An example of the wide British Commonwealth base of the personnel of the Sadler’s Wells company, Nadia Nerina is from South Africa, where she was born in 1927. It was in Cape Town that she commenced her ballet studies and had her early career; for she was a winner of the South African Dancing Times Gold Medal and, when she was fifteen, was awarded the Avril Kentridge Shield in the Dance Festival at Durban. Moreover, she toured the Union of South Africa and, when nineteen, went to London to study at the Sadler’s Wells School. Very soon after her arrival, she was dancing leading roles and was one of the ballerinas of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.
Such was her success in Rosebery Avenue, and such the wisdom of Ninette de Valois, that, within the year, Nerina was transferred to Covent Carden. Today, as I have pointed out, she has been promoted to full ballerina status.
It is a well-deserved promotion, for Nerina’s development has been as sure as it has been steady. I have seen her in Le Lac des Cygnes since her ascendancy to full ballerina rank, and have rejoiced in her fine technical performance, as I have in the quality of her miming—something that is equally true in Delibes’ Sylvia.
It is characteristic of Ninette de Valois that she gives all her ballerinas great freedom within the organization. One is permitted to go to Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Another to La Scala, Milan. Yet another to films. An example of this desire on “Madame’s” part to encourage her leading personnel to extend their experience and to prevent any spirit of isolation, is the tour Nerina recently made through her native South Africa, in company with her Sadler’s Wells partner, Alexis Rassine, himself a South African.
The outstanding quality in Nerina’s dancing for me is the sheer joy she brings to it, a sort of love for dancing for its own sake. In everything she does, there is the imprint of her own strong personality, her vitality, and the genuine elegance she brings to the use of her sound technique.
ROWENA JACKSON
During the first two American tours of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, a young dancer who attracted an unusual amount of attention, particularly in the Ashton-Lambert Les Patineurs, for her remarkable virtuosic performance and her multiple turns, was Rowena Jackson.
Today, Rowena Jackson is the newest addition to the Sadler’s Wells list of ballerinas.
Rowena Jackson is still another example of the width of the British Commonwealth base of the Sadler’s Wells organization, having been born in Invercargil, New Zealand, on the 24th March, 1926, where her father was postmaster. Her first ballet training was at the Lawson-Powell School, in New Zealand. It was in 1947 that the young dancer joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.
This rise of the British dancer more than fulfils the prophecy of The Swan. It was thirty years ago that Pavlova said: “English women have fine faces, graceful figures, and a real sense of poetry of dancing. They only lack training to provide the best dancers of the world.” She went on: “If only more real encouragement were given in England to ballet dancers the day would not be far distant when the English dancer would prove a formidable rival to the Russians.”