Voices of British Ballet

• Joan Seaman

  Joan Seaman gives us a wonderful bird's eye view of VE Day which she spent seeing Sadler's Wells Ballet stars Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann dance Coppélia and her interview is full of the amazing good humoured selflessness demostrated by so many young people in World War II. Joan had volunteered to serve in the WAAF at 19 and it was during this time that she discovered what would be a life-long enthusiam for ballet. She went on to be deeply involved in the Ballet Association, In this episode she talks to Gerald Dowler about her first encounters with ballet whilst volunteering with the WAAF. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• David Wall

  David Wall was one of the greatest male dancers of his era, with an extraordinary stage charisma, range, theatricality and honesty. In this interview he talks to Frank Freeman, a former colleague, about his early training and his work in the Royal Ballet Company, which included partnering Dame Margot Fonteyn at the age of 19, and having major roles created on him by Sir Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor and Sir Kenneth MacMillan. He also gives us some insight into his enthusiasm for theatre and his friendship with some of the great actors of the time. The interview is introduced by Voices of British Ballet founder and dancer, Patricia Linton, in conversation with Natalie Steed.David Wall’s career in dance began with ballroom dancing classes, followed by ballet classes with Mrs Durnsford in Windsor. Training with the Royal Ballet School began when he was 9 years old, and he joined the Royal Ballet Touring Company in 1963. He was appointed Principal at the age of 20, the youngest in the history of the Company, having already partnered Margot Fonteyn in Les Sylphides at the age of 19 and going on to perform Swan Lake with her the following year.He joined the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 1970, where he continued to partner Fonteyn frequently, as well as Doreen Wells, Lynn Seymour, Natalia Makarova and all the principal ballerinas of the time. His male colleagues included Rudolf Nureyev and Sir Anthony Dowell, whose brilliance in no way overshadowed his own.While in the Royal Ballet, Wall worked with many choreographers, including Dame Ninette de Valois (Rake’s Progress), Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor. He is often remembered for his work in some of the heavily dramatic ballets of Kenneth MacMillan: Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Lescaut in Manon and Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling, the last two roles having been created on him, but he also excelled in lighter pieces, such as La Fille mal gardée, The Two Pigeons and Coppélia, aside from achieving great acclaim in the classics such as Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and Giselle.Wall retired from dancing at the top of his career in 1984. He was then Assistant Director and Director for the Royal Academy of Dance until 1991. In 1995 he began to work as Ballet Master for English National Ballet until 2011, though he continued to coach both there and for the Royal Ballet. Wall was married to the ballerina Alfreda Thorogood and they had two children. He was appointed CBE in 1985, and died in 2013.A charismatic presence on stage, in whatever type of role, tragic, noble, sinister, light-hearted, he was always technically impeccable, as well as acutely sensitive to the essence of a work. He was thus able in his later years to pass on his insights to the next generation of dancers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  23:50
• The Braunsweg Years

  The story of Festival Ballet and the impressario Julian Braunsweg is told by a panel who danced with the company.The dance writer, and former dancer, Deborah Weiss is joined in the studio for a special Voices of British Ballet round table discussion. Anita Landa, Pamela Hart, Joyce Lyndon and David Long, are all former dancers with Festival Ballet, and talk about the early days and legacy of one of the most important companies in the history of British ballet.Festival Ballet was founded by the impresario Julian Braunsweg. He persuaded Dame Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin to lead the company, which started with a concert tour in 1949.Taking its name from the forthcoming Festival of Britain, the company was originally named Festival Ballet and then, in 1969, London Festival Ballet. In 1989, it changed its name once again, to English National Ballet.The discussion focuses on the Braunsweg years, 1949 until he was ousted in 1965. Julian Braunsweg left a memoir of the time, his so-called Ballet Scandals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  58:24
• Noel Bronley

  Noel Bronley was a member of International Ballet from 1946 until it closed in 1953. Little remembered now, at the time International Ballet was a very large undertaking of over 100 people. It toured extensively, both in Britain and abroad, under the direction of its founder, director and prima ballerina, the redoubtable Mona Inglesby. In conversation with Patricia Linton, Noel speaks about the vicissitudes of touring and landladies, and also gives us some candid insights into the character of Mona Inglesby – and the Inglesby parents.The interview is introduced by Natalie Steed and Jane Pritchard, Curator of Dance at the Victoria and Albert Museum.Born on Christmas Day in 1927, Noel Bronley (born Brown) started ballet classes in order to strengthen her body and correct a curvature of the spine. Loving dancing, she quickly became determined to have a life in ballet and trained at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School, although, as a security, her father insisted that she did a Pitman’s course in shorthand and typing. She joined Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet in 1946, when it had been running for 5 years. Having joined, and, at Inglesby’s insistence, having adopted the name Bronley (after Bronislava Nijinska), Noel immersed herself in touring and performing in what at the time was a bigger company than the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. This was her life until 1953, when, having failed to secure an Arts Council grant, International Ballet was forced to fold, despite having brought ballet to millions over its existence and up to then having had no public funding. Since 1953 Noel has played a big role in keeping memories of the company alive and ex-members in touch through re-unions. Belated recognition of International Ballet came when a plaque was placed in the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank in 2012. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  24:11
• 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 the landscape and people of Greece. Choosing Craxton for the designs, sets and costumes of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Daphnis and Chloë in 1951 was, therefore, an inspired choice. In conversation with Patricia Linton and Anthony O’Hear, Craxton speaks of how this came about, of working with Ashton, and of the influence of Margot Fonteyn on his work. He also expresses strong views on the importance of visual artists in ballet.The interview is introduced by Anthony O'Hear in conversation with Natalie Steed.John Craxton was born in London in 1922 into a well-known musical family. His father, Harold Craxton, was a composer and, for over 40 years, a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Janet Craxton, John’s sister, was a distinguished oboeist. At the age of 17, John Craxton went to Paris to study art, being too young for the Chelsea School of Art. When war started, he continued his studies in various London colleges. He mounted solo exhibitions in 1942 and 1944 and in 1943 toured Pembrokeshire with his contemporary Graham Sutherland, by whom he was clearly influenced. Other influences around this time were the Romantic painter Samuel Palmer (1805 – 1881) and his close friend Lucian Freud.After the war Craxton began to travel widely, but it was Greece, and Crete specifically, that particularly attracted him and where he spent increasing amounts of time. From around 1970 until his death in 2009, he shared his life between a home in Crete and London.Craxton was attracted to the light and colour of Greece, and to what he saw as an arcadian life, both human and natural. His art became suffused with the textures, personalities and the floral and geological forms of Greece, all rendered with striking clarity and colour. As time went on, his often very large canvases showed a tendency to semi-abstraction, but an abstraction always rooted in the flowers, trees, landscapes and pastoral life of Greece, and at times showing the influence of Byzantine iconography.His designs for the ballet Daphnis and Chlöe in 1951 are at the start of his Grecian odyssey, and show clearly the direction his art was taking, away from England and Wales, and into an imagined Hellenic paradise.Over the years Craxton gained increasing recognition, both in Britain and in his adopted Greece. He had major retrospectives at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1967 and, two years after his death, at Tate Britain in 2011. John Craxton was elected Royal Academician in 1993.The photograph of John Craxton is by W. Suschitzky, Copyright the Estate of W. Suschitzky Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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