British Ballet
Ever since I was a teenager training at The Royal Ballet School, I have been fascinated by dance history. Alongside daily ballet classes and academic lessons, we studied the development of ballet, how it emerged from the court dances of the Italian Renaissance, the impact of French King Louis XIV (the Sun King), the opera-ballets of the nineteenth century, the significance of the Ballets Russes, the powerful impact in London of Dame Ninette de Valois, and the growing American interest in this art form with the arrival of George Balanchine in the 1930s.
The 1930s was a time of exciting change and new beginnings for British Ballet. In 1933 when my debut novel Clara & Olivia (entitled The Dance of the Dolls in the US and Canada) is set, the Vic-Wells Ballet company was two years old. A small company in the recently rebuilt Sadler’s Wells theatre, the vision was to create a national ballet with its own unique style. The fledgling company needed to prove itself at a time when ballet was identified with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes or a revue in a music-hall.
It is interesting how many of us assume ballet has always been part of Britain’s heritage, an old, established art form. However, before the work of the remarkable Ninette de Valois, British ballet was little more than divertissements in variety shows. De Valois transformed it into an art form that rivalled the contemporary cultural developments of art, music and literature. By 1933 it was firmly on its way to becoming the successful, world-leading institution we know as The Royal Ballet today.
It was in 1926 when dancer and choreographer Ninette de Valois set up her school, The Academy of Choreographic Art, and the journey began. The move to Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London came five years later after a collaboration with the impressive Lilian Baylis, manager of the Old Vic Theatre, who supported de Valois in her goal of setting up a national ballet. In Clara & Olivia, many of the foundational figures of British Ballet take on small fictional roles. There is Ninette de Valois, Constant Lambert, the musical director, Lydia Lopokova, the famous Russian ballerina who was married to the economist and ballet enthusiast John Maynard Keynes, Alicia Markova, Robert Helpmann, and Mr and Mrs Freed who set up the now world famous pointe shoe manufacturer, Freed of London. Margot Fonteyn plays a small part in the novel: she was just fourteen years old in 1933. When her mother brought her to Sadler’s Wells to audition for the ballet school, she forgot to bring her ballet clothes and shoes. Ursula Moreton, the ballet mistress, told her to take off her shoes and stockings and audition barefoot in her petticoat.
Clara & Olivia is set during the rehearsals and performances of a real production of the ballet Coppélia. This was the first major production of a classical ballet by the Vic-Wells, with the majority of previous performances being new choreographic works created by de Valois herself. The background for staging Coppélia is fascinating: in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the régisseur of the Imperial/Mariinsky Ballet, Nicolas Sergeyev, fled Russia and took with him trunks containing the notation books of many classical ballets, including Coppélia. Many years later, Ninette travelled to Paris and found him, bringing him back to London where he helped her to stage some of the great classical ballets.
In March 1933, the company performed the first two acts. They struggled to fill all the parts in the ballet and dancers cut their ribbons in the wings to make the speedy transition from pointe shoes to character shoes in Act One.
My novel interlaces details of the production of the ballet Coppélia with the story behind the ballet itself. Coppélia is a joyful, comic ballet, the choreography packed with entertaining mime sequences and energetic national dances. However, the ballet is inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story ‘Der Sandmann’, a much darker, more sinister story of a man called Nathanael who falls in love with an automaton doll, Olympia. He cannot appreciate that Clara, his real fiancée with her vibrant and intelligent personality, would be a much more attractive companion than this doll. His obsession grows into insanity and he ends up throwing himself off a tower in despair. In Clara & Olivia I have drawn on elements of both the comedy ballet and the gothic Hoffmann story. In fact, I took the names of Nathan and Clara directly from Hoffmann’s work.
Clara & Olivia tells another story of new beginnings. Frederick and Dora Freed set up their shoe shop in 1929. From humble foundations in a workshop in the basement of his first shop in Cecil Court, Covent Garden, Frederick Freed started what is now Freed of London, the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of professional dance shoes. While Frederick Freed was a quiet and ingenious creator, it was Dora Freed who helped to build the shop’s reputation. She was a dynamic woman, confidently making connections and spreading the word about how different these shoes were to the previous offerings from other shoe companies. In 1933, there was just one apprentice working with Mr Freed. My character Samuel Steward is a fiction, but there really would have been a hard-working cobbler working down in that basement to help produce these beautiful shoes.
The Freeds famously said that they would make shoes to fit the dancer, not the dancer having to fit the shoe. Individual dancers, especially regular customers, would even have their own specific shoe last created for them, molded to fit their needs. Indeed, Margot Fonteyn wore Freed shoes with a specific colour of satin just for her. When I was researching for the novel, I got in touch with Sophie Simpson, the senior manager at Freed of London. She fitted me for my very first pair of pointe shoes when I was eleven years old and at White Lodge, The Royal Ballet School, and since then I have worn hundreds of pairs of Freed shoes. Speaking with her about the history of Freed and the handcrafted turn-shoe method of making a pointe shoe was fascinating and led to the creation of my character Samuel Steward.
In 1933, the Vic-Wells Ballet was small, but it wouldn’t be long before it started to capture the hearts of a gradually growing audience. I hope to have replicated this feeling of excitement and energy in my novel, combining the fictional story of the Marionetta twins with the real story of new beginnings for British Ballet.
Lucy Ashe is a former ballerina, teacher, and the author of Clara & Olivia, and most recently The Sleeping Beauties.
