If ever a job needed diplomacy it must be as General Director of the Royal Opera House, a post Sir John Tooley held from 1970 until 1988. He was also Assistant to the General Administrator from 1955 to 1960, followed by 10 years as Assistant General Administrator. Here he gives Bruce Sansom a few examples from his early years of how true the need for diplomacy is. He speaks about the diplomatic crisis surrounding the visit of the Bolshoi in 1956, about arranging American tours for the Royal Ballet, about his admiration for Dame Ninette de Valois, and about the circumstances of Sir Frederick Ashton’s retirement in 1970.

The interview is introduced by Anthony Russell-Roberts, the former Administrative Director of the Royal Ballet who died in January 2024, in conversation with Natalie Steed.

Born in Rochester ,1924, John Tooley was educated at Repton and Magdalene College, Cambridge. For much of this time he had ambitions of becoming a professional singer. Although he judged he was not talented enough to make a career in singing, his interest in music remained, and he planned on becoming a musical administrator. To prepare himself for such a role, he spent a few years working in management at the Ford Motor Company.

In 1952, he was appointed Secretary to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His long association with the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden began in 1955, when he became Assistant to the General Administrator. Five years later, in 1960, he was given the position of Assistant General Administrator, working alongside the General Administrator, Sir David Webster, until 1970, when Webster’s health became uncertain. Tooley was then promoted to being General Administrator. He held that post for 10 years until 1980, when it was re-named General Director. It was as General Director that Tooley retired from the Royal Opera House in 1988.

During his long career, Tooley served at various times as a trustee or board member of various musical companies and organisations. These included the Walton Trust, the Britten Estate, the Southbank Centre and Welsh National Opera. John Tooley was knighted in 1979. He died in 2020.

Episode photo credit: © Clive Barda/ArenaPAL.com

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Violette Verdy’s laughter and intelligence endlessly shine through in this discussion with Clement Crisp. She explains how, as dancer and actress, music was the core of her existence. She talks about working with George Balanchine, of doing new pieces with him, his musical sophistication in dealing with difficult scores, and of the spiritual dimension to his work. Jerome Robbins, with whom she also worked, was a complete perfectionist, and in Balanchine’s view, the American choreographer. Yet, at the height of his career and fame, Robbins always regarded Balanchine as his only master. 

The interview is introduced by the dance writer Alastair Macaulay in conversation with Natalie Steed.

Violette Verdy, originally Nelly Armande Guillerm, was born in Brittany, France, in 1933. In 1942 her mother took her to Paris to acquire the best ballet training available, studying under Carlotta Zambelli, Rousanne Sarkissian and Viktor Gsovsky. By 1945 she was in the corps de ballet for Roland Petit and then part of his Ballets des Champs-Elysees. In 1949 she starred in Ludwig Berger’s film Dream Ballerina (released in 1950), when she changed her name to Violette Verdy. In 1953 she made her first trip to America, again with Petit and his Les Ballets de Paris. The following year, as well as dancing with London Festival Ballet, she danced at La Scala, Milan, in two ballets by Alfred Rodrigues and also in Coppélia and Giselle with Ballet Rambert. 

The next phase of her life began when Nora Kaye asked her to join American Ballet Theatre in 1957. Verdy went on to join Balanchine at New York City Ballet in 1958. While she continued to dance with many companies in many countries, it was with Balanchine and Robbins that her brilliance shone brightest, and where many leading roles were created on her. Her two decades in New York secured her place in ballet history. 

Violette Verdy retired from dancing in 1977. She became the first female Artistic Director of the Paris Opéra until 1980. Her directorial skills honed, she went on to Boston Ballet, where she stayed until 1984 and then became Distinguished Professor of Music (Ballet) at Jacobs School of Music in Indiana University. In her later years she undertook guest teaching residences with many of the leading ballet companies in the world, including the Bolshoi, where she was the first foreign teacher to work there since the 1917 revolution. She was given many honours and awards, not least the Légion D’Honneur. She could dance, act, choreograph, direct, teach and, most of all, inspire. But all her answers were in the music and the multiple layers of meaning that imbued her dancing began and ended with that. Violette Verdy died in Bloomington, Indiana in 2016.

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Dame Antoinette Sibley talks with Alastair Macaulay. Her wonderful mix of enthusiasm, appreciation and practicality typify the glorious mercurial talent that has beguiled a generation of dancers and public alike.

Sibley talks about her early aspirations, working with Sir Frederick Ashton and her career-defining partnership with Sir Anthony Dowell.

The episode is introduced by the dance critic and writer Alastair Macaulay in conversation with Natalie Steed.

