Background

Ninette de Valois was born as Edris Stannus on 6 June 1898 at Baltyboys House, an 18th-century manor house near the town of Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland, then still part of the United Kingdom. She was the second daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stannus, a British Army officer, and Elizabeth Graydon Smith, a glassmaker, known as "Lilith Stannus." Ninette de Valois was the maternal great-granddaughter of the diarist Elizabeth Grant Smith and the maternal great-great-granddaughter of Scottish politician John Peter Grant. In 1905 Ninette de Valois moved to England. She lived with her grandmother in Kent.

Education

In 1908 Ninette de Valois started attending ballet lessons at the age of ten. In 1911 Ninette de Valois studied at the Lila Field Academy for Children with the greatest teachers: Edouard Espinosa, Enrico Cecchetti, Nicholas Legat.

Ninette de Valois was honored with a Doctor of Music at the University of London in 1947. She was also honored a Doctor of Music at the University of Sheffield on 29 June 1955. Ninette was an honorary owner of a Doctor of Music at Trinity College, Dublin in 1957. Ninette de Valois was honored with a Doctor of Music at Durham University in 1982. She was an honorary owner of a Doctor of Letters at the University of Reading in 1951. Ninette was honored with a Doctor of Letters at the University of Oxford in 1955. Ninette de Valois was also honored with a Doctor of Letters at the University of Ulster in 1979. At the University of Aberdeen in 1958 and from the University of Sussex on 5 July 1975 Ninette de Valois was honored with a Doctor of Letters.

Career

Edris Stannus’s career began when she was 13. Edris Stannus changed her name to Ninette de Valois and she performed as a principal dancer in pantomime at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End. In 1919, at the age of 21, Ninette de Valois became a principal dancer of the Beecham Opera. It became the resident opera company at the Royal Opera House. While performing, she continued to study ballet with notable teachers: Edouard Espinosa, Enrico Cecchetti, and Nicholas Legat.

In 1923, de Valois joined the Ballets Russes, a renowned ballet company founded by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Ninette de Valois performed around Europe with them for three years. Ninette de Valois performed solo in some of the company's most famous ballets, including Les biches and Le Train Bleu. During this time, she was also a teacher to Alicia Markova who became later a Prima Ballerina Assoluta and one of the most famous English dancers of all time. Everything Ninette de Valois knew about how to run a ballet company she learned from working with Diaghilev. In 1924 she quite regular intense dancing because doctors detected damage from a previously undiagnosed case of childhood polio.

In 1927, de Valois established the Academy of Choreographic Art, a dance school for girls in London and the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet, Dublin. She wanted to form a repertory ballet company, with dancers drawn from the school and trained in a uniquely British style of ballet. Students of the school took part in opera and plays staged at the Old Vic Theatre with Valois. Lilian Baylis was the owner of the Old Vic at that time. In 1928 Lilian Baylis also acquired and refurbished the Sadler's Wells Theatre. She intended to create a sister theatre to the Old Vic. She employed de Valois to stage full-scale dance productions at both theatres. In 1931, de Valois moved her school into studios there, under the new name, the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. She also formed a ballet school under the name of the Vic-Wells Ballet. The Vic-Wells ballet company and school are today's Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Royal Ballet School.

In May 1927, William Butler Yeats, who was a poet and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, suggested to de Valois to established a ballet school in the city. From November Ninette de Valois started. It was the first of perhaps five Irish national ballet school projects during the 20th century, ran until June 1933. The statistics said that 7 of the 16 final students continued in active dancing, with 2 founding the next national ballet project, the "Abbey School of Ballet." De Valois produced a number of ballets each year. She also worked with music especially commissioned from Irish contemporary composers such as Harold R. White's The Faun (April 1928), Arthur Duff's The Drinking Horn and John F. Larchet's Bluebeard (both in July 1933).

When the Vic-Wells ballet was formed, it had only six female dancers, with de Valois. She worked as a lead dancer and choreographer there. The company performed its first full ballet production on 5 May 1931 at the Old Vic, with Anton Dolin as a guest star. They succeeded, so Valois hired new dancers and choreographers to work ith the company. She retired fully from the stage herself in 1933 after Alicia Markova joined the company and was appointed as Prima Ballerina.

