Voices of British Ballet

The fate of many a dancer is discussed at the end of the interview featured in this episode. Adventures are recounted with unaffected humour and a deliciously 1930s delivery. In this interview with Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, Felicity Sands-Widdrington talks about becoming a Bluebell Girl in Paris and being stuck in prison when World War Two broke out, before getting back to London via Switzerland and France. The interview was recorded in 2003.

Felicity Sands (later Felicity Sands-Widdrington) was born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, in 1917. She took ballet classes in Perth with Linley Wilson, and came to London in 1936, partly to complete her Royal Academy of Dance exams and, when there, she trained under Olive Handley. She then got a job working on a film in Vienna, (Premiere 1937 directed by Géza von Bolváry) along with 100 other female dancers in a spectacular dance sequence.

After that, Felicity danced professionally in France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, and eventually joined the Bluebell Girls at the Lido de Paris. During her dancing career she was always the only Australian in whatever company she was appearing. She was dancing in Milan in 1939 just before World War Two broke out. Two days before Italy joined the war, she and some of her colleagues were arrested and thrown into prison, wrongly suspected of being involved with gun runners. After a few days they were released and escorted by the Italian police to the Swiss border. She got into France and was able to get back to London on one of the last boats to leave for England.

Back in London in 1940, Felicity thought show dancing was “no way to conduct yourself in the war”, so she drove ambulances, before working in the Postal and Censorship Office in the famous Room 99. She had married in 1940, and after the war never returned to professional dancing.

The photograph shows Felicity in a Bluebell line up in 1939 in Milan.

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In this interview with Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, Barbara Vernon illustrates that it is not all plain sailing out of the mainstream of the ballet world and gives a glimpse of a different sort of struggle, where dedication and belief are not quite enough – especially without funds. The interview, which was recorded in 2003, is introduced by the dance historian Jane Pritchard.

Born in 1918, Barbara Vernon’s mother was aware that she was an artistic child and supported her in her endeavours. Her first ballet classes were in Birmingham, where she trained in the syllabus as set by the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD). From the age of 16, she danced with various small groups, but it was whilst performing in pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin that her future life was set. There, she heard about the teaching of a Russian émigré ballet master, Nicholas Legat. When back in London in 1936, she joined his classes at 46, Colet Gardens. Legat died the following year, and Vernon then found her way to Léonide Massine’s studio in Monte Carlo, where she learnt a wonderful variety of repertoire.

These two momentous happenings – the teaching of Legat and the repertoire of Massine – were to shape and inform the whole of Vernon’s future life. During World War Two, she danced with various companies, including Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet, and the Anglo-Polish Ballet. It was whilst she was in the latter company that she met John Gregory, the multi-talented actor, artist, dancer and writer, John Gregory. The couple married in 1945 and later had two children together. In 1949 the pair created the School of Russian Classical Ballet in Chelsea, which developed into the Harlequin Ballet ten years later. This little group took ballet to the people for the following decade. From that time onwards they taught, lectured and wrote, and in 1995 the couple inaugurated the Legat Foundation. John Gregory died in 1996, and Barbara Vernon in 2007
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In 2026 Voices of British Ballet is celebrating the life of Ninette de Valois, to mark the centenary of the Royal Ballet School, with a series of interviews and special episodes that illuminate her life and artistic practice.

In this episode, Dr Anna Meadmore, Manager of Special Collections at the Royal Ballet School, introduces an interview with the writer and ballet historian Giannandrea Poesio. The interview was recorded in 2011 at a conference dedicated to Ninette de Valois where Giannandrea Poesio was one of the delegates. He talks with Patricia Linton about two meetings he had with de Valois and how she gave him the nickname “Cecchetti Boy”. He discusses Ninette de Valois’ reservations about the Cecchetti method and explores the use of historical mime in present day performance.

Anna Meadmore was one of the organisers of that conference in 2011 and reflects on the importance of dance history to the education and training of new dancers and choreographers. She also talks about Giannandrea’s talk at the conference about mime in ballet and the influence of Giuseppina Cecchetti and Francesca Zanfretta.