Antoinette Sibley was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1939. She trained at the Arts Educational School in Chiswick before joining the Sadler’s Wells School in 1949 and the Royal Ballet Company in 1956. In 1959 she was coached by Tamara Karsavina, the great Russian Ballerina from the Imperial Russian Ballet and Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Later that year she danced Odette/Odile in Swan Lake. In 1960, she became a principal dancer and in 1961 danced Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. 1964 saw a pivotal moment in her career: the creation of the role of Titania in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, alongside Sir Anthony Dowell’s Oberon. This was the start of one of the great partnerships in the history of the Royal Ballet, indeed of ballet, and one which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century.

Her professional stage career ran from the late 1950s until her late forties in 1988, with a few years of retirement in the early 1980s. During her career with the Royal Ballet, Sibley danced many principal roles in the classical and in the dramatic repertoires. She created major roles for Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Michael Corder and other choreographers. She danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov in the Hollywood film The Turning Point (1978). As President of the Royal Academy of Dance from 1991 to 2012 and as a coach at the Royal Ballet, her involvement in British Ballet continued into the 21st century.

She was appointed CBE for services to dance in 1973, and DBE in 1996.

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The ballet writer Gerald Dowler is joined in a special episode of Voices of British Ballet by Monica Mason (former Royal Ballet student, principal dancer and director), Jane Pritchard (curator of dance, theatre and performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum and former archivist to Rambert Dance), and Judith Mackrell (former dance critic at the Guardian, and author of Bloomsbury Ballerina, a biography of Lydia Lopokova).

Together, they set out what the ballet scene was in London at the beginning of the 1920s, the impact of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on that scene and explore why Marie Rambert and Dame Ninette de Valois focused, at first, on training.

The Sleeping Princess, Serge Diaghilev’s 1921 production of Marius Petipa’s ballet was described by critics at the time as a “gorgeous calamity”. Our guests examine its impact on the appetite for dance in Great Britain in succeeding years and set out what happened to ballet in Britain after Digahilev’s death in 1929.

The contributions of Marie Rambert, Ninette de Valois, Lilian Baylis, Alicia Markova and Constant Lambert are assessed and our guests consider what this new British ballet might have looked like in terms of technique as well as discussing de Valois' work as a choreographer of ballets such as Checkmate and The Rake’s Progress.

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Dame Darcey Bussell talks to Natalie Steed to introduce an interview with the dancer and choregrapher, Christopher Wheeldon.

Christopher Wheeldon talks in 2003 with his former classmate and Royal Ballet First Soloist Jane Burn. Christopher speaks about his early years in dance with candour and charm, mentioning Anatole Grigoriev, his teacher at White Lodge, and his early forays into choreography with the inspirational Norman Morrice.

Christopher Wheeldon was born in 1973 in Yeovil, Somerset. He started training as a dancer from the age of 8. From 1984-1991 he attended the Royal Ballet School, winning the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne in 1991. That same year he joined the Royal Ballet. In 1993 he joined the New York City Ballet, becoming a soloist in 1998.

He began choreographing for the New York City Ballet in 1997, retiring from dancing in 2000 to concentrate on choreography. In 2001, Wheeldon became the New York City Ballet’s first resident choreographer and first resident artist. From 2006-10 he also ran his own company, the Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company.

Aside from his work in New York and also in London, Wheeldon has established himself as a choreographer worldwide, including works for the San Francisco Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada. In 2011 he choreographed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Royal Ballet’s first full-length commission for 20 years, followed in 2014 by The Winter’s Tale. Other commissions include Strapless (2016) and Like Water for Chocolate (2022).  In 2014 he directed and choreographed a musical version of An American in Paris, first performed in Paris, then in New York and London.

He was awarded an OBE in 2016 for services to dance. 

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Adam Cooper talks to Natalie Steed to introduce this inteview with the dancer, director and choreographer Wendy Toye.

It begins with Wendy Toye’s memory of chatting to Sergei Diaghilev at the age of 9, giving her opinion of L’Après-Midi d’un faune, and the pace never stops. She tells Patricia Linton of her love for dancing of all sorts. From the age of 5 she performed in Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall. At 14 she became a member of the Vic-Wells Ballet, while dancing commercially as well. She speaks of touring in Denmark, with Adeleine Genée leading the company, and being singled out by the Prince of Wales. Her career, in the 1930s and subsequently, involved films, shows, cabaret and television, as well as ballet, opera and choreography. At the age of 90 she reflects on how she worked in so many fields, not, as she says, peaking in any of them, but having enjoyed all of it and all of them.

