Ninette de Valois was gifted with myriad talents. To summarise these as dancer, choreographer, artistic director and theatre administrator tells only a fraction of her story. It has required a wealth of writers, teachers, performers, colleagues, one-time students and collaborators to come together to engage with and celebrate the complexity of this remarkable woman. More details in her portrait may be gleaned from the titles of the sections into which the volume has been divided: Biography; Teaching; Wordsmith; Company; Turkey; Choreography; Collaborations; Herself. Yet these headings merely intimate the strengths of her private inner resources (her acumen, astounding foresight, dedication, daring) and the diversity of her public achievements, the realising and the steady but relentless expanding of her vision both for a company and of the potentials of dance as an art-form. Determining those strengths and that diversity is the objective of Ninette de Valois: Adventurous Traditionalist.
Writing alone, however brilliant the description or the analysis, cannot hope fully to capture the vitality of theatrical performance or the rigours of the training and rehearsal schedules that underpin its virtuosity. To help remedy this lack, the text of the book includes more than fifty photographs and a DVD, offering more than four hours of filmed material of archival value and importance to complement the written word. One intention in devising this volume has been to provide a substantial resource to assist future exploration of de Valois' life and work and appendices outline the contents of the major collections housing materials relevant to further study. The many essays here pursue divergent approaches and encompass contrasting viewpoints. But it is without question that de Valois' unparalleled success derived from her unshaken faith that ballet in its training methods and its repertoire must be both fearlessly adventurous and confidently traditionalist.