An idealist she is and yet, at the same time, completely realistic. Without wishing to cast the remotest reflection on the feminine sex, I would say that Ninette de Valois has a masculine mind in her approach to problems artistic or business, and to life itself. She feels things passionately, and these qualities are apparent in everything she does. When her mind is made up, there is no budging her. In a less intelligent person this might be labelled stubbornness.
Like the majority of English dancers, prior to her establishment of a British national ballet, she was brought up in the traditions of Russian ballet. But it should be remembered that she was the first one to break up the foundation of the Russian tradition, utilizing its richness to create an English national school. At Sadler’s Wells, in collaboration with Constant Lambert, she has devoted a great deal of attention to the music of our time, although this has never taken the form of any denial or repudiation of the tradition of the old Russian school—on the contrary, her work at Sadler’s Wells has been a continuation and development of that school, using the new to enrich the old.
As a person with whom to work, I find her completely fascinating. I have never known any one even faintly like her. Her magnificent sense of organization is but one aspect of what I have called her “masculinity” of mind. Figures as well as fouettés are a part of her life. She is adept at handling both situations and individuals. Her dancers obey the slightest lifting of her eyebrows, for she is a masterful person, although quite impersonal in her mastery. She possesses the art of the single withering sentence. Her superb organizing ability has enabled her to surround herself with a highly able staff; but the sycophantic “yes-man” is something for which she has no time. Hers is a rapid-working mind, often being several leaps ahead of all others in a conference. Sincere, honest criticism she welcomes; anything other, she detests. I remember an occasion when a certain critic made a comment based on nothing more than personal bias and a twisted, highly personal approach. Her response was acid, biting, withering, and I was glad I was not on the receiving end.
I am sure that Ninette de Valois was convinced of her mission early in her career. That mission—to found a truly national British ballet—she has richly fulfilled. Much of the work involved in this fulfilment has been the exercise of great organizing and executive ability: in the formulation of policy and plans as well as carrying them out; in the employment of a large number of talented and efficient people; in determining the scale on which the venture should be conducted.
I have spoken of “Madame’s” ability to handle people. This has earned her, in some quarters, an undeserved reputation for being a forbidding and austere person. The fact that she is, as she must be, a strict disciplinarian with her company, does not mean that she cannot be a genuinely gay and amusing person. In certain respects, despite her Irish birth as Edris Stannus, she is a veritable English lady, in the best sense of the term, with an English lady’s virtues (and they are numerous). These virtues include, among others, a very definite, forceful, but quiet efficiency; more than average common sense; a passion for being fair; the inbred necessity for being economical. Against all this is set that quality of idealism that turned a dancing school into a great national ballet. Idealism dreamed it, practicality brought it to fruition.
In those far-off days before the second world war, when I used to visit the ballet in Russia, it was one of my delights to go to the classes of the late Agrippina Vaganova, one of the greatest of ballet teachers of all time, and to watch this wise and highly talented ballet-mistress at work.
I noted that it was Vaganova’s invariable custom to open her classes with a two or three minute talk, in which she would compliment the company, and individuals in particular, on their work in the ballet performance the night before, closing with:
“I am proud of you. Thank you very much.”
Then they would go to work in the class, subjected to the strictest discipline, and, sometimes, to the sharpest and most caustic sort of criticism imaginable. Then, at the end of the class, again came individual approbation and encouragement.
This is the sort of little thing I have never observed at Sadler’s Wells. It may, of course, be there; and again, it may not.