The London Ballet Circle - Promoting interest in dance and kindred arts

The Linden Studio, Royal Ballet School,

London W.C.2

Michael Ludgate was delighted to welcome our guest Miss Anya Linden (The Lady Sainsbury CBE) in the beautiful studio dedicated to her at the Royal Ballet School. He welcomed our distinguished guests Lord Sainsbury and Ambassador and Mrs Blinken (who was US Ambassador to Hungary for some years and is now a well known patron of the arts in the United States). He also welcomed our President Sir Peter Wright CBE; Michael Broderick, Associate Vice President; Founder Member Stanley Hawkins, Honorary Members David Gayle MBE and Leo Kersley, and some Friends of the Royal Ballet School. He thanked Gailene Stock AM, Director of the School, and her staff for all their help.

Anya was born in Manchester and when she was six months old her family emigrated to

Russia

. It was the time of the depression in the UK and as her father was a scientist and had been invited to work in Russia, he decided to take his family to Leningrad, where they lived from 1933 to 1938. Her parents had not been particularly interested in ballet, but while in Leningrad they went to a performance of "Swan Lake" by the Kirov, with a young ballerina called Galina Ulanova. They liked it so much that they bought records of the music and when the family eventually moved to Berkeley, California they took the records with them. When the children were in bed at night her parents played the "Swan Lake" music and Anya, then 7 years old, was so entranced that she just had to get up and dance in the corridor outside her bedroom when she should have been asleep! Her mother noticed Anya's love of dancing and sent her to a local dancing school owned by Miss Dorothy Pring, who, luckily, was a very good basic teacher. Anya enjoyed the classes and especially performing in the little shows put on by her teacher. When she was 12, Anya and her best friend were chosen by Miss Pring to attend a Summer school held by Theodore Kosloff in Hollywood. Anya was overwhelmed by the spacious glamorous studio and impressed by seeing well known professional dancers, such as Nana Gollner and Paul Petrov, for the first time. Anya and her friend Sally Streets had a daily class and private lesson and made technical progress Âespecially with pirouettes. (Sally became Sally Nichols and danced with the New York City Ballet. She was a wonderful teacher, and taught her daughter, Kyra Nichols, who became a ballerina with NYCB and has recently retired.) Kosloff had left Russia in the Revolution and managed to get parts in Hollywood silent films, and then opened his studio. Anya described him as being quite severe. He wore a strange brown leather hairnet and carried a little stick, like a Degas ballet master, but had tremendous charisma and was an inspiring teacher, as was his wife, Maria Baldina.

In February 1947 the family returned to the UK in the depths of the worst winter on record. It was a shock to them coming straight from the heat of California, but they arrived armed with lots of vitamin pills and warm clothes! Anya auditioned for the Sadlers Wells Ballet School, which was then in a freezing church hall in Chalk Farm. She was accepted into the school and admired the wonderful spirit of students and staff in these difficult times. The School moved later that year (September 1947) into Talgarth Road. Anya told us about her two wonderful teachers, then at Chalk Farm, who were George Goncharov and Babs (Ailne) Philips; he was Russian in style and temperament and she was restrained and very correct in the English way. Although Dame Ninette de Valois was overall director of the school, Anya did not have much direct contact with her, but remembered her as a rather volatile figure who noticed everything. At the age of 14, Anya's father decided that her academic schooling came first and that she should continue her education, now on offer at the newly acquired premises at Barons Court junior school, while her best friends from Chalk Farm, Annette Page and David Blair, went up into the senior school there. In due course Anya reached the senior school where Harold Turner was among her teachers. She was also taught by Harijs Plucis, the ballet master to the company at that time, and who became her special mentor when she joined the company. She had her first stage experience as various court ladies and pages in classical ballets. In the revival of "La Boutique Fantasque" she was cast as one of the children in the Russian family and the students playing children became so over enthusiastic that they had to be restrained.

In 1951 Anya then became a student member of the Sadlerâs Wells Theatre Ballet at Â£7.00 per week. This was an exciting time for the company, with John Cranko working on "Pineapple Poll" and "Harlequin in April", and Madam was reviving "The Prospect before us". Anya got her first review from Clive Barnes as a Mirleton in "Casse Noisette" - it said she was out of time! Anya was disappointed not to be chosen for the Sadlerâs Wells Theatre Ballet's first American tour, but was sent to gain experience with the main Company at Covent Garden, "which was not such a bad thing after all"! Anya made rapid progress and soon danced her first full length ballet "Coppelia" which she enjoyed immensely and described some ideas she had about her interpretation of Swanhilda. At the after-show party given by Michael Wood (Company Manager), she arrived in a taxi with all her bouquets and managed to present back to her host the flowers he had sent to her on stage.