Wendy Toye was born in Clapton in 1917, and very early showed considerable balletic and theatrical talent. As a child she was often appearing on the stage, as well as taking serious ballet lessons from Tamara Karsavina, among others. She won the European Charleston Championship at the age of 9. In 1931, she joined the Vic-Wells Ballet Company, though continuing to work in cabaret. She then worked for the Markova-Dolin Company from 1934-5, and choreographed the ballet Aucassin and Nicolette for them. In 1937, partly as a result of an appendix operation, she ceased to dance in ballet, and embarked on her long, distinguished and industrious career in the commercial theatre, films and television, as actress, dancer, choreographer and director (which, in her later years, included directing a number of operas, particularly for Sadler’s Wells/English National Opera). Wendy Toye was appointed CBE in 1992 for services to the arts. She died in Hillingdon in 2010.

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American dancer, choreographer and director Mark Morris is one of the most successful and influential of contemporary modern choreographers. Interviewed by Gerald Dowler, he talks frankly about the role of improvisation in choreography, egalitarianism in dance, his experiences with international dance forms other than ballet and his particular affection for British dance.

The interview is introduced by the dancer and founder of Voices of British Ballet, Patricia Linton, in conversation with Natalie Steed.

Mark Morris was born in Seattle in 1956. Having been excited by both flamenco and his sister’s ballet classes, he himself began studying Spanish dance at the age of 9. In 1970 he joined a dance ensemble specialising in Balkan dance, which was the beginning of a lifetime’s passionate immersion in dance and music of all sorts. He went to New York in 1976, during the era of Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp and Lucinda Childs, to pursue his study of dance. He began working with a group of like-minded modern dancers, who shared Morris’ focus on beauty, genuine musicality and community. From 1980 on Morris began choreographing in earnest and his group was henceforth known as the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG). From the start his work was recognized for its musicality, and its deep understanding of the medium of dance. Hallmarks of the Morris style were the recognizable ordinary body-types of the Company dancers and its up-front treatment of contentious issues, both political and sexual.

From 1980 until 1988, the growth of Morris’s reputation as a choreographer and dancer resulted in an engagement as resident company at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, following the departure of Maurice Béjart. While there he created two of his most famous works: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (based on poetry by Milton and music by Handel) and The Hard Nut (a revelatory version of The Nutcracker). The company remained there until 1991. From 1990 until 1995, with Mikhail Baryshnikov, he founded and ran the White Oak Dance Project. In 2001 Morris and MMDG moved into a permanent headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, which included a community centre and a school. As well as working with his own company, Morris has created works for many international ballet companies and for opera productions in San Francisco, Washington, Boston, London and New York, among other places. His own works for the MMDG, around 150 of them, are notable for their range of musical styles and genres, from Bach and Vivaldi through modern composers to jazz and the Beatles, the repertoire also includes music from Balkan and Asian traditions, as well as collaborations with folk performers and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project.

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In this first episode of our new podcast about the history of British ballet Patricia Linton, the founder of Voices of British Ballet, tells Natalie Steed about her project and introduces a recording she made with Monica Ratcliffe.

Monica Ratcliffe, one of Voices of British Ballet’s earliest voices, talks about her years at Dame Ninette de Valois’ Academy of Choreographic Art in Roland Gardens, London, before the forming of the Vic-Wells Ballet, as well as her encounters with Lilian Baylis, Lydia Lopokova, Olga Spessivtseva and many more.

Monica was born in 1911 in Letchworth Garden City. The family were living in London at the start of the First World War, but moved to Berkhamsted, where Monica went to Berkhamsted High School with her sister. She picked up the rudiments of dance at school, but was inspired to train after watching Anna Pavlova dancing in a window at Selfridges. She joined Ninette de Valois’ Academy of Choreographic Art soon after it had opened in 1926. She loved her time with de Valois, especially when they were at the Old Vic. By 1932 her lack of enthusiasm for pointework had limited her performing repertoire, and she retired in 1933.

Episode photo: Monica Ratcliffe amongst her peers, L-R: Iris James, Beatrice Appleyard, Ninette de Valois, Sheila McCarthy, Freda Bamford, Joy Newton, Monica Ratcliffe (kneeling). Dances from the opera Carmen, choreographed by Ninette de Valois and first performed at the Old Vic in January 1931 © Royal Ballet School/ArenaPal

After the Second World War she became editor-in-chief for her second husband, Arnold Beck, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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Launching soon - a new podcast bringing to life and celebrating the history of dance in Britain.

For more than 20 years the ballet dancer and teacher Patricia Linton has been recording interviews with the people who were there as the story of British dance unfolded across the twentieth century and beyond. 

In this podcast you’ll hear from some famous names, as well those less well known, whose reflections help to build a rich picture of the art-form. 

Subscribe to our podcast and find photos and extra content on our website, also launching soon.

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