12. Ballet Climax— Sadler’s Wells And After.... (continued 3)

Most recently, he has acted with the American Katherine Hepburn, and has scored perhaps his most outstanding directorial success to date in his superlatively fine mounting of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, at the Old Vic.

I am looking forward to bringing “Bobby” to America in the not too far distant future in a great production of a Shakespeare work which I am confident will make theatrical history.

“Bobby” Helpmann, as I have pointed out, is more than a dancer: he is a splendid actor, a fine creator, a distinguished choreographer, an intelligent human being.

His is a friendship I value; he is alive and eager, keen and shrewd, with a ready smile and a glint in his eye. For “Bobby” has a happy way with him, and whether you are having a meal with him or discussing a point, you cannot help reacting to his boyish enthusiasm, his zeal for his job, his flair for doing it. My memories of dinners and suppers with the “inseparables,” to which I have often been invited, are treasured. The “inseparables” were that closely-linked little group: Fonteyn, Ashton, Helpmann, with de Valois along, when she was in town and free. The bond between the members of the group is very close.

It was in Chicago. It was mid-tour, with rehearsals and conferences and meetings for future planning. We were at breakfast. “Madame” suddenly turned to Helpmann.

“Bobby,” she said, with that crisp tone that immediately commands attention. “Bobby, I want you to be sure to be at the Drake Hotel to give a talk to the ladies at one o’clock sharp. Now, be sure to come, and be sure to be there on time.”

“How, in heaven’s name,” replied Helpmann, “can I possibly be in two places at one time? You told me I shall have to be at the Public Library at one sharp.”

De Valois regarded him for a long moment.

“You astound me, Bobby,” she finally said. “Did I tell you that? Very well, then, let it be the Public Library. I shall take the Drake Hotel. But watch out, make sure you are there on time.”

Ninette de Valois not only did something with “that face.” She also made good use of that intelligence.

I last saw “Bobby” Helpmann dance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on Coronation Night, when he returned as a guest artist with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, to appear with Margot Fonteyn in Le Lac des Cygnes, Act Two.

What a pleasure it was to see him dancing once more, the true cavalier, with his perfect style and the same submerging of technique in the ebb and flow of the dance. I am looking forward to seeing him again, and, I hope, again and again.

ARNOLD L. HASKELL

Among my cherished associations with this fine organization, I cannot fail to acknowledge the contribution to ballet and the popularity of it, made through the media of books, articles, lectures, by the one-time ballet critic and now Director and Principal of the Sadler’s Wells School, Arnold L. Haskell.

Haskell, the complete balletomane himself, has done as much, if not more, to develop the cult of the balletomane in the western Anglo-Saxon world as any one else I know. Devoted to the cause of the dance, for years he gave unsparingly of his time and means to spread the gospel of ballet.

In the early days of the renaissance of ballet, Haskell came to the United States on the first visit of the de Basil company and was of immense assistance in helping to create an interest in and a desire to find out about ballet on the part of the American people. He helped to organize an audience. Later, he toured Australia with the de Basil company, preaching “down under” the gospel of the true art with the zeal of a passionate, proselyting, non-conformist missionary.

From his untiring pen has come a long procession of books and articles on ballet appreciation in general, and on certain phases of ballet in particular—books of illumination to the lay public, of sound advice to dancers.

Arnold Haskell’s balletic activities can be divided into five departments: organizer, author, lecturer, critic, and educator. In the first category, he, with Philip J. S. Richardson, long-time editor and publisher of the Dancing Times (London), was instrumental in forming and founding the Camargo Society, after the death of Diaghileff. As lecturer, he delivered more than fifteen hundred lectures on ballet for the British Ministry of Information, the Arts Council, the Council for the Education of His Majesty’s Forces. As critic, he has written innumerable critical articles for magazines and periodicals, and, from 1934 to 1938, was the ballet critic of the Daily Telegraph (London).

As critic, Haskell has rendered a valuable service to ballet. His approach is invariably intelligent. He has a sound knowledge of the dancer as dancer and, so far as dancers and dancing are concerned, he has exhibited a fine intuition and a good deal of prophetic insight.

The fifth department of Arnold Haskell’s activities, educator, is the one on which he is today most successfully and conspicuously engaged. As the active head of the Sadler’s Wells School, established in its own building in Colet Gardens, Kensington, Arnold Haskell is in his element, continuing his sound advice directly; he is acting as wise and discerning mentor to a rising generation of dancers, who live together in the same atmosphere for at least eight years.

I have a feeling of warm friendship for Arnold Haskell, an infinite respect for him as a person, and for his knowledge.

The School of which he is the head, like all other Sadler’s Wells activities, is carried on in association with the British Arts Council, thus carrying forward the Council’s avowed axiom that the art of a people is one of its signs of good health. So it has always been in the world’s history from Ancient Greece to France at the time of the Crusades, to Renaissance Italy and Elizabethan England. Each one of those earlier manifestations, whatever its excellence, was confined to a limited number of people, to the privileged and the elect. The new renaissance will inevitably be the emergence of the common man into the audience of art. He has always been a part of that audience when he has had the opportunity. Now the opportunity must come in such a way that none is overlooked and the result will be fresh vigour and self-confidence in the people as a whole.

The Sadler’s Wells School is, of course, under the direct supervision of Dame Ninette de Valois, D.B.E. Its Board of Governors, which is active and not merely a list of names, numbers distinguished figures from the world of art, music and letters.

