Ballet Black post Johnson - Still a good performance but something was missing

Author Jynto
Reproduced with kind permission of the author

Ballet Black Dopamine (You make my levels go silly), Captured, Red Riding Hood 18 Nov 2017 Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre Leeds

If anyone is interested, the photo above is a model of a molecule of dihydroxyphenethylamine or dopamine. It appears above because I can't use a lovely photo of  José Alves and Marie-Astrid Mence in Michael Corder's House of Dreams that I received just after I had published my review of Ballet Black's triple bill in Nottingham and which I had been saving for my review of their performance in Leeds.

I should begin this post by congratulating Damien Johnson on joining the Suzanne Farrell Ballet in Washington DC. I wish him every success with that company. Damian was my Outstanding Male Dancer of last year. Ironically, the last time I saw Ballet Black coincided with Damien's tenth anniversary in the company (see All Hail to the Lone Star Dancer 23 June 2017). Had I known in June what I know now, I would have queued at the stage door to shake his hand as he was one of the most exciting dancers on the British stage. He is an American so I suppose it is only right that he will now delight audiences in his native country as he delighted us. I am told by David Murley who attended the Red Riding Hood workshop in February that Damien is a good teacher.  I had several opportunities to attend one of his classes.  I now feel like kicking myself for letting those opportunities slip.

I surmise that one immediate impact of Damien's departure is that the company no longer had a second man for House of Dreams.  It substituted Dopamine (you make my levels go silly) which is a duet. It was danced beautifully by Cira Robinson and José Alves. I had last seen it four years ago when José partnered Sayaka Ichikawa on a previous visit ti Leeds (see Ballet Black is still special 7 Nov 2013). The rest of the programme proceeded as advertised with Martin Lawrance's Captured and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Red Riding Hood.

It was a good performance. Ballet Black retains excellent experienced dancers and has a very promising recruit in Ebony Thomas.  Mthuthuzei November wowed us with his flirtatious virtuosity as he had wowed the Nottingham Playhouse and the London Barbican.  Sayaka was an excellent Red Riding Hood adding a soupcon of fun and naughtiness to her veneer of innocence. Grandma was as funny and dazzling on pointe as ever.  The cast danced their hearts out and they were rewarded with hearty applause.

Yet something was missing and that something was Damien.  Ballet Black has lost some fine dancers in the past such as Sarah Kundi and Kanika Carr who seemed irreplaceable at the time but it always recovered stronger than ever.  The company will no doubt get over the loss of Damian in time but he will be the hardest gap to fill.

This is Ballet Black's last performance in the North. They will appear in Portsmouth on the 21 which seems to be the last stop on their current tour. If you live or happen to be in Hampshire or Sussex on that day I urge you to see them.  They will then work on their 2018 season which will include a revival of Arthur Pita's A Dream Within a Midsummer Night's Dream. The company was recently nominated for the best creative artist in the Black British Entertainment Awards. They have recently achieved National Portfolio funding from the Arts Council England.  They are still a fine company and those like me who wish to support them can do so by subscribing as a Friend.

The Increasing Cost of Friendship

On Saturday 10 Oct 2015 I discussed public funding for ballet (see How Arts Council England supports Dance 10 Oct 2015).  I mentioned Arts Council England’s analysis of its investment inlarge-scale opera and ballet in which the Arts Council announced on page 7 that it will reduce the total funding to the major opera ballet companies by 7.3% in real terms, and shrink their share of national portfolio funding to 21%.  I was, however, pleased to see on the next page that the Arts Council gave Northern Ballet a planning figure of £3.1 million from 2015-16, an increase of £550,000 per annum on its core grant.

