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Dame Ninette de Valois (6 June 18988 March 2001) was an Irish-born British dancer, teacher, choreographer and director of classical ballet. Most notably, she danced professionally with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, later establishing The Royal Ballet, one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century and one of the leading ballet companies in the world today. She also established the Birmingham Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet School. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of ballet and as the "godmother" of English ballet.〔〔〔 ==Biography== Ninette de Valois was born Edris Stannus on 6 June 1898, near the town of Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland. She was the second daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stannus DSO,〔(thepeerage.com )〕 a British Army officer, and Lilith Stannus (née Elizabeth Graydon Smith), a distinguished glassmaker.〔〔 She moved to England in 1905, where she lived with her grandmother in Kent. De Valois started attending ballet lessons in 1908 at the age of 10. At the age of 13, she began her professional training at the Lila Field Academy for Children. It was at this time that she legally changed her name to Ninette de Valois and made her professional debut as a principal dancer in pantomime at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End. In 1919, at the age of 21, she was appointed principal dancer of the Beecham Opera, which was then the resident opera company at the Royal Opera House. She continued to study ballet with notable teachers, including Edouard Espinosa, Enrico Cecchetti and Nicholas Legat. In 1923, de Valois joined the Ballets Russes, a renowned ballet company founded by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. She remained with the company for three years, being promoted to the rank of Soloist, and creating roles in some of the company's most famous ballets, including ''Les biches'' and ''Le Train Bleu''. During this time, she was also mentor to Alicia Markova who was only a child at the time, but would eventually be recognised as a Prima Ballerina Assoluta and one of the most famous English dancers of all time. Later in her life, de Valois claimed that everything she knew about how to run a ballet company, she learned from working with Diaghilev.〔 After leaving the Ballets Russes, in 1927, de Valois established the Academy of Choreographic Art, a dance school for girls in London〔 and the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet, Dublin.〔Victoria O'Brien: ''A History of Irish Ballet from 1927-1963'', Bern: Peter Lang, 2011, ISBN 978-3-03911-873-1, pp. 7-39〕 In London, her ultimate goal was to form a repertory ballet company, with dancers drawn from the school and trained in a uniquely British style of ballet. Students of the school were given professional stage experience performing in opera and plays staged at the Old Vic Theatre, with de Valois choreographing several short ballets for the theatre. Lilian Baylis was the owner of the Old Vic at that time, and in 1928 she also acquired and refurbished the Sadler's Wells Theatre, with the intention of creating a sister theatre to the Old Vic. She employed de Valois to stage full scale dance productions at both theatres and when the Sadler's Wells theatre re-opened in 1931, de Valois moved her school into studios there, under the new name, the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. A ballet company was also formed, known as the Vic-Wells Ballet. The Vic-Wells ballet company and school would be the predecessors of today's Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet School. From November 1927 to July 1933, de Valois was responsible for the setting up and the programming of the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet at the request of W.B. Yeats, founder of the Abbey Theatre. During these years she produced a number of ballets each year, mostly to her own choreography. She also worked with music especially commissioned from Irish contemporary composers such as Harold R. White's ''The Faun'' (April 1928),〔See O'Brien (2011), p. 18〕 Arthur Duff's ''The Drinking Horn'' and John F. Larchet's ''Bluebeard'' (both in July 1933).〔See O'Brien (2011), p. 31〕〔See also http://www.abbeytheatremusic.ie〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ninette de Valois」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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