The School was founded by the Governors of the Sadler’s Wells Foundation, in association with the Arts Council, in 1947, to train dancers who will be fitted to carry on the high tradition of Sadler’s Wells and generally to maintain and enhance the prestige of British Ballet. Over eighty-five per cent of the members of the ballet companies at both the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre are graduates of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. The School combines a full secondary education and a highly specialized vocational training. Boys and girls are taken from the age of nine. Pupils are prepared for what is the equivalent on this side of the Atlantic of a complete High School education; in Britain, the General Certificate of Education, and the curriculum includes the usual school subjects of English language and literature, French, Latin (for boys only), history, geography, Scripture, mathematics, science, handicraft, music, and art work. The dance training consists of classical ballet, character dances, mime. Importance is attached to character formation and to the self-discipline essential for success on the stage.

There is also an Upper School, which is open to boys and girls above school-leaving age. After taking the General Certificate of Education, the American equivalent of graduation from high school, students from the Lower School pass into the Upper School if they have reached a standard which qualifies them for further training in the senior ballet classes. The Upper School is also open to students from other schools. Entry is by interview, and applicants are judged on general intelligence, physical aptitude, and standard attained. Entrants are accepted on one term’s trial. Here the curriculum includes, in post-education: classes in English and French language and literature, history, art, music, lecture courses, and Dalcroze Eurhythmics. In ballet—the classical ballet, character dances, mime, tuition in the roles of the classical ballets and modern works in the repertoire of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Companies. It is important to note that all ballet classes for boys are taken by male teachers.

The School is inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, and is licensed as a first-class educational institution. The pupils number about one hundred ten in the Lower School, with about thirty in the Upper School.

So splendidly has the School developed that now a substantial physical addition is being made to the premises in Colet Gardens, in the form of a new building, to provide dormitories and living quarters so that it may become a full-time boarding school, as well as a day-school; and thus obviate the necessity for many students to live outside the school, either at home or, as so often the case if the students come from distant places, in the proverbial London “digs.”

One of the most interesting and significant things about the School to me is the number of boys enrolled and their backgrounds. Such is the feeling about male dancing in our Anglo-Saxon civilization that many of the boys have had to be offered scholarship inducements to enroll. The bulk of the boys come out of working-class families in the North of England and the Midlands. They are tough and manly. It is from boys such as these that the prejudice against male dancing will gradually die out, and the effeminate dancer will become, as he should, a thing of the past.

MOIRA SHEARER

Although, to my regret, due to personal, family, and artistic reasons, Moira Shearer is not present with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet on its 1953-1954 North American tour, I know her devotion to the Sadler’s Wells institution remains unchanged.

The simple fact is that Moira Shearer is preparing to enter a new and different aspect of the theatre, a development with which I hope I shall have something to do in the near future.

Among the personalities of the company during the first two Sadler’s Wells tours, American interest and curiosity were at their highest, for obvious reasons, in Moira Shearer. The film, Red Shoes, had stimulated an interest in ballet on the part of yet another new public, and its ballerina star had acquired the questionable halo of a movie star. This was something that was anything but pleasing to the gentle, intelligent Moira Shearer; and was, moreover, something she deplored.

Born in Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1926, Moira Shearer came to ballet at an early age, having had dance lessons in Rhodesia as a child at the hands of a former Diaghileff dancer. It was on her return to England, when she was about eleven, that her serious studies began with Madame Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat. In 1940 she joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School, remaining briefly, however, because of the blitz. But, early in 1941, she turned up with the International Ballet, another British ballet organization, dancing leading roles at the age of fourteen, another example of the “baby” ballerina. In 1942, she left that company to rejoin Sadler’s Wells School.

In 1943, Shearer became a member of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, achieving an almost instant success and a marked popularity with audiences. What impresses me most about Moira Shearer, the dancer, is a fluidity of movement that has about it a definite Russian quality; she has a fine polish in her style, coupled with great spontaneity and a gentle, easy grace.

Distinctive not only for her Titian-coloring and her famed auburn-haired beauty and her slender grace, Shearer is equally noteworthy for her poise and an almost incredible lightness; for her assurance and classical dignity; for her ability to dominate the stage. The “Russian” quality about her dancing I have mentioned, I suspect stems from her early indoctrination and her training at the hands of Madame Legat; there is something Russian about her entrances, when she immediately commands the stage and becomes the focus of all eyes. All of these qualities are particularly apparent in Cinderella.

Moira Shearer’s reputation had preceded her across the United States and Canada, as I have pointed out, because of the exhibition of spontaneity, beauty and charm that had been revealed to thousands in the motion picture, Red Shoes. There is no denying this film was highly successful. I suppose it can be argued successfully that Red Shoes brought ballet to a new audience, and thus, in that sense, was good for ballet. Whatever it may have been, it was not a true, or good, or honest picture of ballet. I happen to know how Moira Shearer feels about it, and I share her feelings. Although she dislikes to talk or hear very much about Red Shoes, and was not very happy with it or about it, she was, I fancy, less disturbed by her role in The Tales of Hoffman, with “Freddy” Ashton, “Bobby” Helpmann, and Leonide Massine. Best of all her film excursions, Moira feels, was her sequence in My Three Loves, which Ashton directed for her in Hollywood.

Once, on introducing her to one of those characteristic, monumental California salads, her comment was: “My, but it’s delicious; yet it looks like that Technicolor mess I should like to forget.” Shearer feels Red Shoes was rather a sad mess, a complete travesty of the ballet life which it posed as portraying; that it was false and phoney throughout, and that, perhaps, the phoniest thing about it was its alleged glamor. On the other hand, she does not regard the time she spent making it wasted, for, as she says, she was able to sit at the feet of Leonide Massine and watch and learn and observe the concentration with which he worked, the intelligence he brought to every gesture, and the vast ingenuity and originality he applied to everything he did.

