From public protests about visiting Russian dancers, to audacious original ballets taking on themes of female sexuality, and collaborations with figures such as Patrick Kavanagh, it seems extraordinary that Dublin's National Ballet School & Company has been forgotten.
For the new Lyric Feature documentary Building a Ballet on RTÉ lyric fm, programme-maker Joanna Marsden set out to discover more about the dancers in this unusual Russian-style ballet school and their teacher & choreographer Patricia Ryan. Joanna introduces Building a Ballet below - listen to it above.
In one of the fragments of memoir written by choreographer Patricia Ryan, who died in 2011, she describes both her pain on giving up ballet as a young woman in the 1940s and her joy at getting a second chance in the ballet world when she became the teacher of Dublin’s National Ballet School in 1957:
'I had stopped dancing. I had stopped dead. I was dead. And, suddenly, I had these students under my hands, and they could continue where I had left off, and that is what they did…’
The seven-year period of intense creativity that followed, during which Ryan took on and grew the National Ballet School into a significant National Ballet Company – within reach of becoming a true National Ballet for Ireland – is the subject of Building a Ballet.
of the National Ballet School & Company Dublin
(Photo by Michael Kinneen (Ryan's brother)
and courtesy of The Penelope Collins Collection)
The documentary follows Ryan’s story as she finds her feet as a teacher, drawing on her early training under Russian prima ballerina Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat to develop her choreographic style. The achievements of Ryan include not only staging classical ballets but choreographing three original Irish ballets to music by Belfast-born composer AJ Potter: Careless Love (with a libretto by Donagh McDonagh), Gamble no Gamble (based on a poem by Patrick Kavanagh) and Caitlin Bhocht.
During the making of this documentary, recordings of these ballets were found in the Contemporary Music Centre (CMC) and RTÉ archives and, in two instances, digitised for the programme. All three ballets interrogate ideals of womanhood and Ireland, and they were choreographed specifically for Ryan’s talented young dancers. The lead dancer in Careless Love, Joan Wilson, is a contributor to the documentary and she describes a brave moment in the ballet when she and her partner climbed onto a bed under an image of the Sacred Heart.
& Joan Wilson (the city girl) in the first production of
'Careless Love in 1960 (Photo courtesy of Joan Wilson)
Other dancers interviewed include Ester Ó Brolcháin – whose parents Blanaid Ó Brolcháin (niece of Joseph Plunkett) and Eoin Ó Brolcháin were important supporters of the Ballet School – and Geraldine Morris, who later joined the Royal Ballet in London. They speak of their commitment to their daily classes and of how Ryan’s choreography encouraged emotional expression. In Joan Wilson’s words, "You could put all your guile into it! Liberate yourself!"
The achievements of Ryan and the company include bringing Russian principal dancers Nina Menovchikova and Veanir Kruglov to Dublin during the Iron Curtain era. With no Russian Embassy in Ireland at the time, Ryan wrote to the Ministry of Culture in Moscow to organise the visit:
‘If you can send us some of your magnificent young dancers, I am convinced that our country would give them the warm-hearted welcome which they deserve. We know that their visit would not only be an honour, but also a wonderful inspiration to ballet in this country.’
The welcome did not pan out quite as Ryan had hoped and her memoir describes arriving at a stage rehearsal at the Olympia one afternoon in September 1962, and being ‘horrified to see, marching up and down the street outside the Olympia, men and women with placards saying that the Irish people would not attend any performance given by "The Godless People".’
(and later Royal Ballet dancer) Dr Geraldine Morris at the Royal Opera House
in Covent Garden (Photo courtesy of Joanna Marsden)
It was also Ryan who negotiated the entry of dancers into the union Irish Actors Equity and it was National Ballet Company dancers who performed under television choreographer Norman Maen at the first RTÉ broadcast on December 31st 1961 – although the dancers’ memories of the performance on the tarmac at Dublin Airport suggest a somewhat shambolic affair.
in April 1957, courtesy of The Penelope Collins Collection.
This is a story rich in unpublished historical material, much of which has been meticulously collated by Ryan’s youngest daughter Penelope Collins in the years since Ryan’s death in 2011. Penelope Collins's Collection includes letters from Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat and Ninette De Valois (performed in the documentary by Ingrid Craigie); Samuel Beckett and Micheál Mac Liammóir (performed by Mark Doherty); and critic Monk Gibbon and painter Patrick Collins (performed by Jonathan White).
But the central voice from the past is Patricia Ryan herself, whose fragmented memoirs open a first-hand window onto her remarkable story, and take in topics beyond the ballet, including her affair with painter Patrick Collins and her frank reflections on female sexuality. The memoirs are given additional poignancy because they are performed by actor Simone Collins, the granddaughter of Ryan.
actor Simone Collins, who performs Ryan's memoirs in 'Building a Ballet’.
(Photo courtesy of Penelope Collins)
The collapse of the National Ballet Company, not long after its merger with the Irish Theatre Ballet in Cork, was an enormous personal loss for Ryan, who never worked in the ballet world again, and for her dancers who scattered around the world.
For me as documentary-maker, Building a Ballet was always two stories – the central story of a forgotten ballet company and its achievements; and the powerful sub-story of the ramifications of a kind of creative death in Ryan’s life when she was unable to continue the work she loved. It’s clear from Ryan’s daughter Penelope, who contributes to the documentary, that the loss reverberated through the rest of Ryan’s life.
For Ryan, an additional source of pain was that her story – unlike that of many of the men she worked with – had been forgotten. But the papers she kept, and the work her daughter Penelope did in preserving them, made this documentary possible, and in that way, it is a reminder to hold on to your papers as well as your dreams.
Building a Ballet will be broadcast on The Lyric Feature (Sunday at 6pm on RTÉ lyric fm) on Mother’s Day March 10th . You can listen to more Lyric Features here.
The Producer wishes to thanks Penelope Collins for the use of her collection of original letters & memoirs in the making of this programme. Additional contributors include Jim Hughes and Victoria O’Brien, whose book ‘A History of Irish Ballet from 1927 to 1963’ includes the only significant written account of the National Ballet School & Company. Thanks also to the CMC, the Dance Archive of Ireland in Limerick, The Royal Opera House, and artist Michael Kane.
