HOMAGE TO NINETTE
THEATRE, ballet, dance, drama, poetry, spectacle, traditional and contemporary dance – the inaugural Ninette de Valois Festival of Dance in Blessington had it all in abundance.
This collaboration between Blessington & District Forum and Interpretive Artists Ireland was established to pay homage to local artist Edris Stannus and evoke her legacy as a living heritage.
Edris rose to global fame through her talents as a dancer, choreographer and visionary enterprise under her stage name Ninette deValois. The festival celebrated with her home community her amazing journey from Blessington to Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House and her profound impact in founding the Royal Ballet, The Abbey School of Ballet (with W.B.Yeats), and the Australian, Canadian and Turkish National Ballet.
The atmosphere in Tramway Theatre on opening night was electric and the excitement was palpable ahead of the evening’s entertainment for which the local theatre welcomed well known personalities from the Irish and British Ballet establishment including Ballet Ireland, Dance Ireland, Irish National Youth Ballet, Cork City Ballet and Royal Ballet School in London and numerous dance teachers from influential Irish ballet schools. Many of these long-time champions of Ninette were at last realizing their long-held conviction that this great Irish Artist would one day achieve the recognition in Ireland that she has earned alongside her Dame of the British Empire and Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur which she merited as far back as 1950.
In the Tramway lobby, for the occasion, hung three large black and white photographs of Ninette, her husband and colleagues, suitably attired for an opening night in 1950s New York. These were alongside a translucent copy of a portrait of her mother Elizabeth Grayden Smith. The original painting has been mysteriously missing for almost a century. The pictures were lovingly transported by car by Louise Verity, a grand-niece of Ninette, on loan to enhance the occasion.
On the opposite wall of the foyer hung a black drape with a specially commissioned portrait of Ninette by RHA artist Michael Coleman which, at the artist’s request was surrounded by multiple child drawings of ballet, dancers, ballet shoes, tutus and ballerinas created by Blessington schoolchildren.
Throughout the rest of the evening the ballet enchanted the audience, beginning with Irish National Youth Ballet’s fabulous ‘Schubert Impromptu’, the première of ‘Le Spectre de la Rose’ specially filmed in Russborough House featuring rising Irish star Zoe Ashe-Browne and Dominic Harrison, to the jaw-dropping brilliance of Russian Ballerina Yuliya Prokhorova and Portadown’s Leigh Alderson on loan from Cork City Ballet to perform one of the main highlights of the Festival with the Grand Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty.
They were then rejoined by INYB for the grand finale.
A unique addition to the festivities was a one-act drama evoking Ninette’s more reflective sensibility as revealed in her poetry, journals and autobiographical writings entitled ‘The Contented Ghost’. Ninette was played superbly by the much admired Deirdre Monaghan and Arnold Haskill played by the actor (and author) Laurence Foster.
A charming feature of the Afternoon Tea-Dance hosted by Russborough House and the Beit Foundation was the 200 plus audience singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to 78 year-old Tom Deegan who was also celebrating his 70th year playing trumpet with the Ballymore Eustace Concert Band.
The unveiling of the Ninette deValois plaque on the wall of St Mary’s Church on Main Street was a poignant and ground-breaking event in Blessington’s story.
Just beyond the wall where the gracious grand-niece of deValois, Louise Verity unveiled the plaque lies the remains of Ninette’s sister Thelma and an emotional drawing of breath could be heard throughout the hundred or so present.
The plaque is loaded with a QR feature providing access for smart phones to information (without the need for an app) such as playback of an interview with Ninette produced by BBC’s Desert Island Discs in the 1970’s.
Chairman of the new Town Team John Horan accessed the recording and loudly played Ninette’s voice through the PA system which was quite spine-tingling and utterly unforgettable moment.