I happen to know Shearer has no illusions about the film publicity campaign that made her a movie star overnight. She was amused by it, but never taken in, and was hurt only when the crowds mobbed for autographs and Americans hailed her as “the star” of Sadler’s Wells.

Cultured and highly intelligent, Moira Shearer is intensely musical, both in life and in the dance. This musicality is particularly apparent in her portrayal of the Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, and in the dual role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. Again it is markedly noticeable in a quite non-classical work, for of all the dancers I have seen dance the Tango in Façade, she is by far the most satiric and brilliant. She is well-nigh indispensable to Wedding Bouquet.

Aside from the qualities I have mentioned, there is also a fine romanticism about her work. Intelligence in a dancer is something that is rare. There are those who argue that it is not necessarily a virtue in a dancer. They could not be more wrong. It is, I think, Moira Shearer’s superior intelligence that gives her, among other things, that power of pitiless self-criticism that is the hallmark of the first-class artist.

Moira Shearer has been as fortunate in her private life as in her professional activities. She lives happily in a lovely London home with her attractive and talented writer-husband, Ludovic Kennedy. During the second Sadler’s Wells American tour, her husband drove across the continent from New York to Los Angeles to join Moira for the California engagement, discovering, by means of a tiny Austin, that there were still a great many of the wide-open spaces left in the land Columbus discovered.

In her charming London flat, with her husband, her books, her pictures, and her music, she carries out one of her most serious ambitions: to be a good mother; for the center of the household is her young daughter, born in midsummer, 1952.

The depth of Moira Shearer’s sincerity I happen to know not only from others, but from personal experience. It is a genuine and real sincerity that applies to every aspect of her life, and not only in art and the theatre.

A loyal colleague, she has a highly developed sense of honor. As Ninette de Valois once remarked to me: “Anything that Moira has ever said or promised is a bond with her, and nothing of a confirming nature in writing is required.”

A splendid artist, ballerina, and film star, it is my profound hope that Moira may meet with the same degree of success in her new venture into the legitimate theatre.

There seems little doubt of this, since I am persuaded that she will make good in anything she undertakes.

BERYL GREY

Another full-fledged ballerina of the company, is Beryl Grey, who alternates all ballerina roles today with Fonteyn, Violetta Elvin, Nadia Nerina and Rowena Jackson. Beryl Grey’s American success was assured on the opening night of the first season at the Metropolitan Opera House, with her gracious and commandingly sympathetic performance of the Lilac Fairy in The Sleeping Beauty.

In a sense, Grey’s and Shearer’s careers have followed a similar pattern, in that they were both “baby ballerinas.” Born Beryl Groom, at Muswell Hill, in London’s Highgate section, in 1927, the daughter of a government technical expert and his wife, Beryl Grey’s dancing studies began very early in life in Manchester, and at the age of nine, she won a scholarship at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. In 1941, she joined the company, and so rapid was her growth as an artist that she danced leading roles in some half-dozen of the one-act ballets in the repertoire, in place of Margot Fonteyn who had been taken ill. Even more remarkable is the fact that she danced the full-length Swan Lake in London on her fifteenth birthday.

The term, “baby ballerina,” has become a part of ballet’s language, due to its association with the careers of Baronova and Toumanova in the early ’thirties. In Grey’s case, however, she was privileged to have a much wider experience in classical ballets than her émigré Russian predecessors. She was only seventeen when she danced the greatest of all classical roles in the repertoire of the true ballerina, Giselle.

My feeling about Beryl Grey, the dancer, is that she possesses strikingly individual qualities, both of style and technique. She has been greatly helped along the path to stardom by Frederick Ashton who, as I have pointed out, likes nothing better than to discover and exploit a dancer’s talents. It was he who gave Grey her first big dramatic parts.

Beryl Grey is married to a distinguished Swedish osteopath, Dr. Sven Svenson, and they live in a charming Mayfair flat in London. Here again one finds that characteristic of fine intelligence coupled with an intense musicality. Also rare among dancers, Grey is an omnivorous reader of history, biography, and the arts. She feels, I know, that, apart from “Madame” and Ashton, who have been so keenly instrumental in shaping her career, a sense of deep gratitude to Constant Lambert for his kindness and help to her from her very early days; for his readiness to discuss with her any aspect of music; and she gratefully remembers how nothing was too inconsequential for his interest, his advice and help; how no conductor understood what the dancer required from music more than he did. She is also mindful of the inspiration she had from Leonide Massine, of his limitless energy, his indefatigable enthusiasm, his creative fire; she learned that no detail was too small to be corrected and worked over and over. As she says: “He was so swift and light, able to draw with immediate ease a complete and clear picture.” Also, she points out, “He was quiet and of few words, but had a fine sense of humor which was often reflected in his penetrating brown eyes. His rare praise meant a great deal.”

Beryl Grey is the star in the first three-dimensional ballet film ever to be made, based on the famous Black Swan pas de deux from Le Lac des Cygnes.

From the point of view of a dancer, Beryl Grey had one misfortune over which she had to triumph: she is above average height. This she has been able to turn into a thing of beauty, with a beautifully flowing length of “line.” Personally, she is a gentle person, with a genuine humility and a simple unaffected kindliness, and a fresh, completely unspoiled charm. Her success in all the great roles has been such as to make her one of the most popular figures with the public.

I find great pleasure in her precision and strength as a dancer, in her poised, statuesque grace, in her clean technique; and in her special sort of technical accomplishment, wherein nothing ever seems to present her any problems.

During the American tours of Sadler’s Wells, she is almost invariably greeted with flowers at the station. She seems to have friends in every city. How she manages to do this, I am not sure; but I feel it must be a tribute to her genuine warmth and friendliness.

