The world of ballet comes to Wicklow
DAVID MEDCALF SAT IN ON A PLANNING SESSION AS THE FINAL TOUCHES WERE PUT TO PREPARATION FOR THE NEW NINETTE DE VALOIS FESTIVAL OF DANCE IN BLESSINGTON. THE EVENT IS SET TO REMIND EVERYONE OF A CULTURAL COLOSSUS
RENOWNED centres of ballet are few in number. The cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg vie with each other for primacy in the Russian sphere of dance. New York with its Lincoln Center is worth a mention, of course, while Paris and London are serious cosmopolitan contenders for honours nearer to home. Now perhaps the time has come to add Blessington to the list…
In a meeting room at the public library over the local branch of Dunnes Stores, three respectably aged men are engaged in earnest conversation. Michael Doyle, Vincent McCabe and Jim Corley are not discussing Wicklow’s prospects against Dublin in the football championship or the relative merits of Audi as compared with Lexus.
Though they have never pulled on a leotard in earnest, their topic of enthusiastic conversation is ballet and how to wake up Blessington to this most demanding, yet rewarding, art form. The trio and their colleagues are planning to put Blessington on the cultural map with the Ninette de Valois Festival of Dance next month, running (doubtless on tippy-toes) from June 29 to July 1. Though other forms of dance are on the programme, it is ballet which has prompted the initiative, with the Tramway Theatre set to become County Wicklow’s own Bolshoi.
The inspiration for the festival was Blessington’s own giant of ballet – a woman christened Edris Stannus, though that was not the name by which she is remembered. She adopted the Ninette handle early in a career that brought her great renown on stages and in ballet troupes around the world but most particularly in Britain, where she founded the Royal Ballet. Dancer, choreographer and teacher, she is remembered in the UK as a colossus, a Dame, her memory immortalised in a bronze statue outside the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden.
Local historian Jim Corley is adamant that the girl from Baltyboys House preserved a fondness for Ireland throughout a life that extended across three centuries. Edris-cum-Ninette was born in 1898 and she drew her final breath in the new millennium, finally expiring not so very long ago in 2001. The man from Blessington History Circle confirms that she was daughter of local lady Elizabeth Graydon Smith who married a military man called Thomas Stannus.
The family departed for England with their young family: ‘She was seven when they left and went to Deal in Kent,’ reports Jim. ‘It broke her heart because she loved Baltyboys and Ireland all her life.’ Though Ninette went on to command a world-wide reputation, she came back repeatedly to her native country and was in constant touch Ireland’s great cultural leader WB Yeats. It was Yeats, creator of his own poetic ‘Swan Lake’ when he wrote ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, who brought her back to establish the Abbey School of Ballet in 1927.
She maintained a regular, hands-on interest in the school into the mid-1930s and was back in Ireland during the 1950s for an appearance at the Gate Theatre. On that trip she also ventured out of Dublin city and over the county boarder to take a sentimental look around the house where she was born. It is part of the de Valois legend that Ninette’s first dance was an Irish jig, taught to her by a tenant on the Graydon Smith estate who was called Kate Finnegan. Introverted as a child, the young girl discovered that the jig was useful as a party piece, delighting and amusing the adults who applauded her efforts in the drawing rooms and parlours of the moneyed classes.
Elizabeth Stannus was clearly a very cultured individual, an accomplished singer of opera and a leading authority on cut glass, no less. No doubt it was she who brought her daughter to see her first ballet at the age of six in a Dublin theatre. Ninette’s father was a professional soldier, an officer in the British Army who served in the Boer War and who eventually died in battle at Messines in 1917. W
ITH him gone, Elizabeth supported herself and her family by running a glass making factory and she did not stand in her daughter’s way when Ninette decided to tour England as a young woman with a dance company. It was by no means certain at the outset that her restless passion for the dance would produce a ballerina, as the company did whatever was necessary to please an audience in low brow venues such as Blackpool.
However, as it turned out, she soon rose above the music halls to triumph as an exponent of high flown ballet which was then being championed beyond the boundaries of Russia by Diaghilev. The photographs of the star show a woman who evolved from a young beauty to become a commanding lady with impeccable posture and a commanding presence.
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overlooked part of local lore were it not for the efforts of Vincent McCabe. You probably know Vincent, though you may not know that you know him, his face and his perfect voice. An actor by profession, the Dubliner has reached an age where he is happy to describe himself as an old age pensioner. Abbey Theatre trained, he appeared over the years in, for example, ‘Glenroe’ on television and ‘Blood Brothers’ on stage.
He had a role in setting up the Project Arts Centre and has been active in the actors union Equity. It was through Equity that he became part of an Arts Council backed initiative to honour Ireland’s leading performing artists. Writers and painters have an honours system called Aosdána; it is time to acknowledge the actors and, yes, dancers.
‘I never saw Ninette de Valois or met her,’ says Vincent, ‘ but she stands out above everyone else, outstanding in her field and known for her extraordinary achievements.’ After all, not only did she make her mark in London but she also assisted in establishing the national ballet companies of Canada, Australia and Turkey.
He points out that Yeats held her in such high regard that he repeatedly brought her home to Ireland and he wrote nine plays for dancers with her talents in mind. The forthcoming festival will celebrate a living legacy which continues to inspire those who follow, presented after a year of planning and preparation.
The great woman’s original home town has deliberately selected for the event, away from the big city, as the focus of activity. Michael Doyle, of the Blessington and District Forum, was delighted when Vincent McCabe made the initial approach with his Interpretive Artists Ireland hat on and the idea has grown legs.
‘We hope it will become an annual event but for the moment we are concentrating on getting this year’s festival over the line,’ says Michael, probably best known in these parts as chairman of the town’s credit union.
He has helped to enrol local schools in the build-up to the festival, with first year student Niamh Grace Dowling from Turlough O’Donnell’s art class at the Community College designing the event logo.
During the three days of the festival, Blessington will have an opportunity to enjoy performances by dancers from Irish National Youth Ballet and the Cork City Ballet.
Debate and film screening and poetry dramatisation will also be on the agenda, as well as a tea dance featuring the Ballymore Eustace Concert Band staged in the stately setting of Russborough House.
On the Sunday, a ceremony will be staged on Main Street unveiling a memorial to Ninette de Valois, reminding all who pass along the N81 of her special place in the world of dance. This ceremony will light the spark for an afternoon of action in the town square, led by ballet teacher Ruth Shine who will be joined by colleagues from other dance disciplines including ballroom experts Noel and Anne Nolan and hip hop exponent Sinéad O’Brien.
BALTYBOYS House, now the home of Brian Kingham, is not on the formal timetable of the inaugural Ninette De Valois Festival of Dance.However, the organisers have made contact with the current owner and quite likely the birthplace of the great woman will be available some time soon for the making of a film about the esteemed ballerina. In the meantime, Blessington History Circle stalwart Jim Corley is working on a book about Ninette’s family which he expects to have ready for publication next year. One story is sure to be included: It is said that when Elizabeth Stannus was poised to give birth 120 years ago, her husband Thomas ordered preparations to celebrate the arrival of the child.
The bell at Baltyboys – which is still there, by the way – was to be rung and a great bonfire was to be lit, letting the world know about the happy event. The baby was safely delivered but no match was ever put to the fire, such was Thomas’s disappointment that the child was a mere girl. When Edris Stannus, the future Ninette de Valois, heard of this she vowed that she would light her own fire in the world.
She most certainly did that.