By coincidence I received a letter from Mark Skipper DL (well, actually 2 because one was addressed to "Miss Jane Lambert" and the other to "Ms Jane Lambert") thanking me for my commitment to Northern Ballet over the years and expressing his extreme gratitude and that of David Nixon for my past and ongoing generosity.  In the next paragraph Mr Skipper mentioned the numerous cuts and budget constraints that the arts sector (though happily not Northern Ballet) has faced over the years as well as competition from touring musicals from London and abroad.  He concluded

"To preserve a sustainable future for Northern Ballet, we have to become less reliant on Arts Council funding."

Now as an old fashioned liberal I have always been uncomfortable about asking our beer drinking, football supporting fellow citizens to support my passion for ballet which I have to acknowledge is a minority interest.  As Jeremy Bentham put it:

"Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry."

I therefore applaud any initiative to reduce dependence on Arts Council England.

However, it comes as a cost for Mr Skipper's letters announced that the Friends' subscription (though not the Patrons') will rise.  For most Friends the increase is from £50 to £70 a year but for pensioners who have until now contributed £30 per year it is a whopping 133.3% as they can no longer subscribe at a concessionary rate. A price rise that contrasts with negative inflation across the board in the UK.

Now there is no question of my not supporting Northern Ballet. I have done so in one form or another ever since 1985 when I returned to the North. I do so not because I am Northern, still less because I want to attend open rehearsals or receive the other benefits advertised on the Friends and Patrons page but because I love ballet. By the same token I am also a Friend of Covent Garden even though I hardly ever get to the Royal Opera House, Scottish Ballet even though I am not a Scot and the Dutch National Ballet even though I am a Brit.  I will continue to make an annual gift to Northern Ballet and the Northern Ballet Academy to the extent that I have done in the past even if I cease to remain  a formal Friend.

The reason why I may cease to remain a formal Friend is that there are a lot of companies such as Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Ballet that deserve my support and don't yet get it. There are also bodies like The Ballet Association, The Vic-Wells Association and Dance UK which I really should support. Similarly there are schools and students the length and breadth of the country and elsewhere who need help.  The problem with subscription hikes of this kind is that it forces us to make hard choices.

How Arts Council England supports Dance

Ballet Rambert performing "Peter and the Wolf" at a wartime aircraft factory

Author Ministry of Information
Source Imperial War Museum

Reproduced under Imperial War Museum Non-Commercial Licence

In Dancing in the Blitz: How World War II Made British Ballet David Bintley explained how how the Second World War was the making of British ballet. In that programme Bintley focussed on the work of Ninette de Valois and the Sadler's Wells Ballet which is understandable as he is artistic director of one of its successor companies but it should never be forgotten that the Ballet Rambert also contributed considerably to maintaining morale by visiting military installations and factories as the above photograph shows (see Our History on the Rambert Dance website).

Even though we faced invasion, nightly bombing and scarcities of all kinds the preservation and promotion of the arts were considered sufficiently important for the wartime government to establish the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts in 1940.  Under the chairmanship of the economist Lord Keynes, the Council supported performances by dancers and other artists throughout the second world war. According to Arts Council England's website, the Council funded 46 companies in 1945 (see John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet 3 March 2013).

The Council changed its name to the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946 and continued to support the arts in peacetime until 1994 when it was replaced by Arts Council England and its counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Arts Council England was established by a royal charter dated 30 March 1994 which has been renewed and amended several times.  It receives money from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the National Lottery which it invests in accordance with its framework agreement of 29 Oct 2012. Between 2015 and 2018, we will distribute £1.1 billion from the government and some £700 million from the National Lottery to the performing arts. Its funding programme is  summarized in the YouTube video Arts Council England - Our funding ecology and explained in detail in Great Art and Culture for Everyone its strategic framework for 2010 to 2020. The bulk of the Arts Council's funding goes to national portfolio organizations and major partner museums and a spreadsheet which can be downloaded from this page shows the distribution to those organizations and museums.