VIOLETTA ELVIN

Violetta Elvin, another of the talented ballerinas of the “fabulous” Sadler’s Wells company, is in the direct line of Russian ballet, for she is a product of the contemporary ballet of Russia.

The daughter of a pioneer of Russian aviation, Vassili Prokhoroff, and his wife, Irina Grimousinkaya, a Polish artist and an early experimenter with action photography, Violetta Prokhorova became a pupil at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, at the age of nine. It is interesting to note that she was one of a class of fifty accepted out of five hundred applicants; it is still more interesting, and an example of the rigorous Russian training, that, when she finished the course nine years later, out of the original fifty there were only nine left: three girls and six boys. Of the three girls, Prokhorova was the only one who attained ballet’s coveted rank of etoile.

Violetta finished her training at the time Moscow was being evacuated against the Nazi invasion, and was sent on a three-thousand mile journey to be a ballerina at the ballet at Tashkent, Russian Turkestan. Here, at the age of eighteen, she danced the leading roles in two works, The Fountain of Bakchissarai, based on Pushkin’s famous poem, and Don Quixote, the Minkus work of which contemporary American balletgoers know only the famous pas de deux, but which I presented in America, during the season 1925-1926, staged by Laurent Novikoff, with settings and costumes by the great Russian painter, Korovin.

Another point of interest about Elvin is that she was never a member of the corps de ballet, for she was transferred from Tashkent to the Bolshoi Ballet, which had been moved, for safety reasons, to Kuibyshev, some five hundred miles from Moscow. In the early autumn of 1943, when the Nazi horde had been driven back in defeat, the Ballet returned to the Bolshoi, and Prokhorova danced important roles there.

It was in Moscow, in 1945, that Violetta Prokhorova married Harold Elvin, an architect associated with the British Embassy, and came with him to London. On her arrival in London she became a member of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, first as a soloist, and later as ballerina.

My own impressions are of a vibrant personality and a great beauty. Her feet are extraordinarily beautiful, and, if I am any judge of the female figure, I would say her body approximates the perfect classical proportions. In her dancing, her Russian training is at all times evident, for there is a charm of manner, a broad lyricism, coupled with a splendid poise that are not the common heritage of all western dancers.

It begins to sound like an overworked cliché, but again we have that rare quality in a dancer: intelligence. Once again, intelligence coupled with striking beauty. Elvin’s interests include all the classics in literature, the history of art, philosophy, museums, and good Russian food.

Already Elvin has had a film career, two motion pictures to date: Twice Upon a Time, by the makers of Red Shoes, and the latest, the story of the great British soprano, Nellie Melba, the title role of which is played by Patrice Munsel.

While engaged on the second American tour of the Sadler’s Wells company, Violetta met an American, whom she has recently married.

Talented far beyond average measure, Elvin is a true ballerina in the tradition of the Russian school and is ever alert to improve her art and to give audiences something better than her best.

NADIA NERINA

I cannot fail to pay my respects to the young Nadia Nerina, today another of the alternating ballerinas of the company, with full ballerina standing, whom I particularly remember as one of the most delightful and ebullient soloists of the company on its two American visits.

An example of the wide British Commonwealth base of the personnel of the Sadler’s Wells company, Nadia Nerina is from South Africa, where she was born in 1927. It was in Cape Town that she commenced her ballet studies and had her early career; for she was a winner of the South African Dancing Times Gold Medal and, when she was fifteen, was awarded the Avril Kentridge Shield in the Dance Festival at Durban. Moreover, she toured the Union of South Africa and, when nineteen, went to London to study at the Sadler’s Wells School. Very soon after her arrival, she was dancing leading roles and was one of the ballerinas of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.

Such was her success in Rosebery Avenue, and such the wisdom of Ninette de Valois, that, within the year, Nerina was transferred to Covent Carden. Today, as I have pointed out, she has been promoted to full ballerina status.

It is a well-deserved promotion, for Nerina’s development has been as sure as it has been steady. I have seen her in Le Lac des Cygnes since her ascendancy to full ballerina rank, and have rejoiced in her fine technical performance, as I have in the quality of her miming—something that is equally true in Delibes’ Sylvia.

It is characteristic of Ninette de Valois that she gives all her ballerinas great freedom within the organization. One is permitted to go to Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Another to La Scala, Milan. Yet another to films. An example of this desire on “Madame’s” part to encourage her leading personnel to extend their experience and to prevent any spirit of isolation, is the tour Nerina recently made through her native South Africa, in company with her Sadler’s Wells partner, Alexis Rassine, himself a South African.

The outstanding quality in Nerina’s dancing for me is the sheer joy she brings to it, a sort of love for dancing for its own sake. In everything she does, there is the imprint of her own strong personality, her vitality, and the genuine elegance she brings to the use of her sound technique.

ROWENA JACKSON

During the first two American tours of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, a young dancer who attracted an unusual amount of attention, particularly in the Ashton-Lambert Les Patineurs, for her remarkable virtuosic performance and her multiple turns, was Rowena Jackson.

Today, Rowena Jackson is the newest addition to the Sadler’s Wells list of ballerinas.

Rowena Jackson is still another example of the width of the British Commonwealth base of the Sadler’s Wells organization, having been born in Invercargil, New Zealand, on the 24th March, 1926, where her father was postmaster. Her first ballet training was at the Lawson-Powell School, in New Zealand. It was in 1947 that the young dancer joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.

This rise of the British dancer more than fulfils the prophecy of The Swan. It was thirty years ago that Pavlova said: “English women have fine faces, graceful figures, and a real sense of poetry of dancing. They only lack training to provide the best dancers of the world.” She went on: “If only more real encouragement were given in England to ballet dancers the day would not be far distant when the English dancer would prove a formidable rival to the Russians.”