Eventually, Anya went on tour with the Company to the USA on one of the very long tours by train, and although this was tiring she had many opportunities to dance new roles. She also toured around the UK and the London suburbs. During the long US tours the American orchestra, stage staff and dancers all traveled together on the Company's special train, and by the time the tour ended some of the young dancers had dropped out to marry musicians. Anya recalled that she danced her first Aurora with David Blair in Los Angeles on the American tour and was terrified by the fishdives in the Act III pas de deux. The night before her debut she watched the performance of Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes with very close attention and suddenly noticed the vital move she needed to get the fIshdives right, and they came off perfectly on the night.

Talking about her years in the Company, Anya considered it was a golden time when great artists were creating ballets, such as Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, John Cranko and Alfred Rodrigues. In the course of her career she had to cope with some embarrassing moments on stage, which were nerve-wracking at the time but funny in retrospect! For MacMillan she danced in "Noctambules", "Agon", "Solitaire", "The Invitation" and "Seven Deadly Sins", and pointed out to us the photographs of herself in these roles around the walls of the Linden Studio. Anya was chosen by MacMillan for a special Edinburgh Festival production with Western Theatre Ballet of "The Seven Deadly Sins", which was to star Lotte Lenya as the singing Anna, and Anya as the dancing Anna. Lenya approved of Anya, but not Kenneth's concept, and walked out of the show a week before the first night. Luckily they were able to get Cleo Laine, who learnt the part very quickly and was a great success. Anya is looking forward to seeing Will Tuckett's new version. MacMillan also coached Anya in "Swan Lake" and helped her greatly with her musical phrasing.

Massine created "Donald of the Burthens" for Beryl Grey and the dancers found him to be very severe and difficult to work with, as he used his own notation system which did not allow the slightest variation of movement. Anya couldn't understand how such a beautiful youth, as Massine was in photographs of "Le Legende de Joseph", could have turned out the way he did! She remembered Ashton coaching her in "Symphonic Variations" and telling her to imagine walking on clouds in the slow movement pas de deux. Anton Dolin helped her with "Giselle" which she was to dance with John Gilpin, and she spoke about Dolin's memories of Spessivtseva in this role, who carried some of her madness into Act II. Robert Helpmann coached her as Ophelia in "Hamlet" and encouraged her to set aside any inhibitions and show her emotions in rehearsal. AndrÃ©e Howard and Svetlana Beriosova coached her in "La Fete Ãtrange" when she was second cast. Her first performance with Nureyev was in "Les Sylphides" and Anya and he rehearsed it carefully with Lubov Tchernicheva, but Rudi was often late for rehearsal; in fact at the actual performance he arrived on stage just in time to take his position in the opening pose. As the curtain rose, he said "Anya, is it two lifts, or three?" Talking about her favourite ballets, Anya loved "Firebird", and "Giselle" because they are both dramatic roles. Her last performance was in the role of the Wife in "The Invitation"; she was already four months pregnant with her second child.

Anya loves working with young people and coaches at White Lodge and at the Rambert School. She is interested in stage design and studied at the Slade School when N. Georgiadis was there, and has established a prize for young theatre designers, now in its 20th year. She is very interested in the work of Dance United, directed by Royston Muldoon. A film was made of his work with street children in Ethiopia and he continues to undertake performance projects involving young people outside society, and women in prison, who create and perform dance works. He worked in Germany with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic on a dance project using "The Rite of Spring", called "Rhythm is it", using as his dancers a group of disaffected kids. The film made of the project was a smash hit in Germany. Recently an academy has been set up in Bradford to teach dance to young people which has enormously beneficial effects.

When asked if there was anything she still wished for, it would be to see Oliver Messel's costumes for "The Sleeping Beauty" reinstated on the Opera House stage.

Anya then answered some questions from the audience and told us about her feelings for Dame Ninette de Valois when she got to know her better, and was no longer a terrified student. She admired her tremendous vision, energy and intelligence, and wonderful sense of humour. Even in her late 90s Madam wanted to hear about the school and when Anya told her on one occasion that there were no boys' entries in the choreographic competition, she got quite excited and demanded to know what the boys were doing! She spoke about MacMillan and was fascinated by his ideas, and where he got them from. Talking about ballets she would have liked to have danced, she mentioned Juliet but the timing was not right for her, as it was created just when Anya had returned to the company after her first baby and she was not yet fully fit.

After answering some more questions from the audience the evening ended with the presentation of Champagne to Anya to great applause and many thanks from the audience for a delightful evening.

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