Dame Ninette de Valois

Dame Ninette de Valois (1898–2001), one of the most influential figures in British ballet in the 20th century and founder of the Royal Ballet. She was a dancer, choreographer, teacher, administrator, and artistic director, although she relinquished her careers as dancer and choreographer to focus on directing and teaching. A woman of remarkable vision, De Valois was determined to found a national ballet for Britain.

She was born Edris Stannus on June 6, 1898, in Baltiboys, near Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland, the daughter of a British army officer who was killed in 1917. The family had moved back to England by the time she was 11 and she began to train as a dancer at the London theatrical school, the Lila Field Academy. As Ninette de Valois she danced at the Kilburn Empire at the age of 13. She went on to dance in theatres on piers, in pantomime (notably at the Lyceum in London, 1914–1918), in opera-ballets (including at Covent Garden), and leading her own small group in variety and revues. In 1922 she became a member of the pick-up company of Léonide Massine, employed as a freelance dancer for specific projects, and Massine, a charismatic dancer and inventive choreographer, became a role model. Between 1923 and 1925 she was a soloist with the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, having joined the company to learn not only new ballets but also for an insight into how the best ballet company was run. The following year she left Diaghilev to open her own school, appreciating that to create a national company she needed to train dancers to the required standard and give her corps de ballet a unified style.

Meanwhile, De Valois continued to dance in variety with Anton Dolin, and choreographed experimental productions and taught at both the Festival Theatre, Cambridge, and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. She recognized the potential of working with Lilian Baylis at the Old Vic theatre in London, as it gave her pupils stage experience and would provide an initial home for her company. Her Vic-Wells Ballet presented its first full evening of dance on May 5, 1931. Her close collaboration with the Camargo Society (1930-1933, established to showcase British dance talent) enabled her to acquire the bulk of its repertoire and assets when its work was completed.

De Valois created her most important ballets in the 1930s and 1940s. Many were inspired by art-works: Job (1931), to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, was inspired by illustrations for the biblical Book of Job by William Blake; Bar aux Folies-Bergère (1934), after the painting by Édouard Manet; and The Rake’s Progress (1935), which animated the well-known series of paintings by William Hogarth. Checkmate (1937), created to a libretto and score by Arthur Bliss, was inspired by a game of chess and pitted love against death; it was to have considerable resonance at its premiere in Paris.

In developing her training of dancers De Valois drew on what she had learnt when she perceptively studied with the greatest teachers working in London—Francesca Zanfretta, Edouard Espinosa, Enrico Cecchetti, and Nicholas Legat—amalgamating the best aspects of the French, Italian, and Russian schools. Late in life she developed her own syllabus for teachers, which included emphasizing petit allegro (fleet footwork) and a rich port de bras (set positions of the arms).

A determined leader and able negotiator she could be ruthless in pursuing her aims for the company. As an artistic director she built up a rich repertoire, employing the Russian notator Nicholas Sergeyev to stage the classics of the Russian Imperial Ballet. Thus The Sleeping Beauty became a signature piece of her company—the ballet with which they re-opened the Royal Opera House in 1946, claiming it as their rightful home—and the ballet that stunned American audiences on the company’s first visit to New York’s Metropolitan opera house in 1949. De Valois persuaded Frederick Ashton, whose choreographic style contrasted with her own, to become the company’s choreographer and appointed Constant Lambert to be its music director. Her team was completed by employing and developing first-class dancers. When, for example, Alicia Markova left in 1935 De Valois groomed Margot Fonteyn to be her ballerina.

De Valois married the physician Arthur Connell in 1935. In addition to running her company, she was a lively speaker and excellent writer of articles on dance. She also published several volumes of autobiography and a volume of poems. As well as the many awards from the international dance community and honorary doctorates, she was made a Dame in 1951 and received the Erasmus Prize (1974), Companion of Honour (1982), and Order of Merit (1992). She died in London on March 8, 2001.