Now that the British dancer has been given the encouragement, the truth of Anna Pavlova’s prophecy is the more striking.

As I have said, Rowena Jackson attracted attention throughout North America in Les Patineurs, gaining a reputation for a surpassing technical brilliance in turns. These turns, known as fouetées, I have mentioned more than once. Legend has it that Jackson can do in excess of one hundred-fifty of them, non-stop. It is quite incredible.

Brilliance is one thing. Interpretation is another. When I saw Jackson in Le Lac des Cygnes, my admiration for her and for Ninette de Valois soared. Jackson’s Swan Queen proved to me that at Sadler’s Wells another ballerina had been born. (I nearly wrote “created”; but ballerinas are born, not made). As the Swan Queen she was all pathos and softness and tenderness and protectiveness; to the evil Black Swan, Odile, she brought the hard brittleness the role demands.

Rowena Jackson’s future among the illustrious of the world of ballet seems assured, and I shall watch her with interest, as I am sure will audiences.

SADLER’S WELLS THEATRE BALLET

While I was in London after the close of the first American tour of the Sadler’s Wells Covent Garden Ballet, I paid a visit to the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the cradle of the organization.

The Sadler’s Wells Theatre is in Rosebery Avenue, in the Borough of Islington, now a middle-class residential section of London, but once a county borough. For nearly three hundred years, the site of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre has been used for entertainment purposes. Several theatres have stood on the site, and while the dance has always been prominent in its history, everything from tight-rope and wire-walking exhibitions to performing dogs and dance troupes has been seen there.

It was in 1683 that a certain Thomas Sadler, who was, apparently, a Highway Surveyor, lived there in what was then Clerkenwell, and found a well, actually a spring, having medicinal properties, in his garden. It soon was regarded as a holy well, with healing powers attributed to it. Hither came the halt, the blind and the sick to be cured, and Mr. Sadler determined to commercialize his property. On his lawn he built his Musik House, a long room with a stage, orchestra and seats for those partakers of the waters who desired refreshments as well during their imbibing—and he also provided entertainment. The well is still there today, preserved under the present theatre, but is no longer used, and the theatre’s water supply is from the municipal mains.

Rebuilt, largely by public subscription, the present theatre was opened in 1931, alternating opera and Shakespeare with the Old Vic, but eventually it became the exclusive home and base of the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company. In 1946, when Ninette de Valois accepted the invitation of the Covent Garden Opera Trust to move the Sadler’s Wells Ballet company to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, another company (actually the revival of another idea, the Sadler’s Wells Opera Ballet) was established at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and called the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.

Here, in a fine, comfortable, modern theatre, I saw a fresh young company, with seasoned artists, first-class productions, and some first-rate dancing: a company I felt America should know.

There was an extensive repertoire of modern works by Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, and the rising young John Cranko, and others. The Ashton works include Façade, the Ravel Valses Nobles et Sentimentales; Les Rendez-Vous, to Auber music arranged by Constant Lambert; and the charming Capriol Suite, to the music by Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock), inspired by Arbeau’s Orchesographie. There were three works by Andrée Howard: Assembly Ball, to the Bizet Symphony in C; Mardi Gras; and La Fête Etrange. Celia Franka had an interesting work, Khadra, to a Sibelius score, with charming Persian miniature setting and costumes by Honor Frost. The young South African John Cranko, who had been a member of the Covent Garden company in the first New York season, had a number of extremely interesting works, including Sea Change; and Ninette de Valois had revived her The Haunted Ballroom, to a Geoffrey Toye score, and the Lambert-Boyce The Prospect Before Us. There were also sound classics, including Swan Lake, in the second act version.

The company, under the direction of Ninette de Valois, had a fine dancer, Peggy van Praagh, as ballet mistress.

It occurred to me that, by adding new elements and reviving full length works, it would be an excellent thing to bring the company to the United States and Canada for a tour following upon that of the Covent Garden company.

I discussed the matter with Ninette de Valois and David Webster, both of whom were favorable to the idea; and, since it was impossible for the Covent Garden company to come over for a third tour at that time, they urged me to give further consideration to the possibility.

On my next visit to London, I went over matters in detail with George Chamberlain, Clerk to the Governors of Sadler’s Wells, and himself the opposite number at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre to David Webster at Covent Garden. I found Chamberlain equally cooperative and helpful, despite the fact he has a wide variety of interests and responsibilities, including the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company, the Old Vic, and the Sadler’s Wells School. We have become close friends. Following our initial conferences, we went into a series of them, in conjunction with Ursula Moreton, at the time “Madame’s” assistant at Sadler’s Wells, and Peggy van Praagh, the company’s ballet mistress.

As a result of these discussions, it was agreed to increase the size of the dancing personnel of the company from thirty-two to thirty-six, and to bring to North America a repertoire of fourteen ballets, including one full-length work, and to add to the roster one or two more principal dancers.

Handshakes all round sealed the bargain, and a contract was signed for a twenty-two week season for 1951-52.

It was on my return to London, in March, 1951, that I saw the première of the first of their new productions, Pineapple Poll, a ballet freely adapted from the Bab Ballad, “The Bumbeat Woman’s Story,” by W. S. Gilbert, with music by Arthur Sullivan, arranged by a young Australian, Charles Mackerras, a conductor at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. The scenery and costumes were by Osbert Lancaster, noted architectural historian and cartoonist, and the choreography by John Cranko, who had worked in collaboration with Lancaster and Mackerras.

