History

Ballet training, though not as formally established as in other nations, had long existed in the United Kingdom. 

By the late 1870s, the foremost institution of ballet training in London (and therefore in the United Kingdom), was the National Training School for Dancing, based at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

The school had been founded by J. H. Mapleson at Her Majesty’s Theatre and had been moved to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1867 after Her Majesty’s was destroyed by fire. From 1875 the school was directed by Katti Lanner, who was better known as the ballet mistress of the Empire Theatre of Varieties, a position she took on in 1887.

Covent Garden School for Ballet

William Thompson had expressed the desire to create a school of his own as early as 1882. However, Mapleson refused, stating that the National Training School was perfectly adequate and so no second school was needed. Indeed, several of Thompson’s dancers (most famously Sarah Nicholson) had trained there, but Thompson still wished to have his own attached ballet school.  Therefore, despite Mapleson’s refusal, Thompson continued to seek out potential teachers for the school in preparation for when he might be able to open one. Thompson’s 1887 move to Covent Garden finally afforded him to the opportunity, and in 1888 the Covent Garden School for Ballet was officially opened. 

By 1890, Thompson wished to display his new creation to the public. Though advised against it, he choreographed a polka for the children to dance as the oysters in his new ballet, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This was aligned with Thompson’s belief that children should be exposed to stage performance as soon as they were capable of it, in order to prepare themselves for their later careers on the stage. This opinion was not shared by all, including some of the teachers at the school, who believed that children should remain in the classroom and would neither be capable of reliably executing the choreography nor pleasing the public.

Thankfully for Thompson, the Polka des Huîtres was well received, and the children were (with a few mishaps), quite able to retain and execute the choreography. The success of the Polka prompted Thompson to continue to include children in his ballets, following the Polka with the Danse des Petits Amours in Pygmalion (1893) and the celebrated Ballabile des Enfants in The Buccaneers (1896).

In 1892, the Covent Garden School for Ballet was renamed to the Royal Ballet School. This change was as a result of the renaming of the theatre, until then more completely known as The Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden. In 1892, Gustav Mahler presented the debut of Wagner’s Ring cycle at Covent Garden in German. This resulted in the word “Italian” being quietly dropped from the name of the opera house, and it was now referred to as the Royal Opera House. To reflect this, Thompson requested that his troupe be similarly renamed to the Royal Ballet and his school to the Royal Ballet School. Such a direct attribution to royalty and the royal family was met with initial resistance, but upon correspondence with the palace no objections were found and so Thompson was allowed to proceed with his renaming. 

In 1912, The Fairy Doll was revived by Richard Hague for the Covent Garden troupe and was a failure, considered ludicrously childish by the audience and critics. In 1913, Hague staged the ballet for the graduating class of the Royal Ballet School, revising the choreography. The graduation performance was a success, with both the critics and the audience impressed by the students’ ability to carry an entire ballet (albeit a one-act ballet) and the youthful charm that was now attributed to the ballet in place of previously assigned childishness.