Approximately 22% of national portfolio funding goes to the Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, Opera North, the Royal Opera House and the Welsh National Opera. Arts Council England has published an analysis of its investment in large-scale opera and ballet (see Arts Council England’s analysis of its investment in large-scale opera and ballet Briefing and Outline). The ostensible purpose of that analysis is

"to understand how these organisations could best be served by likely future levels of investment ..... to be sure that investment decisions would represent best value for public funds, in order to address the needs of the companies and to meet the expectations of audiences."

The paper acknowledges that opera and ballet bring together large numbers of skilled artists, technicians and craftspeople which make a significant contribution to the economy. The Arts Council found that audiences for large and mid-scale ballet increased between 2008 and 2012 while those for large and mid-scale opera decreased during the same period and that new audiences for ballet were developed by works for children and live streaming to cinemas.

The Arts Council reported tensions between companies and theatres:

"In general, the companies are frustrated by what they see as a lack of support from venues for their attempts to broaden their repertoire, the refusal to share detailed audience data and the imposition of booking fees and restoration levies. The venues for their part often feel that the companies regard certain weeks to be ‘theirs by right’, do not value the venues’ expertise in selling tickets, and do not consult over repertoire, prices and education programmes."

The paper considered that there was "considerable scope to build audiences for the full range of opera and ballet repertoire" which can be achieved by venues and touring companies working more closely and effectively together. Arts Council England stated that it will  expect companies and venues to agree ambitious audience targets. There is scope for companies to pay more attention to the role that repertoire plays in attracting audiences but at the same time theatres must recognize that all parties have an interest in developing audiences for less familiar work. Funding is to be conditional upon such co-operation and if theatres are not prepared to co-operate the companies will be encouraged to find alternative venues.

Arts Council England recommended an overall decrease in funding for opera and ballet by 7.3% reducing their share of national portfolio investment from 22% to 21% although Birmingham Royal Ballet and Northern Ballet will actually get an increase. All the opera and ballet companies will be required to plan for live screenings and the Royal Opera House is expected to work with other companies to make the most of opportunities presented through digital broadcasts. The inclusion of Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet in World Ballet Day may be an early manifestation of that policy.

Another general recommendation was for "dance hubs" to be developed in Birmingham and Leeds.  In its recommendation to the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Arts Council England said:

"We are proposing that, in addition, we ask the company to work with the City of Birmingham, Dance Xchange, the Hippodrome and other interested parties to make Birmingham into a regional dance centre, building a broad dance culture in the City, capable of increasing audiences and attracting and retaining talent in the city."

The Arts Council also believe that

"Leeds has the potential to become a major regional dance centre. We suggested that Northern Ballet should work with Phoenix, Leeds City Council, Yorkshire Dance and others to explore how they might work collaboratively to build a broad dance culture in Leeds, capable of increasing audiences and attracting and retaining talent in the city."

All good stuff though it should not be forgotten that a major city does not need a big ballet company to be a dance hub as Manchester proves with the Northern Ballet School, Dancehouse theatre, KNT, the Lowry and the Palace theatres not to mention the Chancellor's announcement of a £78 million investment in the Factory (see Let's bring the Royal Ballet to The Factory Manchester 11 Dec 2014).

This is the first of a series of articles that I plan to write about public funding for dance in the UK. In future articles I hope to discuss funding in other parts of the UK and guidance on applying for funding from Arts Council England and other bodies.

Ballet Economics

Population densities of the UK from 2011 Census

Source Wikipedia

One of the questions that I would have liked to have asked David Bintley when he spoke to the London Ballet Circle on Monday but didn't was "Why don't we ever see Birmingham Royal Ballet in Leeds?" They come to Manchester twice a year but the nearest they get to Leeds, Sheffield or Bradford is York. I would also like to put the same question to the business managers of English National Ballet, Scottish Ballet and Ballet Cymru.

I suspect their answer may be that Northern Ballet is based in Leeds and the other great companies don't want to tread on their toes. That probably explains why Northern Ballet will dance in Edinburgh but not in Glasgow, Manchester and Milton Keynes but never Birmingham. It may even be a condition of their funding from the Arts Council or other bodies. I shall have to do some digging to find out.

