Podcast » Monica Ratcliffe
Monica Ratcliffe, one of British ballet’s earliest voices, shares a wonderful collection of memories and anecdotes with Patricia Linton. She talks about her years, in the 1920s, at Ninette de…
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The ballet writer Gerald Dowler is joined in a special episode of Voices of British Ballet by Monica Mason (former Royal Ballet student, principal dancer and director), Jane Pritchard (curator…
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Ninette de Valois’ Academy for Choregraphic Art in March 1926, and to mark 25 years since de Valois’ death, Patricia Linton…
Timeline Event » 1933 – Nicholas Sergeyev stages Coppélia for the Vic-Wells Ballet
In March 1933, the company performed the first two acts of Coppelia, the ballet created by Arthur Saint-Léon, with Lydia Lopokova as Swanilda for the first two performances. Ninette de…
Timeline Event » 1931 – Premiere of Frederick Ashton’s Façade by the Camargo Society
Façade was originally an ‘entertainment’ in which Edith Sitwell, from 1922, recited a selection of her poems accompanied to music composed by William Walton. This musical setting was expanded in…
Timeline Event » 1930 – The First performance by The Camargo Society
The Camargo Society was a subscription ballet club formed in 1930 to support and nurture British ballet. Set up by Philip J.S. Richardson, the editor of the Dancing Times, and…
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…
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…
Timeline Event » 1929 – Death of Serge Diaghilev
The death of Serge Diaghilev in Venice on 19 August, and the closure of his Ballets Russes company changed the profile of dance across Europe. It prompted a diaspora of…