Voices of British Ballet

The distinguished choreographer and director Richard Alston explains to Alastair Macaulay, how, as a teenager, he was entranced by watching ballet. After studying fine art, he began working on the Martha Graham technique with what became the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. He eventually found this too restricting and embraced the freer, less floor fixated approach of contemporary dance associated with Merce Cunningham. Alston goes on to discuss how his own choreography began, and how it developed in line with this expansion of his aesthetic. He speaks about his dealings with Cunningham and with the composer John Cage and also about his long and immensely fruitful creative partnership with Sue (Siobhan) Davies. The interview is also introduced by Alastair Macaulay.

Richard Alston was born in October 1948 in Sussex. He is a British choreographer as well as having been artistic director for several dance companies. His education began at Eton College, followed by two years at Croydon School of Art. His passion for ballet was first sparked after attending performances by the Bolshoi Ballet and The Royal Ballet Touring Company, and also by Merce Cunningham and the Martha Graham Dance Company, which excited an interest in modern dance. As a result, he started attending classes with the Rambert School of Ballet, and in 1968 he became one of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre’s original students. After only three months there, he created his first work, Transit. In his third year at the School he organised a group of students to tour schools, colleges and universities demonstrating the Graham technique. After choreographing for London Contemporary Dance Theatre, he created an independent dance company, Strider, in 1972.

In 1975, Alston travelled to New York to study primarily with Merce Cunningham at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio. He returned to Europe two years later, working as an independent choreographer and teacher. In 1980, he was appointed resident choreographer for Ballet Rambert. He founded Second Stride with Siobhan Davies and Ian Spink in 1982, and in 1986 was appointed artistic director of Ballet Rambert, a post he held until 1992. To reflect the changing nature of the company and its work, in 1987 Ballet Rambert changed its name to become Rambert Dance Company. During his years with Rambert, Alston created 25 works for the company, as well as pieces for the Royal Danish Ballet and The Royal Ballet.

After working in France and at the Aldeburgh Festival, in 1994 Alston became artistic director of The Place and he also formed Richard Alston Dance Company. A steady stream of over 50 dance works created by Alston over the next decades was interspersed with collaborations with the London Sinfonietta and Harrison Birtwistle in 1996, and several television productions, including The Rite of Spring, commissioned by the BBC for their Masterworks series in 2002. The Richard Alston Dance Company celebrated its tenth year with its first appearance in New York in 2004. In 2006 the company made its first full tour of North America, followed by further tours in 2009 and 2010. Alston created a new ballet, En Pointe, A Rugged Flourish, for New York Theatre Ballet in 2011. In March 2020, the Richard Alston Dance Company was wound up after a quarter of a century of critical acclaim., giving its last performance at Sadler’s Wells.
Richard Alston received the De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards in 2009. He was appointed a CBE for services to dance in 2001, and was knighted in 2019.
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Over a long career, Edward Watson became one of The Royal Ballet’s greatest male principals, in the footsteps of Anthony Dowell and David Wall. He is particularly noted for his work in the ballets of Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan, and for creating many roles with contemporary choreographers. Here, in a conversation with Jane Burn recorded for Voices of British Ballet in 2007, he speaks disarmingly about his early days in The Royal Ballet before sharing some insights about portraying Crown Prince Rudolf in MacMillan’s Mayerling, a role for which he is particularly associated.

The interview is introduced by Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp.

Edward Watson was born in South London in 1976, and trained at The Royal Ballet School, first at the Lower School at White Lodge, and then at the Upper School in Barons Court. He graduated into The Royal Ballet in 1994 and was promoted to the rank of principal dancer in 2005. Watson’s pure classical technique, combined with a fine dramatic flair and sensitivity served him well in the works of Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan and Ninette de Valois herself, choreographers at the heart of the British tradition. He has himself been a major force in the continuation of that tradition.
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This episode is introduced by Dame Monica Mason. Violetta Elvin was one of Frederick Ashton’s favourite ballerinas. She was born Violetta Prokhorova in Russia. Here, in this interview with Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, Violetta traces her evacuation to Tashkent at the start of World War II and how she returned, via Kuibyshev, to Moscow to join the Bolshoi Ballet. Despite being warned by the authorities not to talk to foreigners, she married the British diplomat Harold Elvin and managed to come to London in 1946. Only weeks after her arrival she joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden and danced the “Blue Bird” pas de deux on the second night of their opening production of The Sleeping Beauty. The interview is introduced by Monica Mason.