The work had its first performance at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre on the 13th March, 1951. The entire programme I saw that night was made up of Cranko works, and I found myself seated before a quartet of works, highly varied in content and style, all of which interested me, some, to be sure, more than others. The evening commenced with Cranko’s Sea Change. A tragic work in a free style, a character ballet whose story was moving, but a ballet in which I never felt music and movement quite came together. The score was the orchestral piece, En Saga, by Jan Sibelius.

The new work, Pineapple Poll, was the second ballet of the evening. I was enchanted with it. I had always been a Sullivan admirer, and here were pieces from nigh on to a dozen of the Sullivan operas, woven together with great skill and brilliant orchestration into a marvelous integral whole by Charles Mackerras, a complete score in itself, as if it might have been directly composed for the ballet. I watched the dancers closely, and it was impossible for me to imagine a finer interpretation. Elaine Fifield, in the title role, was something more than piquant; she was a genuine ballerina, with a fascinating sense of character, her whole performance highly intelligent. There was no “mugging,” no “cuteness”; on the contrary, there were both humor and wit, and I noted she was a beautifully “clean” dancer. David Blair was a compelling officer, and his “hornpipe” almost on points literally brought the house down. Three other dancers impressed me: Sheillah O’Reilly, Stella Claire and David Poole. Osbert Lancaster’s sets were masterful, both as sets and as architecture. This, I decided, was a Cranko masterpiece, and it impressed me in much the same way as some of Massine’s gay ballets.

Pineapple Poll was followed by a delicate fantasy by Cranko, Beauty and the Beast, an extended pas de deux, set to some of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, and beautifully danced by Patricia Miller and David Poole, who were, I learned, a pair of South Africans from the Sadler’s Wells School.

The closing piece on the programme was another new ballet by Cranko, Pastorale, which had been given its first performance earlier in the season, just before Christmas. It was the complete antithesis of the Sullivan ballet. This was a Mozart work, his Divertimento No. 2, and choreography was Mozartian in feeling. It was a work of genuine charm, delicacy and real humor that revealed to me the excellence of a half-dozen of the principals of the company: Elaine Fifield and Patricia Miller, whom I have already mentioned, and young Svetlana Beriosova, the daughter of Nicholas Beriosoff, a former member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Svetlana was born in Lithuania in 1932, and had been brought to America by her parents in 1940, when, off and on, she toured with them in the days of my management of the Massine company, and frequently appeared as the little child, Clara, in The Nutcracker. Now rapidly maturing, she had been seen by Ninette de Valois in a small English ballet company, and had been taken into the Sadler’s Wells organization. The three ballerinas had an equal number of impressive partners in Pastorale: Pirmin Trecu, David Poole and David Blair.

I decided that Pineapple Poll, Pastorale and Beauty and the Beast must be included in the repertoire for America, and that the first of these could be a tremendous American success, a sort of British Gaîté Parisienne.

In further conversations and conferences, I pressed the matter of a full-length, full-evening ballet. The work I wanted was Delibes’ Sylvia. This is the famous ballet first given in Paris in 1876. I recognised there would be problems to be solved over the story, but the Delibes score is enchanting, delicate, essentially French; and is it not the score which Tchaikowsky himself both admired and appreciated? Moreover, a lot of the music is very well-known and loved.

We agreed upon Sylvia in principle, but “Freddy” Ashton, who was to stage it, was too occupied with other work, and it was at last agreed to substitute a new production of Delibes’ Coppélia, in a full-length, uncut version, never seen in North America except in a truncated form. It was, however, difficult indeed to achieve any progress, since every one was occupied with work of one kind or another, and continuously busy. Moreover, Dame Ninette was away from London in Turkey and Jugoslavia, lecturing, teaching, and checking on the national ballet schools she has organized in each of those countries, at the request of their respective governments, with the cooperation of the British Council.

It was not until three o’clock one morning several weeks later that we all managed to get together at one time and place to have a conference on repertoire. The following day I saw another performance at the Wells, and was a bit distressed. It was clear to me that it was going to be necessary to increase the size of the company still further, and also to be more selective in the choice and arrangement of the repertoire.

There followed a period of intense preparation on the part of the entire organization, with all of its attendant helter-skelter, and with day and night rehearsals. Meanwhile, I discussed and arranged for the production of a two-act production or version of The Nutcracker. The opening scene of this Tchaikowsky classic has always bothered me, chiefly because I felt it was dull and felt that, during its course, nothing really happened. There is, if the reader remembers, a rather banal Christmas party at which little Clara receives a nutcracker as a present, goes to bed without it, comes downstairs to retrieve it, and is forthwith transported to fairyland. I felt we would be better off to start with fairyland, and to omit the trying prologue. Moreover, I felt certain the inclusion of the work in this form would give added weight to the repertoire for the North American tour, since The Nutcracker and Tchaikowsky are always well-liked and popular, as the box-office returns have proven.

On this visit I spent three weeks in London, flying back to New York only to return to London three weeks later, to watch the company and to do what I could to speed up the preparations so that the company might be ready for the Canadian opening of the tour, the date of which was coming closer and closer with that inevitability such matters display.

The Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet and its entire organization showed really tremendous energy and application, and did everything possible to prepare themselves to follow the great American success of their sister company, something that was, admittedly, a very difficult thing to do.

Just before the company’s departure for the North American continent, it gave a four-week “American Festival Season” at Sadler’s Wells, consisting of the entire repertoire to be seen on this side of the Atlantic. This season included another Cranko work I have not before mentioned. It is Harlequin in April, a ballet commissioned for the Festival of Britain by the Arts Council. While I cannot say that it is the sort of piece that appeals to audiences by reason of its clarity, there is no gainsaying that it is a major creation and a greatly to be commended experiment, and, withal, a successful one. The choreographic work of John Cranko, in collaboration with the composer, Richard Arnell, and the artist-designer, John Piper, it was that much desired thing in ballet: a genuine collaboration between those individuals responsible for each aspect of it.