In the 1930s the ballet company became one of the first Western dance companies to perform the classical ballet repertoire made famous by the Imperial Russian Ballet. Ninette de Valois set about establishing a British repertory. She engaged Frederick Ashton as Principal Choreographer and Constant Lambert as Musical Director in 1935. Ninette de Valois choreographed some of her ballets, (Job, 1931; The Rake's Progress, 1935, and Checkmate, 1937).

The most famous ballet dancers in the world were included in the company (Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey, and Michael Somes). In 1949 the Sadler Wells Ballet was a sensation when they toured the United States. Margot Fonteyn instantly became an international celebrity.

In 1947, de Valois established the first ballet school in Turkey. Later it became the School of Music & Ballet at Ankara State Conservatory, a department of the Hacettepe University. De Valois made sure that her company had talented stars such as Svetlana Beriosova, Antoinette Sibley, Nadia Nerina, Lynn Seymour, and, most sensationally, Rudolf Nureyev. She also invited choreographers like Sir Kenneth MacMillan and George Balanchine to work with her company. In 1963 de Valois retired from the Royal Ballet directorship in 1963, but her presence continued to loom large in the company and the same was true with the School, from which she retired in 1970.

Ninette de Valois was a supporter of a number of other projects, including the Cork Ballet Company and Irish National Ballet Company in Ireland. In April 1964 Ninette de Valois was the subject of This Is Your Life. She continued to make public appearances until her death in London at the age of 102. Ninette de Valois produced the Greek tragedy Oresteia. In 1926 it opened Terence Gray's Cambridge Festival Theatre. In 1935, de Valois collaborated with Frederick Ashton to produce a series of signature ballets, including her other famous works, The Rake's Progress (1935) and Checkmate (1937).

Achievements

• De Valois produced ballets such as Coppélia, Giselle, Don Quixote, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker. Job (1931) was the first ballet to be produced by an entirely British creative team. In 1947, Valois established the first ballet school in Turkey. In 1956 her ballet company and school were granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth II, and formally linked. In 1964 Ninette de Valois earned the Order of the Companions of Honor from Queen Elizabeth II. Ninette de Valois was honored with the Order of Merit on 2 January 1992. Ninette de Valois received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey on 2 January 1998.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Invitation to the ballet 1937
  • Come Dance With Me 1957
  • Step by step: The formation of an establishment 1981
  • Selected poems 1998

Religion

All Ninette de Valois's life she adhered to the Christian faith in which she had been brought up. In the words of one of her published poems, Ninette de Valois knew she could look forward to "the perpetuity of life, as thought forsakes all earthbound aims."

Views

Ninette de Valois kept her private life very distinct from her professional, making only the briefest of references to her marriage in her autobiographical writings.

Personality

Tenacious, far-sighted, and immensely professional, Ninette de Valois showed ruthless dedication in realizing her ambition to create a great ballet company in Britain. The dance world stood in awe of her; many were the number simply terrified of her. Ninette de Valois's energy, intelligence, and creative flair - and her ability to plan a long-term strategy for British ballet - were all in the Napoleonic vein. Temperamental, moody and difficult in pursuit of her aims, Ninette de Valois could also be witty, charming and enormous fun. At all times, she was overwhelmingly the center of attention.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Ninette de Valois leaves, for future British dancers, the prospect of a career that did not exist when she was young; for audiences, two great companies that would not have existed without her; and for her country, a national asset beyond price." - The Times

Interests

• Artists

  Serge Diaghilev

• Music & Bands

  classical music

Connections

In 1935 Ninette de Valois married Doctor Arthur Blackall Connell at Windsor. He was a physician and surgeon from Wandsworth, who worked as a general practitioner in Barnes, London. There they lived, and later they moved to Sunningdale, Berkshire. Ninette de Valois was his second wife. They didn't have children. Ninette de Valois had two step-sons, including Doctor David Blackall Connell. In 1955 he married Susan Jean Carnegie, a daughter of John Carnegie, 12th Earl of Northesk. They had two sons and a daughter.

Father:

Thomas Stannus

Mother:

Elizabeth Graydon Smith

Great-great-grandfather:

John Peter Grant

husband:

Arthur Blackall Connell

Step-son:

David Blackall Connell

Daughter-in-law:

Susan Jean Carnegie

Great-grandmother:

Elizabeth Grant Smith

pupil:

Alicia Markova

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields
  2010
• Ninette De Valois: Idealist Without Illusions
  1988