1940 – The Pauline Grant Ballet established

Dancer and choreographer Pauline Grant formed her first ballet company at the Neighbourhood Theatre in Kensington in 1940. Grant’s company led an itinerant life, moving between venues when they became damaged in air raids. For a brief time, the group was based at the Institut Français (which helped the company tour England under the name Pauline Grant’s French Ballet), and Grant initiated a scheme entitled Lunch-Hour Ballet in the summer of 1940 at the Little Theatre. Her dancers were presented as part of various West End shows, Grant becoming one of the leading musical choreographers of the time. Grant was significant because her aim to build a ballet audience at the Neighborhood Theatre resembled Marie Rambert’s efforts with The Ballet Club at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill. The company closed around 1944.