English in Flavor and Form: Mona Inglesby's Choreography for the International Ballet

Abstract

When Mona Inglesby's International Ballet made its debut in 1941, the ambitious enterprise prompted commentary, in part, because it came during the German blitz over London. Until the company's demise in 1953, Inglesby was a well-regarded ballerina who, with her company, helped spread ballet throughout Britain by means of educational programs for children and dedication to audiences outside London. Inglesby's record as a company director and principal dancer is substantial, but her choreography has been largely overlooked. Provincial and London press frequently covered her productions; dance writers commented on her choreography and the repertory she toured. An examination of her creative record sheds light on the historical context within which she worked and the choreographic trends to which she was responding—or that she was ignoring—during and immediately after the war.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Research on this topic was made possible by an Ohio State University Arts and Humanities Research Enhancement Grant, and a Manuscript Preparation Grant-in-Aid, as well as a Howard D. Rothschild Fellowship in Dance from the Houghton Library Visiting Fellowship Program at Harvard University. My thanks to Sebastian Knowles, Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, for his support of my project, and to my superb research assistant, Veronica Dittman-Stanich.

Notes

Phyllis Bedells wrote that she believed “Kyasht's choreography was as fine as the best we see to-day. She brought us the classical style and, like the other Russians, she taught from her memory of what had been done in the great theatres of her homeland.” Phyllis Bedells, My Dancing Days (London: Phoenix House Ltd., 1954), 36.

The other part of her mission was to train ballet dancers, mostly, she thought, to serve as a ready crop of talent for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Lionel Bradley, “Marie Rambert, A Pioneer of English Ballet,” in British Ballet, ed. Peter Noble (London: Skelton Robinson, 1949), 204.

Rambert's students and choreographers initially presented their work at her studio. In February 1930, the Marie Rambert Dancers performed for the general public at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. In the autumn, the group, then dubbed the Ballet Club, began performing at its own Mercury Theatre. By the summer of 1937, when it began to produce seasons at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge and, later, at the Arts Theatre Club in London, the troupe was known as Ballet Rambert. Lionel Bradley, Sixteen Years of Ballet Rambert, 1930–1946 (London: Hinrichsen Edition, 1946); Mary Clarke, Dancers of Mercury: The Story of Ballet Rambert (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1962).

Invited works included Michel Fokine's Carnaval and Les Sylphides (staged by Stanislas Idzikowski); Harold Turner's Fête Bohème (1942); and, after the war, works by Léonide Massine, Angelo Andes, Algeranoff [Harcourt Algernon Essex], Dorothy Stevenson, and Julian Algo.

Even the acclaimed Vic-Wells Ballet toured for a time with just two pianists, using reduced scores. The stringent conditions under which most companies toured often dictated repertory choices. Mary Clarke, The Sadler's Wells Ballet: A History and an Appreciation (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955), 149.

Fernau Hall pointed to the populist orientation of Inglesby's project. He equated her mission with the similarly educative work of the conductor, Sir Henry Wood:

Ever since 1941 the International Ballet has played in the largest provincial theatres, big London cinemas, the Butlin camps, the London Casino, and so on; year by year it has built up an enormous audience for ballet among people who would normally never have dreamt of going to ballet. In fact, Mona Inglesby's achievement is in some respects comparable to that of Sir Henry Wood in the early years of the Proms—when his programmes consisted to a considerable extent of the musical equivalent of the ‘classics’ on which the repertoire of the International Ballet is based.

Fernau Hall, Modern English Ballet: An Interpretation (New York: Andrew Melrose, 1951), 279.

Butlin Holiday Camps, begun in 1936 by Billy Butlin, were initially very basic resort camps, catering to families and offering entertainment and lighthearted activities. The first such camp was established in the town of Skegness in Lincolnshire. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A855245 (accessed August 18, 2011).

For more information on Sergeyev and his scores see Roland John Wiley, “Dances from Russia: An Introduction to the Sergyev Collection,” Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. 24, no. 1 (January, 1976): 96–112.

