The Royal Ballet: 75 Years

by Zoë Anderson

In 1931, Ninette de Valois started a ballet company with just six dancers. Within twenty years, the Royal Ballet - as it became - was established as one of the world's great companies. It has produced celebrated dancers, from Margot Fonteyn to Darcey Bussell, and one of the richest repertoires in ballet. This book is a perceptive and critical account of its first 75 years, tracing the company's growth, and its great cultural importance.

Genres: Nonfiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2006

About the author

Zoë Anderson is dance critic for The Independent and Dancing Times. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years. She lives in London.

Reviews

[Esmee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competent summary of 75 years of history. Notable that once it gets to the era the writer must have seen that there is a personal bias involved in the retelling. A lot of the summaries are incredibly short and occasionally it is difficult to follow the career of a single dancer or the development of a single ballet or such as the author attempts to handle all threads at once. Good overview but definitely one to use to be inspired to look more deeply into specific ballets and periods rather than rely on exclusively.

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a real history, not a picture book, and as such I expected that it would have its longueurs. Surprisingly, that was not true for me - perhaps I had enough touchstones within each era to keep me interested. The book is arranged decade by decade, and the only stretch that failed to hold my attention was the 2000-2006 chapter (the book was pulished in '06): and I expect this is more of a reflection on my failings as a ballet fan than on either Anderson or the Royal Ballet. It's true I belong to that generation whose noisy passion for the art faded when Baryshnikov hung up his classical dancing shoes.

It would be an injustice to say that the book consists solely of a summation of contemporary critical reaction for each production as it was first presented and/or remounted, year by year, but certainly that is a very large part of the book. As such, it takes on a rather mechanical tone at times, though always very literate and readable (Anderson apparently has a doctorate in literature). There are a few anecdotes about the dancers, the choreographers, and the administrators scattered here and there, particularly in the accounts of the very early days with de Valois. Major behind-the-scenes ructions are not glossed over, but summed up in a few sentences rather than dwelt upon. The authorial voice and authorial opinions, not surprisingly, become more pronounced as the book's chronology gets into the period where Anderson has been dance critic of The Independent. As such, it is occasionally grating (her clear dislike of Glen Tetley's choreography, which I enjoyed very much during his association with the National Ballet of Canada, set my teeth on edge a bit.

There are some nice colour plates and a few black and white illustrations, and because of its thoroughness this will be an invaluable reference book (has already proved to be so, in fact). I'm very glad I got it, and it will stay on my shelves.

[Stella Zawistowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book frustrated me because it had quite a bit of information I was interested in, but read like a pile of newspaper clippings of reviews of individual ballets, not a sweeping history of a company.

Occasionally there would be tidbits of something larger, like a mention of how the UK's joining of the Common Market affected dancers' ability to move between countries, and how that affected the company. This kind of thing gets no more text than the description of a single ballet performed by the company!

I also got very little sense of the personalities of the people involved (with the exception of de Valois).

A decent amount of interesting information, but a deeply frustrating read.

[Rachel Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this on and off for half the year. It's a beautiful history of London's formost ballet company - conveying the ups and downs and highs and lows. Probably not for anyone not completely passionate about ballet though... even I found myself skipping bits. It's a dip into book...

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this. The beginning, about the founding of what was to become The Royal Ballet was quite interesting, but I would have liked more information about the various dancers and their backgrounds. After the beginning it became an almost repetitive list of what ballets were performed in what years, and which dancers were in them. I hadn't realized before that multiple dancers might play the same role during a season, often taking turns, so found that interesting as well. I hope that The Royal Ballet continues well into the future.

[Sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt like reading a Wikipedia page about my special interest which was exactly what I was looking for