in English literature for much of the 20th Century. Is his attempt to reconcile modern modes of expression with ancient traditions reflected in British ballet? Some fragments: from The Love...

Dreamer in Landscape, 1942

© John Craxton

1920s – 1950s: Neo-Romanticism and After

By Anthony O’Hear, philosopher

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 by Roger Fry. This may be accurate...

Northen Adventure - 1929 painting by Paul Nash, (London, England, 1889 - 1946).

1930s: Art and Literature in Britain in the 1930s

By Anthony O'Hear, philosopher

Artists in Britain in the early and mid 20th Century were influenced by contemporary developments in Europe. However, they also looked back to a quintessentially native? Romanticism. There is no doubt that in their own choreography, de Valois,...

Oxford Station. Photo by Ben Brooksbank

1940s onwards: The Wartime Quartet

By Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, philosophers

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), Philippa Foot (née Bonsanquet) (1920 – 2010), Mary...

Setting off on tour in their ENSA Uniforms L-R, Pauline Clayden, Thekla Russell and Julia Farron. Credit: Private Collection

1940s: ENSA, The Entertainments National Service Association

By Kiri Bloom Walden, author and lecturer in film and music

All the arts, including ballet, played their own part in the war effort. The Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) was the brainchild of one man. Basil Dean began his career in repertory theatre, working his way up to become the first...

1950s: Charles Mackerras and Pineapple Poll

By Nigel Simeone, author and musicologist

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 November 1925; d. London, 14 July 2010), Australian...

1960’s: The war is not going well. Peter Cook is addressing Jonathan Miller, both are in RAF uniforms.

By Brian Appleyard, writer and journalist

The 1960s is often seen as a golden age for ballet, but it was also an exciting time in all the arts. “We need a futile gesture at this stage it will raise the whole tone of the war,” he says. Cook then instructs Miller to fly to Bremen and get...

1960s – 1970s: Ballet For All

By Caroline Southam (Caroline Emo), dancer

Outreach and Accessibility dominate in recent times, but Peter Brinson’s Ballet for All was way ahead of its time in this respect. My tour with Ballet for All in 1967 is a map with gaps: gaps in the map of England, in my letters home, and above...

Poster for Original Production of Julian Mitchell's Another Country

1970s: Adapting Adaptations

By Julian Mitchell, playwright

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 and on with the same version of the same old...

GISELLE ; Stina Quagebeur as Myrtha ; Alina Cojocaru as Giselle ; Corps de ballet ; English National Ballet ; Choreography by Khan ; Visual and Costume Design by Yip ; Palace Theatre, Manchester, UK (Touring Production) ; 26 September 2016 ; Credit: Bill Cooper / ArenaPAL ; www.arenapal.com

1980s and on: Bill Cooper, a photographer on photography

By Bill Cooper, photographer

Photography has continually transformed itself, like all the other arts. How has this affected the photography of ballet? When I joined Scottish Ballet in 1977 Peter Darrell organised a Choreographic Evening. I and other choreographers were invited...

Photograph of Le Train Bleu, a one-act ballet choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska to music by Darius Milhaud for Serge Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes , based on a scenario by Jean Cocteau with costumes by Coco Chanel. 1924 Retrieved from the Library of Congress

…and on: Fashion & Ballet in Step

By Tamasin Doe, fashion writer and author of several books including Textile Design in the Digital Age (Carlton, 2015), editor of The Fashion Book (Phaidon, 1998)

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, these cultural heat-seekers turn to ballet, which...

Geoffrey Hill, photo courtesy of Chris Floyd

Into the Millenium: Thoughts on Geoffrey Hill’s The Book of Baruch

By Anthony O'Hear, philosopher

Over a lifetime Geoffrey Hill produced some of the most important poetry of the era. The Book of Baruch is his final poetic statement. Like much modern ballet it draws on a wealth of different sources and ideas. Geoffrey Hill’s The Book of Baruch...