A friend went to an exhibition of photographs taken by Joan Leigh Fermor at the Benaki Museum in Athens. It looks like a little gem and I hope it may follow in the footsteps of Charmed Lives in Greece to the British Museum.
Her subjects are more often than not ordinary people she encountered travelling round Greece with Paddy LF.
But this picture caught my friend’s eye.
The Leigh Fermors and John Craxton were invited by Thomas Hart Fisher (an American lawyer) and his wife, Ruth Page (ballerina), to join them on board a chartered caique, Elikki. Margot Fonteyn and Frederick Ashton were also guests and put in some ballet practice on deck.
Frederick Ashton had a long association with Ninette de Valois, creating his first ballet for her company in 1931. He asked her round to his Chelsea house in 1964 when Eamonn Andrews appeared unexpectedly to say This is Your Life. This came to mind on Monday morning as I walked up the towpath to Richmond, passing this house in Barnes.
The blue plaque reads: “Dame Ninette de Valois O.M. 1898-2001 Founder of the Royal Ballet lived here 1962-1982”. Such an appropriate name for the world of ballet, Ninette de Valois, only she made it up when she was thirteen.
Edris Stannus was born in 1898 at Baltyboys House near Blessington in Co Wicklow, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stannus DSO. In 1905 she moved to England to live with her grandmother in Kent. In 1911 she made her debut as principal dancer in pantomime and re-invented herself as Ninette de Valois.
She is remembered in Co Wicklow. At the end of this month there will be a festival of dance at Blessington to mark the 120th anniversary of her birth.
I do enjoy the way you bring together many interesting references into a single entry. The musical pun is too good! (And one can almost imagine a military band playing “Tea For Two” from that show as a cup is passed ’round . . . ) The biography of Joan is in my pile “to be read,” and I am very much looking forward to it.
I knew Ninette de Valois slightly as she was President of the Royal Ballet School, which she founded, when I was first a Governor there. She ( “Madame” to the ballet world) was a terrifying presence.At her 100th birthday in White Lodge there was a performance in the small studio theatre by dancers from the Company. Madame sat in the front row with Anthony Dowell a few feet from the dancers commenting on their individual performances in a loud voice, with him manfully agreeing with her, equally loudly, since she was, unsurprisingly, rather deaf. One of the ballerinas told me afterwards that it was the most alarming performance of her life.