The Royal Ballet

Description

Fifty years ago a tiny band of dancers presented an evening of ballet in a working mens's theatre in South London. Today the group has grown into The Royal Ballet, an organisation controlling two large dance companies with a world-wide influence and reputation. As part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations the Royal Opera House has commissioned this book, which establishes The Royal Ballet's origins, traces its development and records its achievements. It is a romantic story, starting in 1931 at the Old Vic, moving on to Sadler's Wells, the two theatres from which the Comapny took its first name, and thence to the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden. It is also an inspiring story, at the centre of which is Ninette de Valois, the Company's legendary founder - whose inspiration sprang from her connection with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes - and her two young collaborators, Constant Lambert, her brilliant Music Director, and Frederick Ashton, the great choreographer whose succession of ballets were to be a prime influence in moulding an English style of dancing. Among the artists who contributed to the early years were Alicia Mrkova, Anton Dolin and Robert Helpmann, while the long line of dancers who have sprung from theranks do the Company includes Margot Fonteyn, whose career almost spanned the whole period, together with a list of other names which are sure of a place in ballet history, such as Turner, May, Somes, Brae, Field, Shearer, Grey, Nerina, Grant, Blair, Beriosova, Park, Wells, MacLeary, Sibley, Seymour, Dowell and Wall. During their fifty years, the two Royal Ballet Companies, based on the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells Theatre, have presented over three hundred and fifty productions. The repertoire ranges from the nineteenth-century classics handed down to them by Nicholas Sergeyev, former regisseur of the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, to works by the most celebrated choreographers of this century - Fokine, Nijinska, Balanchine, Tudor, Robbins, Pettit, Tetley and many others. Of equal important are the Comapny's own line of creative artists which stretches from Ashton to Helpmann to Cranko, MacMillan and their young successors. The author has been given a free hand to trace the story of the Company under its four Directors, highlighting dramatic moments, such as its near-capture by the Nazis while touring Holland in 1940, its triumphant New York debut in 1949 and the sudden addition to its ranks in 1962 of the young Kirov defector, Nureyev: to recall its successes and disappointments; to introduce its dancers and to discuss the special character for the Company, its style and its school. Richly illustrated with black and white photographs and colour plates, the book includes a unique reference section listing in fascinating detail the Company's productions, its dancers and its itineraries at home and overseas. THE ROYAL BALLET: THE FIRST 50 YEARS presents a comprehensive and often nostalgic account of one of the greatest adventures in international ballet history.

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