A dancer of rare beauty, Violetta Prokhorova was born in 1923. She trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow and joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1942, following her graduation performance, for which she was coached by Galina Ulanova. When Moscow was evacuated and the Bolshoi was scattered, she danced as a ballerina with the State Theatre of Tashkent. In 1944 she re-joined the Bolshoi in Kuibyshev, on the Volga, where she fell in love with a young Englishman, Harold Elvin. The Bolshoi returned to Moscow in early 1945. She danced with the Stanislavsky Ballet for a year, then married Elvin and obtained permission from Joseph Stalin to leave Russia.

Once in London Violetta started training with Vera Volkova, where she was seen by Ninette de Valois and immediately offered a place in the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. She adored and was true to her Russian training, but with her intelligence and sensitivity she was able to fit in beautifully with the British repertoire. From the Black Queen in de Valois’ Checkmate, through all the classical ballerina roles to Roland Petit’s Ballabile in 1950, Violetta Elvin as she was now known, danced with exquisite vivacity, a hint of exoticism and always impeccable port de bras. Frederick Ashton created several roles for her, notably the Summer Fairy in Cinderella (1948), Lykanion in Daphnis and Chlöe (1951), and one of the seven ballerinas in Birthday Offering (1956). For a decade Violetta Elvin was a unique and irreplaceable member of the developing Sadler’s Wells Ballet. She went to live in Italy in 1956, and although she guested with several companies, including La Scala, Milan (where she performed alongside soprano Maria Callas) in 1952 and 1953, and briefly directed the Ballet of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1985, she retired from ballet when her heart called her elsewhere.
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David Vaughan – unparalleled writer on the choreography of Frederick Ashton – catches moments and movements from The Royal Ballet’s history. In this interview for Voices of British Ballet, which was recorded in New York, he talks to his friend and fellow dance writer Alastair Macaulay. The episode is also introduced by Alastair Macaulay.

The archivist, historian and critic David Vaughan was born in London in 1924. He studied at Oxford University and only began dance training after that, in 1947. In 1950 he won a scholarship to study at the School of American Ballet, where he met Merce Cunningham, who was teaching there. Vaughan began studying with Cunningham from the mid 1950s. Later, in 1959, when Cunningham opened his own studio, Vaughan began performing various tasks for Cunningham and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, including co-ordinating the company’s six-month tour of Europe (with John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg) in 1964. Vaughan became the company’s official archivist in 1976, a post he held until 2012, when the company was disbanded following Cunningham’s death.

In addition to writing and working for and with Cunningham, Vaughan was active in the theatre, film and dance worlds. He acted in off-Broadway productions, devised the choreography for Stanley Kubrick’s film Killer Kiss, and worked on the scripts for films about Cunningham and Cage, and about the choreographer Antony Tudor. Vaughan also appeared in several dance productions, including The Royal Ballet’s revival of Frederick Ashton’s A Wedding Bouquet. In 1988 he wrote an influential op-ed piece in The New York Times, criticising traditional ballet companies for not offering dancers of colour enough opportunities to perform.

David Vaughan was a prolific and well-regarded writer on ballet and dance. His books included The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden (1976), Frederick Ashton and His Ballets (1977, revised edition 1999) and Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years (1996). He contributed frequently to the Dancing Times magazine, and with Mary Clarke he also edited and contributed to The Encyclopaedia of Ballet and Dance (1980). In 2015 David Vaughan received a Dance Magazine award. He died in New York City in 2017.

Photograph courtesy of The Merce Cunningham Foundation
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In this no-nonsense, down-to-earth account of writing music for Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of Aladdin, choreographed by Laverne Meyer in 1974, composer Ernest Tomlinson talks to Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet. The interview is introduced by Stephen Johnson.

Ernest Tomlinson was a British composer, well known for his contributions to light music and for founding The Library of Light Orchestral Music (which prevented the loss of 50,000 works released from the BBC’s archive and other collections). He wrote the music for the ballet Aladdin for Northern Ballet Theatre in 1974.

Tomlinson was born in 1924, in Rawtenstall, Lancashire. His parents were musical, and he sang as a chorister at Manchester Cathedral. After a grammar school education, he studied at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester School of Music, with a break for war service in the RAF. He moved to London after graduation in 1947, working first for music publishers. In 1955, after some of his compositions had been performed by the BBC, he formed his own orchestra – the Ernest Tomlinson Light Orchestra – and set out on a highly successful freelance career as a prolific composer, conductor and director of choirs and orchestras. He was particularly concerned to counter the notion of a strict division between art music and popular music. His own Sinfonia 62 was written for jazz band and symphony orchestra, while his Symphony 65 was performed at festivals in London and Munich and in the Soviet Union in 1966, where it was the first symphonic jazz to be heard there. In 1975, Tomlinson won his second Ivor Novello Award for his ballet, Aladdin. Among many other professional appointments, he was the chairman of the Light Music Society from 1966 until 2009. Ernest Tomlinson was appointed an MBE for his services to music in 2012.

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