Royal Ballet

   Founded in 1931 as the Vic-Wells Ballet (because it performed at both the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells theatres), and awarded its name by Royal Charter in October 1956, this is Britain’s national ballet company. The organization is descended from the Academy of Choreographic Art, which was formed in London in 1926. Its centre is now the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden, and there is also a Royal Ballet School at White Lodge in Richmond Park. From 1962, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, a newly defected ‘permanent guest’ from the Kirov Ballet, were its famous leading partnership. Other notable dancers have been Robert Helpmann, Lynn Seymour, Merle Park and Wayne Sleep. Leading British principal dancers in the 1990s are Darcey Bussell, Jonathan Cope and Viviana Durante. The company was started by Ninette de Valois (born 1898), who was also founder of the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School. It was her vision to create a national ballet centre to match the national institutions in other arts, and the formidable de Valois, known to all simply as ‘Madam’, was herself a major choreographer, director, and teacher who kept a hand in the company up to her recent one hundredth birthday. De Valois resigned as Director in 1963 to be replaced by Frederick Ashton, then by Kenneth Macmillan in 1970, Norman Morrice in 1977 and dancer Anthony Dowell in 1986. Since 1975 the pattern has been to have two large troupes, one of about eighty dancers at Covent Garden, who also do some major tours, and another of about fifty dancers who would mostly be on tour but also hold a London season at Sadlers Wells.

   See also: English National Ballet

   Further reading

    Bland, A. (1981) The Royal Ballet—The First 50 Years, London: Macmillan

   PETER CHILDS