But if that is the explanation I think it is flawed. Northern Ballet has cultivated an audience for dance in Leeds which is hungry for more. Cassa Pancho said something to that effect when I first met her. Ballet Black had been performing in Southport to an appreciative but not particularly massive crowd. Their show had been a sell out at The Linbury the previous February and they usually fill the Stanley and Audrey Theatre. Yet Southport is in Merseyside, which is itself part of a much bigger urban area. Though it is at the North-Western end of the conurbation it is well connected to the rest of North West England by road and public transport.

Manchester is one of our greatest cities but I have attended excellent performances at The Lowry where the auditorium has been much less than full. Manchester. Now Manchester has great cultural institutions such as The Hallé and The Royal Exchange but, sadly, no longer has a major resident ballet company and that seems to make all the difference.  I am told that the Birmingham Royal Ballet has created a massive audience for dance at the Hippodrome and I have seen and felt the audience at The Tramway in Glasgow (see No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015).

If major companies struggle to fill seats in Manchester it must be even harder to sell tickets in sizeable towns and cities in the remoter parts of the country. Maybe you could get a good audience for The Nutcracker but you might struggle for anything else.

I am not a great fan of public sponsorship of the performing arts. The Arts Council was the brain child of Lord Keynes (see John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet 3 March 2013) and on this matter as on many others I am no Keynesian. There seem to be all sorts of shadowy figures such as the National Dance Coordinating Committee which I heard about for the first time only the other day but have found impossible to google. So much better, indeed so much fairer, to let companies follow their audiences and perhaps to grow them.

Post Script

Janet McNulty writes:

@jelterps I've tried to post a comment on the blog. @BRB perform in Salford not Manchester and they stopped coming to Leeds long before Nb

— Janet McNulty (@JanMcN) May 15, 2015

Funding the Arts in the North

Palace Theatre, Manchester

Photo Wikipedia

You may have heard a lot of talk from politicians about a "Northern Powerhouse". That may be because there is an election is the offing and the politicians who have had most to sat about the idea - namely the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Deputy Prime Minister - hold Northern seats. But there is a case for growing the North as a counterweight to London in order to rebalance the British economy.

In its report on The Work of Arts Council England of 28 Oct 2014 The Culture, Media and Sport Committee found that:

"London has long received a disproportionate share of arts funding, something which even the Arts Council acknowledges. To a limited extent this reflects London’s position as the capital city and a world cultural centre. However, there remains a clear funding imbalance in favour of London at the expense of tax payers and lottery players in other parts of the country. The Arts Council is well-placed to restore some balance. It must do so with greater urgency if it is to realise its declared ambition to engineer the provision of great art and culture for everyone."

In a response to that report an organization that represents Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield known as "the Core Cities group" acknowledged "the important role played by London as the national cultural capital and the central role of the cultural economy in London’s attractiveness as a place to live, visit and invest" but contended that:

"the Core Cities have a unique role to play as regional cultural capitals and a similar argument in terms of the critical mass of larger-scale venues and producing companies. The substantial cultural offer of the Core Cities plays a lead role in driving economic growth and supporting competitiveness as well as providing a rich cultural environment. This role extends beyond the Core Cities themselves, to the wider city region, the region and surrounding economies. The term ‘Cultural Capital’ is therefore used here in that sense of delivering benefits to a much wider area, not in an exclusive sense."

