Ninette de Valois: building a home for British ballet

Ninette de Valois did more than found a ballet company. She built a system: a school to train dancers, a repertory company to employ them and a body of work that gave British ballet an identity of its own. The institution that began as the Vic-Wells Ballet became The Royal Ballet; her work also helped establish ballet in Turkey. Her influence came from the organisation of a lasting artistic life as much as from the choreography she made for the stage.

From Edris Stannus to the Ballets Russes

Born Edris Stannus on 6 June 1898 in Blessington, County Wicklow, she moved to England in 1905 to live with her grandmother in Kent. She began ballet lessons in 1908 and, at 13, entered professional training at the Lila Field Academy for Children. Around this time she took the name Ninette de Valois. Her professional debut came as a principal dancer in pantomime at the Lyceum Theatre in London’s West End.

In 1919, aged 21, she became a principal dancer with Beecham Opera, then the resident opera company at the Royal Opera House. She continued her ballet studies with teachers including Edouard Espinosa, Enrico Cecchetti and Nicholas Legat. In 1923 she joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, performing across Europe and rising to the rank of soloist. She created roles in works including Les biches and Le Train Bleu, and mentored the young Alicia Markova.

De Valois later said that working with Diaghilev taught her how to run a ballet company. The experience became a practical education in repertory and organisation, not simply a celebrated chapter in her dancing career. In 1924, after doctors found damage associated with a previously undiagnosed case of childhood polio, she stepped back from regular, intensive performance. She turned increasingly towards teaching, choreography and the more demanding task of creating an institution.

A school, a company and a British repertory

In 1927 de Valois established the Academy of Choreographic Art in London and the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet in Dublin. Her London ambition was to create a repertory company whose dancers would be trained in a distinctively British style. Students gained stage experience in opera and plays at the Old Vic, where theatre owner Lilian Baylis was developing a dance programme. Baylis had acquired and refurbished Sadler’s Wells Theatre, which reopened in 1931.

De Valois moved her school into studios at Sadler’s Wells, where it became the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. The company formed alongside it was the Vic-Wells Ballet, named for its association with the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells. Its first full ballet production opened at the Old Vic on 5 May 1931, with Anton Dolin as guest star; the company performed at Sadler’s Wells later that month. The school and company became predecessors of the Royal Ballet School, The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet.

At first the company had only six female dancers, and de Valois herself performed as lead dancer as well as choreographing. She retired from the stage in 1933, after Alicia Markova joined the company as its prima ballerina. De Valois then developed the company’s range, drawing on classical repertory while building a British one. In 1935 she appointed Frederick Ashton as principal choreographer and Constant Lambert as musical director. Dancers associated with the company included Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey and Michael Somes. A 1949 tour of the United States brought the Sadler’s Wells Ballet wide attention, and Fonteyn became an international celebrity.

Making ballets, shaping institutions

De Valois’s choreography was central to the repertory she was building. Her 1931 ballet Job, based on William Blake’s engraved illustrations for the Book of Job, was the first ballet produced by an entirely British creative team. De Valois choreographed it; Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the commissioned score, orchestrated by Constant Lambert, and Gwendolen Raverat designed it. Geoffrey Keynes wrote the libretto. The ballet premiered in July 1931 and became an important work in the developing British repertory.

Among her other best-known works are The Rake’s Progress (1935) and Checkmate (1937), alongside The Haunted Ballroom (1934). The works named in accounts of her career therefore represent only part of a sustained choreographic practice. She also made shorter pieces and worked on dance for plays and operas. In 1935, her collaboration with Ashton on The Rake’s Progress helped add to the company’s repertory; her own Checkmate followed two years later.

In 1956, the ballet company and its school received a Royal Charter and were formally linked. This did not simply amount to a new name: it secured the standing of institutions de Valois had spent decades developing. She retired as director of The Royal Ballet in 1963, though she remained an influential presence. She formally retired from the school in 1970. Her work for ballet in Britain also included support for projects in Ireland, among them the Cork Ballet Company and the Irish National Ballet Company.

Taking the model to Turkey

De Valois’s institution-building extended beyond Britain and Ireland. In 1947 she established the first ballet school in Turkey, following the model of the Sadler’s Wells school. The Turkish government had invited her to investigate the possibility of establishing ballet training there. The school began in Istanbul and later became part of the music and ballet provision at Ankara State Conservatory.

The project took time to establish. Molly Lake and Travis Kemp took responsibility for running the school in 1954, at de Valois’s request. She also helped the emerging state ballet company through early productions and performances, with Royal Ballet dancers among the guest artists. The repertoire included classical works such as Giselle, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, as well as ballets by Ashton and de Valois herself.

In 1965 she choreographed Çeşmebaşı (At the Fountain), the first full-length work created for the new Turkish State Ballet. Its score was by Turkish composer Ferit Tuzun, and the choreography incorporated elements of Turkish folk dance. This undertaking makes clear that de Valois’s influence abroad was not simply a matter of exporting a British company’s repertory. It involved creating opportunities for training and performance within a developing national ballet institution.

Honours and a long life in dance

De Valois married physician Arthur Blackall Connell in 1935. She continued to make public appearances into old age and died in Barnes, London, on 8 March 2001, aged 102. Her career was recognised with honours in Britain and elsewhere. She was appointed CBE in 1947 and promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951. In 1981 she became a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour, and in 1992 she received the Order of Merit.

Her awards included the Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal in 1964 and the Erasmus Prize in 1974. She also received honorary degrees from universities including London, Sheffield, Trinity College Dublin, Oxford and Aberdeen. These distinctions reflected a career spanning performance, choreography, teaching and leadership. De Valois’s own books included Invitation to the Ballet and the memoir Come Dance with Me.

Why Ninette de Valois deserves a place in British Legacy

Ninette de Valois deserves a place in British Legacy because she made a national ballet tradition more than an aspiration. She founded the school and company that became central predecessors of the Royal Ballet School and The Royal Ballet, and helped establish Birmingham Royal Ballet’s institutional lineage. Those connections mattered in practical terms: dancers could be trained, gain stage experience and work within a continuing repertory company. Her decision to build a distinctively British repertory also helped create conditions in which choreographers, composers, designers and performers could make work together. Job, created by an entirely British team, is a particularly clear example of that ambition in action.

Her legacy is not confined to a single company or to the stages of London. The school she established in Turkey and her contribution to the development of the Turkish State Ballet show how her organisational model could support ballet in a different national setting. In Britain, her work connected education, performance and artistic leadership; abroad, it helped create training and production where ballet had not previously been established in the same way. That combination of institution-building and creative work is the specific British cultural contribution her story represents: a durable set of opportunities for artists and audiences, shaped by a founder who understood that an art form needs people, training and places in which to grow.

Sources

Ninette de Valois — revision 1368360956 · Ninette de Valois

Adapted in part from Ninette de Valois by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.