Voices of British Ballet

• Siobhan Davies

  Siobhan Davies explains to the dance critic Alastair Macaulay her initial engagement with dance in the 1960s. She talks about how she began as an art student, fascinated by the act of drawing, particularly in charcoal, and then started taking dance classes with the Contemporary Dance Group. She was introduced to dance by the Graham technique, with its big strokes and large, sweeping arms and legs. There was, though, something lacking, which Siobhan later found in the smaller, more focused movement of Merce Cunningham. In 1967 she took part in the first public performance of what became the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. A little later, under the aegis of Ballet for All, she took part in a tour of works by Robert Cohan, including Eclipse (a simple, clear duet, with clarity of space) and Cell (politically charged, several couples interacting, ending with a single man on stage). At this time she got to know Richard Alston, another former art student, who shared her views on dance. While she had (and has) huge respect for Cohan, she was beginning to feel that her body was not fully alert. She was restless, and wanted to move on.The interview is introduced by Kenneth Tharp who danced with Siobhan Davies.Siobhan (Sue) Davies was born in London in 1950. Originally studying at art school, she started taking dance classes with the Contemporary Art Group in 1967. In 1969 she became a member of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, and began choreographing in the 1970s. She became the Associate Choreographer of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1974, and its Resident Choreographer in 1983. Important early works were Sphinx (1977) and Plain Song (1981).In 1981 Davies started working with her own group, Siobhan Davies and Dancers. In Siobhan Davies and Dancers joined up with a group founded by Richard Alston and Ian Spink to form Second Stride, which was influential in the 1980s and toured the USA. Davies left LCDT in 1987, winning a Fulbright Arts Fellowship to spend a year studying in America, the first choreographer to do so. On her return in 1988, she founded her own company, Siobhan Davies Dance, and also became the Resident Choreographer of Rambert Dance Company, a position she held until 1992. Important works created in the 1990s included Make-Make (1992), Wanting to Tell Stories (1993), Wild Translations (1995) and Bank (1997).In the early 2000s Davies began moving away from pieces for performance in traditional theatres to site specific works, in such venues as art galleries, studios, and even on occasion an aircraft hangar. In 2007 she abandoned touring productions altogether and disbanded the Siobhan Davies Dance company in favour of working with the Siobhan Davies Studios, which had opened in 2006 in Lambeth, South London. This is a multi-media complex enabling the exploration of relationships between dance and movement and the visual arts, film, video, craft, poetry and sound. In 2012, in collaboration with the film maker David Hinton, Davies created All This Can Happen, a film composed entirely of archive photographs and film, which was shown in international film festivals around the world.Siobhan Davies was appointed DBE for services to dance in 2020. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  24:07
• Clement Crisp on Constant Lambert

  Critic and writer Clement Crisp gives a succinct and vivid summing up of the debt British ballet owes to Constant Lambert, not just as the conductor for the Vic-Wells and then the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, but as what Crisp calls their artistic conscience. He also speaks about Lambert’s own musical genius, both as a composer and a conductor, and his penchant for reviving unjustly overlooked music. The interview ends with the sad story of the ballet Tiresias and Lambert’s early death only weeks after its premiere.The interview is introduced by Gerland Dowler in conversation with Natalie Steed.Widely regarded as the doyen of British ballet criticism, Crisp was an imposing figure in the ballet world, both in person and in print, and was so for nearly half a century. His dazzling knowledge of dance (and other arts), authoritative style and occasional waspish barb made him a voice to be reckoned with. His passion for ballet began at the age of 12. He was educated at Bordeaux and Oxford Universities, and after spells in business and teaching, he became the ballet critic of the Spectator in 1966, followed in 1970 by several decades on the Financial Times. He was the Librarian and Archivist at The Royal Academy of Dance from 1968-1986, and Archivist until 2001. He wrote many books on ballet and its history and related arts, frequently co-authored with Mary Clarke. In 1992 he received the Royal Academy of Dance’s Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award, and was also made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, Denmark. He was awarded an OBE in 2005 for services to ballet. He died in 2022.Episode photo: L-R: John Field, Clement Crisp and Leslie Edwards in conversation at The Royal Opera House, London in 1975.© G.B.L. Wilson/Royal Academy of Dance/ArenaPAL.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  15:11
• Beryl Grey