Alleging that they contributed 28% to national output which was more than London the Core Cities continued as follows:

"[7] The cultural and creative sectors are key drivers of success (including economic diversity, human capital, innovation, quality of place), and growing competition for public and private funds will limit their growth. Sustainable development of the cultural and creative sector in the Core Cities is therefore vital to balanced growth in the wider economy.
[8] For this to be fully realised, it is important that decisions on Government spending recognise this contribution in terms of the economic impacts of cultural spend and how this relates to the wider re-balancing agenda in order to maximise growth dividends for the UK as a whole.
[9] This requires not only mechanisms which fairly reflect the activities of cultural organisations operating in the regions, but new ways of relating spending priorities to growth to take full advantage of culture’s economic contribution.
[10] Whilst the culture and creative sector contribute directly to economic growth, it should also be noted that they have a wider role to play in the Core Cities in strengthening economic competitiveness. A strong cultural economy attracts visitors and investors as well as being a significant provider of broader skills development."

They concluded "that, without a new policy direction agreed between the Core Cities and central government, it is likely that in the short to medium term, the national cultural infrastructure based in the cities and serving their regional economies, is not sustainable and its loss will have wide-ranging impact on the competitiveness of the country."

On the very day that the Core Cities' response to the Committee's report was published, Opera North announced "a new membership scheme for inspired business leaders who recognise and value the role the company plays in making the region an attractive place to live, study, work and invest" (see Business Partners scheme hits the right note ahead of its launch 12 Jan 2015 Yorkshire Business News). It appears that Opera North 25 founding business partners include AQL, Arup, Bartlett Group, Blacks Solicitors, Brewin Dolphin, The Business Desk, Dermalogica, DLA Piper, Evans Property Group, EY, Hainsworth, Hammerson plc, James Hare Ltd, KPMG, Land Securities, Leeds Building Society, Leeds City Council, MAC, Maestro! Tour Management, NJ Geddes Private Jewellery Concierge, One Medical Group, Taste Cuisine, Town Centre Securities, Yorkshire Building Society and Yorkshire Water.

To my mind raising money locally from business and the community is a better way of sponsoring the arts in the North than diverting public funds from artists in London. First, we are a very small country and London is easy to reach from any part of the UK. Nowhere is more than a couple of flying time by air and all the core cities are connected to the capital by motorway and intercity rail services. Secondly, institutions like the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera serve us all. I would much rather see a well funded performance at Covent Garden than more experimental theatre at the local civic. Thirdly, we have excellence in the North and the Midlands (see any my reviews of Northern Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet). Also in Scotland (see  Like meeting an old friend after so many years 4 Jan 2015), Wales (see An Explosion of Joy 21 Sep 2014) and indeed Grantham (see The Happy Prince in Halifax 21 Nov 2014) and Hinckley (The Bedouin of Ballet 12 Dec 2014). Fourthly, we want devolution in skills, transport and economic development and all sorts of other areas so why not in culture?

Branding and Ballet - Ten Top Tips

Whenever possible I try to get the company's T-shirt when I watch them performing in a ballet. So far I have T-shirts from

• Ballet Black
• Ballet Cymru
• Rambert
• The Dutch National Ballet
• The Royal Ballet, and
• The Stuttgart Ballet.

I also have a ballet bag from the Bristol Russian Ballet School and I'be bought English National Ballet's My First Coppelia t-shirts for Vlad the Lad and my Huddersfield ballet teacher's younger daughter. It is a way of supporting those companies and one that I much prefer to the doling out of public money by the Arts Council of England. 

The reason I feel uncomfortable about it is that I can't really think of an answer to my fellow citizens who see opera and ballet as all right for those who like that sort of thing but it shouldn't be their brass that pays for it. Now don't get me wrong. I love opera, ballet and all the other performing arts. I am delighted that my beloved Northern Ballet was favoured in the Arts Council's latest round of investment in opera and ballet. But I am not sure that Arts Council funding is particularly fair to those who prefer their money to be spent in other ways and when I look across the Atlantic where just about every town of any size has its own company that is supported strongly by its local community (some of which such as the Sarasota Ballet seem to be rather good) I have to ask whether this form of subsidy is even good for the performing arts. The Arts Council was promoted by one of its first chairmen Lord Keynes (see "John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet" 3 March 2013). Like a lot of Lord Keynes's ideas that wilted under the scrutiny of Thatcherism in the 1980s direct funding for the performing arts may have to be reconsidered.