Following the practice instituted by Diaghilev, the Vic-Wells and the International Ballet called this work The Sleeping Princess rather than The Sleeping Beauty, although Inglesby claimed her version was closer to the Petipa original than was that of the Vic-Wells Ballet.

Many companies offered single acts of Le Lac des Cygnes, for example. Some staged Aurora's Wedding or selected divertissements from Casse-Noisette. The Sadler's Wells was the other major company to tackle the full-length nineteenth-century ballets. Audrey Williamson was one critic who preferred what she considered the superior performances of the classics by the Sadler's Wells over Sergeyev's productions for other companies (presumably the International Ballet). She appreciated de Valois's “efficiency in clarifying details through a ‘sweeping up’ process,” which streamlined the old-fashioned mime passages and quickened the pace of the action. Audrey Williamson, “Classical Revival,” in Ballet Renaissance (London: Golden Galley Press, 1948), 132.

Several writers voiced their admiration for Inglesby's determination. Her great champion, Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, wrote of her “constantly remembering the maxim ‘forward’ which she applies to everything connected with work.” Mona Inglesby, Ballerina and Choreographer (London: Vawser and Wiles, Ltd., 1947), 27. Another writer declared, “We admire Miss Inglesby for sticking her chin out.” “The Almost Legendary Miss Inglesby,” Carnaval: The Magazine of Ballet and Ballet Personalities (November–December 1946): 55. The mostly dispassionate A. H. Franks titled one of his articles “The Inglesby Legend: A Short Factual Survey of the International Ballet,” in Ballet Decade, ed. Arnold Haskell (New York: Macmillan, n.d.), 182–84.

She danced for a time under her mother's maiden name, as Mona Kimberly, and later adopted Inglesby as her stage name.

The dancers in the Ballet Russe companies were often referred to as “the Russians,” although some dancers came from elsewhere in Europe. Peter Noble wrote that the decision by British dancers to join “the Russians” was no discredit to the British companies. “In general the English groups increased their loyal following to such an extent that a ready-made audience was awaiting them when the outbreak of war caused the visits of foreign companies to cease.” Peter Noble, “Some Notes on Twenty Years of British Ballet,” in British Ballet, ed. Peter Noble (London: Skelton Robinson, 1949), 15.

A review in The Times, May 24, 1940, read, in part: “A new ballet by Miss Andrée Howard is an event of importance since her work always has distinction and sometimes a touch of genius. [The mood of] La Fête Etrange, which was performed for the first time last night by the London Ballet…is wistful and its decoration in half-tones—Miss Howard has tackled sad themes before now—so that one must not look for the clear strokes and closely knit structures she is fond of employing elsewhere. She deploys a larger company and shows her wonted skill in grouping them effectively.” Andrée Howard Biographical File, Theatre Museum, London.

Salaman's choreographic career came to an early end with the onset of illness. Mary Clarke described her legacy this way: “Her ballets were not of the kind long to endure in the repertory (for they excelled in clever situations rather than in steps) but they endured—especially the Sporting Sketches—in the memories of all who saw them and danced in them.” Dancers of Mercury, The Story of Ballet Rambert (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1962), 101.

One critic expressed the trend this way: “The fashion in symphonic ballet seems to be giving way to one in Shakespearean ballet. It is as well perhaps; certainly Shakespeare is more likely to offer a suitable scenario than is Beethoven.” “Ballet at His Majesty's, ‘Twelfth Night,’” The Times, September 4, 1942, 6.

Elspeth Grant, writing in The Daily Sketch, September 3, 1942, said the ballet could not replace the delights of the play, but the audience, “one must faithfully report, was rapturous.” Much of the success was due to fine comedic portraits by Nina Tarakanova, who was “positively brilliant. Leslie French as Feste, John Pygram as Sir Toby and Rex Reid as Sir Andrew Aguecheek contributed to the success of the comedy team which lifted the ballet from the pretentious to the pleasant.” International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

Presumably Massine's Noblissima Visione (premiered in 1938) was meant here. Massine described this work as not really a ballet so much as “a dramatic and choreographic interpretation of the life of St. Francis in which Hindemith, Tchelichev, and I tried to create and sustain throughout a mood of mystic exaltation.” Léonide Massine, My Life in Ballet (London: Macmillan, 1968), 209.

