Royal Ballet: 75 Years

This is a perceptive and critical account of the Royal Ballet's first 75 years, tracing the company's growth and extraordinary cultural importance. Dancing through the Blitz, winning an international reputation in a single New York performance, and adding to the glamour of London's Swinging Sixties, Zoe Anderson vividly portrays the extraordinary personalities who created the Royal Ballet, from Ninette de Valois to founding music director Constant Lambert through to chief choreographers Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. She records the dancers: Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer, mould-breaking artists like Lynn Seymour, golden partnerships like that of Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell, through to stars of today like Bussell, Cope, Cojocaru, Kobborg and Rojo, and guest artists who became part of the company, from Nureyev to Guillem. Giving full attention to dance style and performance standards, Zoe Anderson will put Royal Ballet repertoire in context, showing its place in ballet history and in the history of British arts.She looks at the bad times, as well as the good, examining the controversial directorships of Norman Morrice and Ross Stretton, and the criticism fired at the company as the Royal Opera House closed for redevelopment.