Even if the Arts Council can be justified the funds available to it for investment are unlikely to grow by much and there is also a limit to the amount of money that the hard pressed public can afford to pay for tickets or donations.  As I said in "Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers" 13 March 2014 companies, theatres, dancers (at least principals) and possibly even schools and dancers will have to exploit their goodwill a little more in the way that sports stars and artists in the other performing arts have done. To that end I wrote three further articles to show how that could be done:

• "Protecting the Brand" 31 March 2014
• Branding and Ballet - Licensing the Brand 18 April 2014, and
• Branding and Ballet - Copyright and Rights in Performances 3 May 2014

This is a summary of the advice that I gave in those articles. It applies to everyone in dance - individual artists and teachers as well as institutions.

1. Register your business name and any logo as trade marks: You can do it yourself on-line for the UK from as little as £170 though I would advise you to last out a few hundred pounds more and get a trade mark or patent agent to do it for you. He or she will make a search to make sure there are no conflicting registrations, prepare a specification that covers all your needs, file it and correspond with the Intellectual Property Office or other registry until you have your grant. There are two advantages of registration, First it is easier to protect and license branded merchandise. Secondly, it trumps anything a cyber-squatter can say in a domain name dispute. If you do it yourself make sure you cover all the countries in which you want to perform or sell your merchandise and that your registration covers clothing, printed matter and anything else you can see yourself selling in the next five years.
2. Subscribe to a good watch service. A watch service scours the IPO and other patent office websites for applications that could conflict with your registrations and reports back to you if it finds any.  Most patent and trade mark agents can set up such a subscription for you though they tend to be on the pricey side. Leeds Business and IP Centre runs a good service. Call Ged or Stef on 0113 247 8266 for more info.
3. Keep an audit trail of all your artistic, choreographic, literary and musical works. As I said in "Branding and Ballet - Copyright and Rights in Performances" copyright and rights in performances are not registered rights. They come to being when a qualified person creates an original artistic, dramatic, literary or musical work or, in the case of dancers and musicians, takes part in live performances.  The best way of proving your title is by means of contemporaneous notes and logs with references back to the stave on which the choreology or music is recorded.
4. Review and keep under review all your licences and other agreements. This applies both to people who serve you such as your choreographers, dancers and musicians and also to those who want to take licences from you. Make sure these are drawn up professionally and that you enforce them.
5. Take out adequate insurance to cover claims by you and against you.   IP litigation is expensive and is usually excluded from most legal risk indemnity programs. There are some specialist companies that provide such a service and it is worth looking out for them (see my article "IP Insurance Five Years on" 23 Oct 2010 Inventors Club blog).
6. Be sure to talk to a lawyer first if you think someone has infringed your IPR. That is because some statutes such as the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Trade Marks Act 1994 provide a cause of action against those who threaten litigation without justification (see "If you think someone has infringed your patent talk to a lawyer first" 11 July 2014 Inventors Club biog).
7. Carry out periodic IP audits. You are creating new works all the time and also licensing in and out other peoples' work. Make sure that everything is covered.
8. If someone infringes your rights don't ignore it. There's an expression in the law that delay defeats equity. At the very least delay in enforcing your rights could prevent your getting an interim injunction. At the worst it could be seen as acquiescence.
9. Make others aware of your IP rights.  Use the copyright symbol (c) and the registered trade mark symbol to make the public aware of your rights. That way they can't use the defence of ignorance.
10. Get your audiences on your side. Folk who have paid a lot of money for their tickets are understandably annoyed when the first thing they hear is an order not to use cameras or mobile phones. But if you explain why they will co-operate with you even to the point of stopping their neighbours from surreptitiously photographing or taping your show.