Handley-Taylor is alluding to critics accustomed to disparaging Inglesby's work.

1. Obituary, “Mona Inglesby,” The Telegraph, October 9, 2006, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1530922/Mona-Inglesby.html (accessed November 11, 2009). A number of obituaries similarly attested to her prominence, for example, Nadine Meisner, “Mona Inglesby,” The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/mona-inglesby-419831.html (accessed October 13, 2006); “Mona Inglesby,” The Sunday Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article607763.ece (accessed October 21, 2006); Mary Clarke, “Mona Inglesby,” The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/oct/10/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries (accessed October 10, 2006).

2. Peter Noble, “British Ballet Companies and their Repertoire,” in British Ballet, ed. Peter Noble (London: Skelton Robinson, 1949), 91.

3. Noble, “British Ballet Companies,” 91.

4. Alexandra Carter, Dance and Dancers in the Victorian and Edwardian Music Hall Ballet (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005).

5. Peter Noble, “Some Notes on Twenty Years of British Ballet,” in British Ballet, 12.

6. Beth Genné, The Making of a Choreographer: Ninette de Valois and Bar aux Folies-Bergère, Studies in Dance History, no. 12 (Madison, Wisc.: The Society of Dance History Scholars, 1996); Ninette de Valois, Come Dance with Me (New York: World Publishing Co., 1957); Kathrine Sorley Walker, Ninette de Valois: Idealist without Illusions (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987).

7. Mary Clarke, The Sadler's Wells Ballet: A History and an Appreciation (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955).

8. On this topic, see Karen Eliot, “Starved for Beauty: British Ballet and Public Morale During the Second World War,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 31, no. 2 (2008): 175–210.

9. “The Almost Legendary Miss Inglesby,” Carnaval: The Magazine of Ballet and Ballet Personalities (November–December 1946): 55.

10. Peter Noble, “Some Notes on Twenty Years of British Ballet,” in British Ballet, 25.

11. P. J. S. Richardson, “Ten Years’ Work, The Progress of ‘International Ballet,’” The Dancing Times (July, 1951): 585.

12. A. H. Franks, Approach to the Ballet (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1948), 144.

13. Audrey Williamson, Ballet Renaissance (London: Golden Balley Press, 1948), 132; Richardson, “The Sitter Out,” The Dancing Times (October 1945): 3.

14. Walford Hyden, Pavlova, the Genius of Dance (London: Constable and Co., 1931), 146.

15. Mona Inglesby, Ballet in the Blitz: The Story of a Ballet Company, with Kay Hunter (Debenham, Suffolk: Groundnut Publishing, 2008), 15, 18.

16. Inglesby, Ballet in the Blitz, 28.

17. Inglesby, Ballet in the Blitz, 30.

18. Diana [Gould] Menuhin, A Glimpse of Olympus (London: Methuen, 1996), 61.

19. Inglesby, Ballet in the Blitz, 36.

20. “Inglesby, Mona,” by Peter Williams, The International Encyclopedia of Dance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

21. Inglesby, Ballet in the Blitz, 33.

22. Stephanie Jordan, Moving Music: Dialogues with Music in Twentieth-Century Ballet (London: Dance Books, 2000), 278.

23. Judith Chazin-Bennahum, The Ballets of Antony Tudor: Studies in Psyche and Satire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 8.

24. Rayner Heppenstall, “Opera and Ballet,” The New English Weekly (February 13, 1936): 354.

25. Edwin Evans, The Sketch (June 5, 1940), Andrée Howard Biographical File, Theatre Museum, London.

26. Arnold Haskell, The Marie Rambert Ballet (London: British-Continental Press, 1930), 42.

27. Haskell, The Marie Rambert Ballet, 42.

28. Inglesby, Ballet in the Blitz, 26.

29. Joseph Sandon, Façade and other Early Ballets by Frederick Ashton (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1954), 29.

