Podcast » Wendy Toye
The dancer and choreographer Adam Cooper introduces this wonderful interview with the dancer, choreographer, stage and film director Wendy Toye who begins by recalling chatting to Serge Diaghilev at the…
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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…
Timeline Event » 1926 – Ninette de Valois opens the Academy of Choreographic Art
Ninette de Valois (1898-2001) was an Irish dancer, choreographer and founding director of The Royal Ballet.In 1918 and 1919 she became principal dancer for the Beecham Opera at Covent Garden…
Timeline Event » 1920 – Marie Rambert opens her school
Marie Rambert (1888-1982) was a dancer, choreographer, teacher and company founder and director born in Warsaw. In 1910, she went to Geneva to study the eurhythmics of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze. She…
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…
Timeline Event » 1916 – Serafina Astafieva opens her school in London
Born in St Petersburg in 1876, Serafina Astafieva became an important teacher in London in the early years of the 20th century. She ran a school on the King’s Road…
Russian Dancer and choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky was a legendary performer in the history of dance. Born in Kiev, he was a brilliant graduate from the Imperial Ballet School, St Petersburg…
Timeline Event » 1912 – Anna Pavlova buys Ivy House and settles in London
Anna Pavlova was born in St Petersburg in 1881, and entered the Imperial Ballet School in 1891. In 1897 she first danced on the Maryinsky stage, and graduated in 1899….
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 » 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…
Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1909-1929) That Serge Diaghilev believed in Russian art and its spirit can never be doubted. His company, the Ballets Russes, exploded every myth about dance. From…
Timeline Event » 1900 – Isadora Duncan begins her sensational career in Europe
Isadora Duncan, (1877-1927) was an American dancer and choreographer. As a pioneer of ‘free’ dance, she was a huge influence on choreographers and on modern dance generally. Inspired by the…
Adeline Genée (1878-1970) was a Danish ballerina and founder-president of the Royal Academy of Dance. At the age of three she started taking dancing lessons from her uncle Alexander Genée…
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 » 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 » 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…
Podcast » Dianne Richards
Here is Dianne Richards, skipping through parts of her dancing life – in this case at the start of London Festival (now English National) Ballet. Names from the world of…
Timeline Event » 1926 – Premiere of George Balanchine’s The Triumph of Neptune by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes
The ballet was choreographed by George Balanchine to music by Lord Berners, and had its premiere on 3rd December 1926 at the Lyceum Theatre, London. Alexandra Danilova and Serge Lifar…
Timeline Event » 1926 – Frederick Ashton choreographs A Tragedy of Fashion for the pupils of Marie Rambert
A Tragedy of Fashion was Frederick Ashton’s first work. Loosely based on a true story from the court of Louis XIV, it was performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in…
Timeline Event » 1922 – Formation of The Cecchetti Society
The Cecchetti Society was founded in 1922 to perpetuate the system of teaching established by the Italian dancer and ballet master Enrico Cecchetti (1851-1928). Based in Russia for many years,…
The Sleeping Beauty (also performed as The Sleeping Princess) Often considered Marius Petipa’s masterpiece, The Sleeping Beauty, to music composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was first performed in 1890 by…
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…
Checkmate is one of the only two ballets by Ninette de Valois to survive in the repertoire. It makes allegorical use of a chess game to represent a battle between…
Podcast » Irina Baronova
What agony to hear this gorgeous, beguiling woman lament the lack of interest she feels was shown to her generation in passing on their knowledge and experience to the next….
Timeline Event » 1937 – Les Ballets Trois Arts established
John Regan had trained with Enrico Cecchetti and Nicholas Legat before he joined Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the Markova-Dolin Ballet. In 1937 Regan formed his own group, the International…
Podcast » Celebrating Ninette de Valois: Checkmate
The second in a series of special episodes celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Ninette de Valois’ Academy for Choregraphic Art in March 1926, and marking 25 years…
Podcast » Roger Tully
There is so much in this short interview to love and revere. Roger Tully was a legendary teacher, who was an inspiration to many dancers over many years. He had…
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 » 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 » Janette Mulligan
The energy in Janette Mulligan’s voice reveals what a vibrant dancer she was. Her enthusiasm for the whole gamut of performing shines through, from correct hair styles and clean shoes…
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…
Podcast » Reflections: Anna Pavlova
As part of Voices of British Ballet’s Reflections series Jane Pritchard, curator of Dance at the Victoria and Albert Museum, talks to Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of…
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…
Timeline Event » 1929 – Nicolas Legat sets up his school
Nicholas Legat was a Russian dancer, choreographer and teacher who was born in St Petersburg. In 1888 he joined the Maryinsky Ballet, where he was an outstanding dancer and partner,…
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…
Marius Petipa (1822-1910) was born in Marseilles into a theatrical family. He was performing publicly at the age of nine. When he was 16 he was the premier danseur in…
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…
The acquisition of a second Bronislava Nijinska work by The Royal Ballet ensured the survival of perhaps her greatest masterpiece. Les Noces, an austere depiction of a Russian peasant wedding,…
First performed by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1928, George Balanchine’s Apollo was only the fourth work by Balanchine to enter The Royal Ballet’s repertoire after Ballet Imperial in 1950…
Timeline Event » 1987 – Premiere of Richard Alston’s Pulcinella by Ballet Rambert
Based on the commedia dell’arte narrative of the 1920 Léonide Massine / Pablo Picasso / Igor Stravinsky ballet created for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Pulcinella is a homage to the…
Timeline Event » 2005 – Wayne Eagling becomes director of English National Ballet
Wayne Eagling was appointed director of English National Ballet in 2005, where he stayed until 2012. During Eagling’s tenure, the company extended its repertory to perform such works as Kenneth…
Acquired in 1964 for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton as director and born out of his reverence for the choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska’s charming Les Biches, a seemingly light-as-a-soufflé ballet…