This is the last of my articles on ballet and branding. It is my gift back to the artists and impresarios who have given me so much pleasure over the years. I hope that at least some of you will find my tips useful.

John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet

When I watched the Birmingham Royal Ballet dance Aladdin last Thursday (see "Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin" Terpsiechore 1 Mar 2013) I could not help reflecting that the Birmingham Royal Ballet and indeed its sister company at Covent Garden might never have come into existence had it not been for the influence and indeed benevolence of John Maynard Keynes in the early years of English ballet. Sadly, there is no acknowledgement of Keynes's contribution on the history page of the Birmingham Royal Ballet's website or in its accompanying chronology.

Although his ideas fell temporarily out of fashion when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister he is still regarded as one of this country's greatest economist.    When I started to read economics at St Andrews in 1968 his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was my text book. Unlike many academic economists he put his knowledge to practical use amassing an enormous personal fortune from shrewd investment on the Stock Exchange.  Much of that wealth he gave away and one of the principal beneficiaries of his bounty were the dance troupes that eventually blossomed into the Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Probably even more important than his personal generosity was the influence that he exerted through his membership of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts ("CEMA") and its successor the Arts Council of Great Britain of which he was the founding chair.   The arts in general and ballet in particular were important for sustaining civilian morale during the Second World War and post war austerity.   Keynes understood the importance of ballet and ensured that the Royal Opera House and Sadlers Wells received all the resources that they needed.   The reopening of Covent Garden with a performance of The Sleeping Beauty in 1946 was a glittering affair.   A great contrast to the greyness of the time.

However, Keynes had another connection with the ballet and that was his marriage to the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova. Lopokova was one of the members of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, a great artistic enterprise that brought together not just the dancers of Imperial Russia but also outstanding painters and composers. After the revolution those artists had to tour and it was through touring that a market for ballet was developed in the United States and Britain.  It was upon one of those tours that Lopokova came to London where Keynes saw her dance in The Sleeping Beauty.

According to Alison Light

"Keynes met Lopokova when she was on the verge of becoming a cult figure. Her final frenzied cancan with Massine, which transformed her from an inert doll into a bacchante, sent her fans crazy; they stood on their seats, clapping and chanting her name. It wasn’t long before ‘Lydia’ dolls were being sold. The British press loved her because she was more like the girl next door than an exotic Slav; she was a ‘London sparrow’ with an ‘exquisite plebeian beauty’. Lopokova was a fan of the music hall and her childlike, wistful face could imbue a role with Chaplinesque dignity and pathos. Nor was she above a bit of clowning. When her knickers slithered to the floor as she danced the lead in Les Sylphides – the most poetic of ballets – she threw them into the wings with a flourish (she used other such ‘accidents’ to play to the gallery). In 1921, hoping to bring in the crowds, Diaghilev staged a lavish version of The Sleeping Beauty. The production flopped. The critics felt it was a retrograde step and London’s postwar audiences were too jaded for romance. Except for Keynes. He sat every night in the stalls, enchanted by Lydia as the Lilac Fairy casting spells over the cradle.(Lady Talky London Review of Books, 18 Dec 2008).

They married in 1925 and Lopokova (later Lady Keynes) survived him until her death at the grand old age of 88 in 1981.  No choreographer has ever made a ballet of Keynes's life to the best of my knowledge and belief but perhaps one should.

Post Script 6 March 2014

Although the Birmingham Royal Ballet did not mention Lord Keynes's contribution to ballet in the United Kingdom in its programme its artistic director David Bintley very properly acknowledged it in Dancing in the Blitz: How World War 2 Made British Ballet which was broadcast by BBC 4 on Tuesday 4 March 2014 at 01:20. This remarkable programme is available on the BBC i-player for the next few days.

Bintley also mentions the performance of The Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden on the 20 Feb 1946 which I discussed in "The Sleeping Beauty - a Review and why the Ballet is important" 29 Sep 2013.