30. Jordan, Moving Music, 189.

31. Robert Helpmann, “British Choreography and its Critics,” in British Ballet, 28–29.

32. Noble, “Some Notes,” 16.

33. Lionel Bradley, Sixteen Years of Ballet Rambert (London: Hinrichsen, 1946); Anna and Hermann Markard, Jooss (Cologne: Ballett-Bühnen-Verlag Rolf Garske, 1985); David Vaughan, Frederick Ashton and His Ballets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977).

34. Richardson, “The Sitter-Out,” The Dancing Times (June 1939): 258.

35. Richardson, “The Sitter Out,” The Dancing Times (June 1941): 498; “The Sitter Out,” The Dancing Times (October 1941): 4.

36. Peter Alexander, “Chamber Ballet,” The Dancing Times (September 1940): 698–99.

37. Marie Rambert, “The Value of Intimate Ballet,” The Dancing Times (December 1940): 111.

38. International Ballet Program, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

39. International Ballet Program, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

40. Richardson, “The Sitter Out,” The Dancing Times (February 1940): 276.

41. Audrey Williamson, Ballet of Three Decades (London: Salisbury Square, n.d.), 87.

42. Richardson, “The Sitter Out,” The Dancing Times (October 1941): 5.

43. Quoted in Sandon, Façade and other Early Ballets, 72.

44. Vaughan, Frederick Ashton and his Ballets, 51.

45. Richardson, “The Sitter Out,” The Dancing Times (October 1941): 4–5.

46. International Ballet, Scenery and Costume Designs (pf MS Thr 388), Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

47. Britta C. Dwyer, “Negotiating ‘new’ venues in art: Doris and Anna Zinkeisen in modernizing London,” in Women's Contributions to Visual Culture, 1918–1939, ed. Karen E. Brown (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), 122.

48. Dwyer, “Negotiating ‘new’ venues,” 127.

49. Noble, “Twenty Years of British Ballet,” 18.

50. “Art of the Ballet, Dished-Up Music,” The Times, September 11, 1942, 6.

51. Ernest Irving, Cue for Music (London: Dennis Dobson, 1959), 138.

52. Irving, Cue for Music, 138.

53. “Ballet at His Majesty's ‘Twelfth Night,’” The Times, September 4, 1942, 6.

54. Marie Rambert, “Andrée Howard, an Appreciation,” The Dancing Times (March 1943): 268; Kathrine Sorley Walker, “The Choreography of Andrée Howard,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 13, no. 3 (1990): 300.

55. “Picadilly Theatre, International Ballet,” The Times, December 28, 1942, 2.

56. Richardson, The Dancing Times (April 1942): 495.

57. W. G. Raffé, “International Ballet of London,” Dance Magazine (March 1948): 12.

58. International Ballet Company Booklet, 1947. International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

59. Irving, Cue for Music, 141.

60. Irving, Cue for Music, 142.

61. “Lyric Theatre, ‘Everyman’ as a Ballet,” The Times, July 14, 1943, 6.

62. H. C. S., “British See New Ballet on Legend of Everyman,” Unidentified clipping (September 5, 1944), International Ballet Clippings File, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

63. “Savoy Theatre, International Ballet,” The Times, May 16, 1944, 8; “His Majesty's Theatre, International Ballet,” The Times, August 20, 1945, 6.

64. Jean Tucker, “At the Ballet,” Sound, October 1945, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

65. James Redfern. The Spectator, July 23, 1943, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

66. A. H. Franks, Approach to the Ballet (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1948), 248.

67. Picture Post, July 31, 1943, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

68. P. G. W., “500-Year-Old Play as a Ballet,” The Evening Standard, July 14, 1943, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

69. The Northampton Independent, February 11, 1944, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

70. Derby Evening Telegraph, December 5, 1944, International Ballet (Mona Inglesby) Company File, Theatre Museum, London.

71. Richard Buckle, “Commentary,” Ballet, vol. 2, no. 5 (October 1946): 5–7.

72. Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, Mona Inglesby, Ballerina and Choreographer (London: Vawser and Wiles, Ltd., 1947), 65.

73. Handley-Taylor, Mona Inglesby, 66.

74. Richardson, “The Sitter-Out,” The Dancing Times (October 1946): 3–4.