After Diaghilev: British ballet in the early twentieth century

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 of dance, theatre and performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum and former archivist to Rambert Dance), and Judith Mackrell (former dance critic at The Guardian, and author of Bloomsbury Ballerina, a biography of Lydia Lopokova).

Together, they set out what the ballet scene was in London at the beginning of the 1920s, the impact of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on that scene and explore why Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois focused, at first, on training.

The Sleeping Princess, Serge Diaghilev’s 1921 production of Marius Petipa’s ballet, was described by critics at the time as a “gorgeous calamity”. Our guests examine its impact on the appetite for dance in Great Britain in succeeding years and set out what happened to ballet in Britain after Digahilev’s death in 1929.

The contributions of Marie Rambert, Ninette de Valois, Lilian Baylis, Alicia Markova and Constant Lambert are assessed and our guests consider what this new British ballet might have looked like in terms of technique as well as discussing de Valois’ work as a choreographer of ballets such as Checkmate and The Rake’s Progress.