Although there was no attempt to use it as a plot idea, for it is in no sense a “literary” work, the idea for Harlequin in April presumably stemmed from the following lines from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:

I could not attempt to explain the work which, to me, consists solely of atmosphere. I liked Richard Arnell’s score; but the ballet, as a ballet, is one I found myself unable to watch very many times. Perhaps the simplest answer is that it is not my favorite type of ballet. Nevertheless, the fact remains it is a work of genuine distinction and was warmly praised by discriminating critics.

The first nights of the two classical works came a week apart. Coppélia was the first, on the night of the 4th September. It was, indeed, a fine addition to the repertoire. There were, in the Sadler’s Wells tradition, several casts; the first performance had Elaine Fifield, as Swanilda; David Blair, as Frantz; and David Poole, as Coppelius.

I was not too happy with the three settings designed by Loudon Sainthill, the Australian designer who had a great success at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre, always feeling they were not sufficiently strong either in color or design. However, as the first full-length, uncut version of the Delibes classic, it was notable, as it also was notable for the liveliness of its entire production and the zest and joy the entire company brought to it. Elaine Fifield was miraculously right as Swanilda, in her own special piquant style; David Blair was a most attractive Frantz; and David Poole was the first dignified Coppelius I had ever seen, with a highly original approach to the character. Alternate casts for Coppélia included Svetlana Beriosova as a quite different and very effective Swanilda, and Maryon Lane, another South African dancer of fine talent, with a personality quite different from the other two, as were Donald Britton’s Frantz and Stanley Holden’s Coppelius.

The 11th of September revealed the new Nutcracker I have mentioned. Actually, without the Prologue, it became a series of Tchaikowsky divertissements, staged with skill and taste under, as it happened, great pressure, by Frederick Ashton. It was a two-scene work, utilizing the Snow Flake and the Kingdom of Sweets scenes. Outstanding, to my way of thinking, were Beriosova as the Snow Queen; Fifield and Blair in the grand pas de deux; Maryon Lane in the Waltz of the Flowers. The most original divertissement was the Danse Arabe.

Following the first performance of The Nutcracker, I gave a large party in honor of both companies: the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Company and that from the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, at Victory Hall.

In this godspeed to the sister company, Margot Fonteyn was, as usual, very much on the job, always the good colleague, wishing Fifield and Beriosova the same success in the States and Canada as she and her colleagues of the Covent Garden company had enjoyed. From Covent Garden also came David Webster, Louis Yudkin, and Herbert Hughes, “Freddy” Ashton, and Robert Irving, the genial and able musical director of the Ballet at Covent Garden, all to speed the sister company on its way, to give them tips on what to see, what to do, and also on what not to do.

The reader will, I am sure, realize what a difficult thing it was for the sister company to follow in the footsteps and the triumphant successes of the company from Covent Garden. A standard of excellence and grandeur had been set by them eclipsing any previously established standards that had existed for ballet on the North American continent.

It is a moot question just what the public and the press of America expected from the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. For more than a year, in all publicity and promotion, with all the means at our command, we emphasized the differences between the two companies: in personnel, in principal artists, in repertoire. We also carefully pointed out the likenesses between them: the same base of operations, the same school, the same direction, the same moving spirit, the same ideals, the same purpose.

The success of the company throughout the entire breadth of the United States and Canada magnificently proved the wisdom of their coming. The list of cities played is formidable: Quebec, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, Des Moines, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, B.C., San Francisco, San José, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Waco, Houston, Dallas, Shreveport, Little Rock, Springfield, Mo., Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, New Orleans, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Miami, and Miami Beach, Columbia, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, Norfolk, Richmond, Washington—where for the first time ballet played in a proper theatre—Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Syracuse, Troy, White Plains, Providence, Hartford, Boston, and New York City. Perhaps the most characteristic tribute to the company came from Alfred Frankenstein, the distinguished critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, who wrote: “This may not be the largest ballet company in the world, but it is certainly the most endearing.” There is no question that the mounting demand for the quick return of the company on the part of local managers and sponsoring organizations and groups throughout the country is another proof of the warmth of their welcome when they next come.

The musical side of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet revealed the same high standards of the organization, under the direction of that splendid young British conductor, John Lanchbery. Lanchbery, a thorough and distinguished musician, not only was a fine conductor, but an extremely sensitive ballet conductor, which is not necessarily the same thing. So admired was he by the orchestra that, in San Francisco, the players presented him with a lovely gift in a token of appreciation.

During the entire association with the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet there was always the warm cooperation of George Chamberlain, and the fine executive ability and personal charm of their tour manager, Douglas Morris.

It is my sincere hope that, following the season 1953-54, they will be able to make an even more extended tour of this continent. By that time, some of the company’s younger members will have become more mature, and the repertoire will have been strengthened and increased by the accretion of two years.

There is the seemingly eternal charge against ballet dancers. They are either “too young” or else “too old.” The question I am forced to ask in this connection is: What is the appropriate age for the personnel of a ballet company, for a dancer? My answer is one the reader may anticipate from previous references to the subject in this book: Artistry knows and recognizes no age on the stage. Spiritually the same is true in life itself.

It is, of course, possible that, by that time, there may be some who will refrain from referring to the members of the company as “juniors,” and will realize that they are aware of the facts of life. Three years will have elapsed since their first visit. During all this time they will have been dancing regularly five or six times a week; will have behind them not only London successes, but their Edinburgh Festival and African triumphs as well.

