Miss Bayliss' Ballet

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 84, 31 January 1941, Page 5

Miss Bayliss' Ballet

| IKE the Old Vic, Sadler’s Wells was a people’s theatre, mostly devoted to ballet, while the Old Vic. put on Shakespeare. These two theatres held fast to their splendid tradition, and nothing would induce Lilian Bayliss to lower her standard and put on some commercial success, that might pay better. She, alone, placed the high quality of her production above the mere making of money. She was a great idealist, a real fighter for the cause to which she had given her life.

To the western mind ballet dancing was associated with Russia, and English dancers hid their identity under Russian names. Anton Dolin, who is probably the most successful British dancer, was an Irish boy. If his name wasn’t Doolan, it was something like that. But a few enthusiasts were determined to kill this false idea that the English lacked the temperament to make ballet dancers, and though other schools of ballet started, and were more or less success ful, it was not until Lilian Bayliss opened the Sadler’s Wells

theatre as a centre for British ballet, that even the English critics were converted. Some of these critics had been bitterly opposed to the scheme, but old Lilian Bayliss stuck to her guns, and made them acknowledge her triumph. During the heyday of the Russian ballet, it was produced by Russian composers, artists and choreographers. It was the success of Sadler’s Wells that led to English composers writing ballet music, English choreographers producing the ballet, and English artists designing the costumes and decor. The new ballet was English through and through. It was not a poor imitation of the Russian ballet. It took its own themes and used its own treatment of the subject, and in time evolved a characteristically British ballet. And made a big

success of it.-

-(" Ships and Shoes and Sealing-Wax,"

by

Nelle

Scanlan

2YA, January 10.)