Giannadrea Poesio died in 2017.
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It really does seem true that dancers in the difficult years of World War Two were happy to exist on the bare minimum. The common bond was that they all loved dancing and that appeared to keep them going. In this interview with the dancer and teacher Robert Harrold, which was recorded in 2007, Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, talks with him about a career that commenced during a time of conflict. The interview is introduced by Jane Pritchard.

Robert Harrold was born in Wolverhampton in 1923. His first dancing lessons were in Birmingham with Evelyn Goodwin, and his stage career began with the Anglo-Polish Ballet in 1940. For the next few years, he danced with Ballet Rambert, where he experienced a fine repertoire of ballets with an enviable range of choreographers, in which he often partnered Rambert’s charismatic ballerina of the time, Sally Gilmour. During the later years of World War Two, Harrold was a member of the Central Pool of Artists (CPA), and he was a part of groups that entertained the troops in Italy, via India, Ceylon and Australia. After the war he danced in musical theatre and television and began to develop his choreographic ability. Most important was the beginning of his lifelong love and involvement with National and Folk Dance. He was a tireless advocate of this form of dance and, along with his friend and mentor Helen Windgrave, wrote books and formed groups – notably the Modial Company – and educational enterprises to interest people in general and to win converts if possible!

Dancer, teacher, examiner, adjudicator and writer, Robert Harrold had a very full and busy life in dance and contributed unstintingly to the many ventures in which he was involved. In 1986 he received the Imperial Award for Outstanding Services to the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD), an organisation he had been involved with for many years.

Photograph: CAPRICCIO by Richard Strauss; Valerie Davie and Robert Harrold as the Dancers Conducted by Pritchard; Directed by Rennert; Scenery Designed by Lennon; Costumes designed by Powell; Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex, UK; 1963;
© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd.; Credit: Guy Gravett / Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. / ArenaPAL ;

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There is so much in this short interview to love and revere. Roger Tully was a legendary teacher, who was an inspiration to many dancers over many years. He had strong and very definite ideas about dancing and technique, but he was always looking beyond – to maybe something spiritual. He was a teacher who in the great early Twentieth-Century tradition of teachers, taught outside institutions. For the art of dance to live on, long may this independent spirit last and flourish. In this interview, which was recorded in 2020, Roger Tully talks to the dancer, choreographer and writer Jennifer Jackson, who was also one of his pupils.

Roger Tully was born in London in 1928. After National Service and training as an optician, his love of dance led him to study with Marie Rambert at her school. He went on to study with Cleo Nordi, Lydia Kyasht, Stanislas Idzikowski and, above all, with Kathleen Crofton, who had herself studied under the former Imperial Russian ballerina Olga Preobrajenska and danced with the Anna Pavlova company. His association with Crofton, which lasted for many years until she herself departed to the USA in 1966, asking him to take over her classes, was perhaps the central influence on his own approach to dance and to teaching.

From 1949 until 1951 Tully danced with Ballet Rambert, and then with International Ballet until it’s closure in 1953. He also worked on the musical stage and with Walter Gore’s London Ballet, where he partnered Paula Hinton. In the 1960s he danced in the USA and in Canada with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.

In 1977, Tully bought a house in Bedford Gardens in Kensington and established a studio there, where he taught until he moved away from London in 2015. He remained independent of established schools and teaching systems and his classes, in which he taught all levels, from beginners to established professionals including principal dancers from major companies, gained an enviable reputation for their grounding in the classical tradition. His teaching was much valued by those looking for something different from the norm. He addressed the person who dances and stressed artistry rather than gymnastic virtuosity. His approach, however, was systematically thought out, looking to move with the body’s natural weight, rather than fighting against it, so as to achieve a true sense of vertical balance and stability. In this quest he was also influenced by his study of classical sculpture. In 2011 he published The Song Sings the Bird: A Manual on the Teaching of Classical Dance, in which he sums up his decades of experience in the teaching of ballet.

As well as working in Bedford Gardens, he also taught ballet at Pineapple Studio and Dance Works in London and to ballroom dancers in Helsinki, as well as master classes in Paris, Rome, and Tokyo. Even after he had moved away from London to Haywards Heath in Sussex, he continued to teach right up to his death in 2020, at the age of 91.
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