At the close of the American Festival Season in Rosebery Avenue, the company entrained for Liverpool, there to embark in the Empress of France. It was a gay crossing, but less gay than had been anticipated. Originally, the Empress was to have carried H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth, and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, on their Royal Visit to the Dominion of Canada. The ship’s owners, the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, had constructed a specially equipped theatre on the top deck, where the company was to have given two performances for the Royal couple. H.R.H., Princess Margaret is the Honorary President of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, and there is considerable royal interest in ballet. Unfortunately, the serious illness of the King, and his operation, necessitated a last moment change of plans on the part of Princess Elizabeth and her husband, who made their crossing by plane. At the last moment before sailing, the theatre was dismantled and removed.

Two members of my staff made a long journey down the St. Lawrence, to clamber aboard the Empress at daybreak and to travel up the river with the company to Quebec, the opening point of the tour. I had gone on to Quebec to greet them, as had our American staff and orchestra from New York. This was the same orchestra, the “American Sadler’s Wells Orchestra,” that had constituted the splendid musical side of the Covent Garden company’s two American seasons. There was no cutting of corners, no sparing of expense to maintain the same high standards of production. For those with an interest in figures, it might be noted that the orchestra alone cost in excess of $10,000 weekly.

Heading the company, and remaining with it until it was well on its way, were Dame Ninette de Valois and George Chamberlain, with Peggy van Praagh as “Madame’s” assistant, and ballet-mistress for the entire tour.

There were three days of concentrated rehearsal and preparation before the first performance in Quebec. Some difficulties had to be overcome, for Quebec City is not the ideal place for ballet production. Lacking a real theatre or opera house, a cinema had to be utilized, a house with a stage far from adequate for a theatre spectacle, an orchestra pit far too small for an orchestra the size of ours, and cramped quarters all around. Nevertheless, a genuine success was scored.

Following the Quebec engagement, the company moved to Ottawa by special train—this time the “Sadler’s Wells Theatre Special.” The night journey to Ottawa provided many of the company with their first experience of sleeping-car travel of the American-type Pullman. Passing through one of the cars on the way to my drawing-room before the train pulled out, I overheard one of the corps de ballet girls behind her green curtains, obviously snuggling down for the night, sigh and say: “Oh, isn’t it just lovely!... Just like in the films!”

Ottawa was in its gayest attire, preparing for the Royal visit. The atmosphere was festive. The Governor General and the Viscountess Alexander of Tunis entertained the entire company at a reception at Government House, flew afterwards to Montreal officially to welcome the Royal couple, and flew back to attend the opening performance, as the official representative of H.M. the King. Hundreds were turned away from the Ottawa performances, and a particularly gay supper was given the company after the final performance by the High Commissioner to Canada for Great Britain, Sir Hugh and Lady Clutterbuck.

Montreal, with its mixed French and English population, gave the company a wholehearted acceptance and warm enthusiasm, by no means second to that accorded the sister company.

So the tour went, breaking box-office records for ballet in many cities, including Buffalo, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (where, for the eight performances, there was not a seat to be had four weeks before the company’s arrival), Los Angeles, the entire state of Florida, and Washington, where, as I have said, I had been successful in securing a genuine theatre, Loew’s Capitol, and where, for the first time ballet was seen by the inhabitants of our national capital with all the theatrical appurtenances that ballet requires: scenery, lights, atmosphere, instead of the mausoleum-like Constitution Hall, with its bare platform backed only by a tapestry of the Founding Fathers.

So the tour went for twenty-two weeks in a long, transcontinental procession of cumulative success, with the finale in New York City. Here, because of the unavailability of the Metropolitan Opera House, since the current opera season had not been completed, it was necessary to go to a film house, the Warner Theatre, the former Strand, where Fokine and Anatole Bourman had, in the early days of movie house “presentations,” staged weekly ballet performances, sowing the seeds for present-day ballet appreciation.

The Warner Theatre was far from ideal for ballet presentation, being much too long for its width, giving from the rear the effect of looking at the stage through reversed opera glasses or binoculars. Also, from an acoustical point of view, the house left something to be desired as it affected the sound of the exceptionally large orchestra. But it was the only nearly suitable house available, and Ninette de Valois, who had returned to the States for the Boston engagement, and had remained through the early New York performances, found no fault with the house.

Among the many problems in connection with the presentation of ballet, none is more ticklish than that of determining on an opening night programme in any metropolitan center, particularly New York. Many elements have to be weighed one against the other. Should the choice be one of a selection of one-act ballets, there is the necessity for balancing classical and modern and the order in which they should be given, after they have actually been decided on. In the case of the Sadler’s Wells companies, featuring, as they do, full-length works occupying an entire evening in performance, there is the eternal question: which one?

The importance of the first impression created cannot be overrated. More often than not, in arriving at a decision of this kind, we listen to the advice of everyone in the organization. All suggestions are carefully considered, and hours are spent in discussion and the exchange of ideas, and the reasons supporting those ideas.

What was good in London may quite well be fatal in New York. What New York would find an ideal opening programme might be utterly wrong for Chicago. San Francisco’s highly successful and popular opening night programme well might turn out to be Los Angeles’ poison.

Whatever the decision may be, it is always arrived at after long and careful thought; and, when reached, it is the best product of many minds. It usually turns out to be wrong.

If, as is often the case, the second night’s programme turns out to be another story, there is the almost inevitable query on the part of the critics: “Why didn’t you do this last night?” Many of them seem to be certain that there must have been personal reasons involved in the decision, some sort of private and individually colored favoritism being exercised....

I smile and agree.

The only possible answer is: “You’re right.... I’m wrong.”