  Darcey Bussell introduces this episode featuring the dancer Beryl Grey.Beryl Grey is in conversation with Frank Freeman, who sadly died in 2011, about her early training, first with Madeleine Sharp and then with Phyllis Bedells before going to the Sadler’s Wells School at the age of 10 in 1937. She joined the Sadler’s Wells Company when she was 14, and started performing leading ballerina roles almost straight away. She talks about this, and about touring during the war, before concluding with an account of the Company’s historic opening performance of Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden in 1946.Beryl Grey was born 1927 in Highgate, London and died in 2022. She began her ballet training at the age of four. At the age of 10, having passed all the Royal Academy of Dance examinations it was possible for her to take, she entered the Sadler’s Wells School. When she was 14, she joined the Sadler’s Wells Company, and almost immediately won leading roles. She danced a full Swan Lake on her fifteenth birthday and Giselle in 1944.In 1957, she resigned from the Royal Ballet, and embarked on a new international career as a guest ballerina, including appearances with the Royal Ballet and (London) Festival Ballet. In 1957-8 she was the first English dancer to be honoured as a guest artist in Leningrad, at the Bolshoi in Moscow and in Tiflis [Tbilisi] . In 1964 she became the first Western guest artist to feature with the Peking Ballet and the Shanghai Company.From 1968 - 1979 Beryl Grey was the Artistic Director of London Festival Ballet. She was President of English National Ballet, President of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Dance. Her many honours include five honorary doctorates and the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award of the Royal Academy of Dance (in 1997). In 2016 she received the De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. She was appointed C.B.E. in 1973, D.B.E. in 1988 and in 2017 was made a Companion of Honour (C.H) for services to dance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  19:36
• Dudley Simpson

  This self-effacing, straightforward man with a twinkle in his eye is known for his compositions for many TV dramas in the 1960s and 70s, including Doctor Who. Perhaps surprisingly, this career started in ballet! Dudley Simpson recounts to Patricia Linton, the founder of Voices of British Ballet, how he travelled from Australia to the Royal Opera House where, with virtually no preparation, he conducted the orchestra of over 70 players, for a ballet performance of Coppélia. Dudley explains how this turned out.This episode is introduced by Barry Wordsworth in conversation with Natalie Steed.Dudley Simpson was born in Melbourne in 1922 and showed an early musical talent. At the age of 13 he won a piano competition for a radio station, and became its official accompanist. While excelling at improvisation, he also studied musical theory, including orchestration and composition. His studies were interrupted by five years military service in the Australian army, after which he started working for the Borovansky Ballet (the fore-runner of The Australian Ballet), first as a pianist and then as assistant conductor and, in 1957, as its musical director.As a result of working in Australia with Margot Fonteyn and a group of ballet dancers from the UK, Simpson decided to go to London. He worked first as a ballet pianist, but in 1959 began to conduct the Royal Opera House Orchestra in ballet performances, becoming its principal conductor from 1960 to 1963. This involved a considerable amount of touring in Europe and the Middle East, with Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev leading the company. In 1963, Simpson arranged Lizst’s B minor sonata for Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand.By 1964, he had already started working for television. Simpson began the work for which he is best known, the incidental music for Doctor Who. This involved composing and directing the music for 62 stories over nearly 300 episodes. Simpson’s involvement with Doctor Who continued until 1980. During this period he worked on many other television series, including The Brothers, Blake’s 7, The Tomorrow People and Tales of the Unexpected. He also composed symphonic music and music for two ballets, A Winter Play for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and Ballet/Class for the The Royal Ballet School. Simpson retired in 1987 and returned to Australia, where he died in 2017, aged 95.Episode photograph: ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL AT ALDEBURGH, Jill Montgomery, Dudley Simpson, Avril Bergen, Susan Turnham, July 1961, (c) Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  25:24
• Brenda Hamlyn

  Brenda Hamlyn-Bencini talks about training under Marie Rambert, the post-war dance scene and touring Germany with ENSA in the immediate aftermath of WWII.At 92, Brenda Hamlyn-Bencini describes events and people from the 1940s, as if it was yesterday. She certainly does not dispel any myths about ‘Mim’ [Marie] Rambert’s powerful personality. Brenda talks candidly of her days at Cone Ripman School during the war, and of taking classes with Rambert herself in London, whom, for all her harshness, she admired. She joined Ballet Rambert and speaks of the devastation she witnessed on an ENSA tour of Germany straight after the war. Brenda also speaks of working with Walter Gore and Frank Staff. Hamyln-Bencini is remembered as a wonderful teacher and lifelong advocate and devotee of the Cecchetti method. The interview is introduced by the dance historian and curator Jane Pritchard.Brenda Hamlyn was born in London in 1925. She trained at the Cone Ripman School from 1934-41. She started taking classes with Marie Rambert in London, as a result of which she began working for Lunch Time Ballet in 1941. A short period with the Ballet Guild was followed by full membership of Ballet Rambert from 1943-8. During this time she toured extensively with Rambert, including an ENSA tour to Germany immediately after the war, and a tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1947-8. In 1948 she joined the Empire Ballet in Leicester Square, and began taking classes with [Vera] Volkova and [Stanislas]Idizikowski. In 1951 she went to Milan, and began dancing throughout Italy and other parts of Europe, including Salzburg and Cologne. In 1963 Brenda Hamlyn opened her own Scuola de Danza Hamlyn in Florence, qualifying shortly after as a Cecchetti teacher. She has since become internationally renowned as an expert on and practitioner in the Cecchetti Method. In 1987 she became a Cecchetti examiner and in 1989 President of the Cecchetti Society of Italy. On stepping down from directorship of her own school after 23 years, she continued to teach and lecture in many countries on the Cecchetti Method until well into the 1990s. In 1996 she won the Enrico Cecchetti Medal and, in 1998, the Premio Cecchetti. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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