Collaborations. Ninette de Valois and William Butler Yeats 14+

📒 W.B. Yeats's invitation to Ninette de Valois to come to Dublin and help him stage his plays for dancers and to found a School of Ballet at the Abbey Theatre have been known facts for many years, not least from de Valois' own autobiographies. Collaborations is the first detailed study of the creative relationship of poet and dancer that resulted, which lasted from 1927 to 1934. Their meeting at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge, a remarkable venture in experimental staging run by Terence Gray, de Valois' cousin, had a profound impact on her subsequent work with Yeats. Gray promoted the expressionist style in terms of design and movement, for which de Valois devised the choreography, and it was a similar style that Yeats encouraged her to pursue in mounting his own plays. Four productions were achieved: Fighting the Waves, The Dreaming of the Bones, At the Hawk's Well and The King of the Great Clock Tower. This study is divided into two parts: the first investigates what precisely de Valois learned from her association with Terence Gray at the Festival Theatre and the nature of her achievements there; the second looks at how this preparation bore special fruit in her roles as performer and choreographer at the Abbey Theatre and why these four productions were for Yeats the most satisfying staging of his dance plays in his lifetime. Their success as collaborators grew from the deep respect each sustained for the integrity of the other's artistry. Yeats is oft...