Throwback Thursday and Mona Inglesby
Mona Inglesby isn’t exactly a name people recognize. She is
a forgotten English ballerina with a fascinating history. She was born in
London and studied with Marie Rambert and later with Margaret Craske and
Nicolas Legat. She performed in Ashton’s Foyer de Danse in 1932, and also danced
the role of Papillon in Fokine’s Le Carnaval when Rambert revived the Diaghilev
ballet.
In 1940 while driving an ambulance during the Blitz, she has
an epiphany. She decided that ballet was the answer to uplifting people’s
spirits during wartime. So she began her own company with money borrowed from
her father and launched The International Ballet. She was 22 years
old.
Her inspiration was right on target: the public loved the
ballet and at a time when other companies were failing, hers succeeded despite the
dark years of war in England. Unemployed dancers came to her company looking
for work, including Moira Shearer and Maurice Béjart who later achieved great
fame.
The International
Ballet made ballet affordable for the masses, and featured the classical
tradition of the Russian Imperial Ballet. Inglesby also brought ballet to areas
that seldom saw ballet, since the company toured all over the world. But in 1953,
after running the company for many years without government funding, Inglesby
applied for a grant and didn’t receive it. That year the company folded.
Her final years were spent in a nursing home, since her
memory gradually failed her. But, once in a while, she’d tell her son that
she could still “hear the music, see the
stage”. She died on October 6, 2006.
From the Big Blue Book of Ballet Secrets:
Dance History Factoid #105:
“Ballerina Mona
Inglesby drove an ambulance during WWII and later brought ballet to the masses.”
Link of the Day:
Quote
of the Day:
“The only walls that exist are those you
have placed in your mind.”
― Suzy Kassem
― Suzy Kassem
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