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. 

Other Ballet Teachers

Aside from the formal ballet schools in London, the Royal Ballet School and the National Training School for Dancing, there were other independent teachers, the most well-known of which was Signora Rampino.

Giovanna Rampino, known professionally as Signora Rampino, was a London-based teacher of the Milanese school of dance. Information on her is unfortunately rather scarce as she seems to have led a private life outside of her work. Many of the details of her life, including when and how she ended up in London are unfortunately not completely clear to us today.

What we do know is that she danced at La Scala, as that was a large selling point and contributed to her draw. As such, Rampino was likely Milanese by birth and likely trained at the theatre’s ballet school. She would have then danced at La Scala before retiring from the stage and moving to London, but when she arrived in London and for what reasons she moved is unfortunately not yet known.

What we do know, is that in 1894 William Thompson invited Rampino to teach at the Royal Ballet School for the second time and she declined, again for the second time. The fact that Thompson’s 1894 invitation is stated as being his second tells us, naturally, that he had to have extended an invitation before his 1894 invitation. As for the date of the first invitation, it probably would not have been before c. 1887/8, as 1888 was the year that Thompson opened his school, the Covent Garden School for Ballet. The source also indicates that Rampino had, at the time of Thompson’s second invitation, already turned down an invitation from Katti Lanner, who would have presumably invited Rampino to teach at the National Training School for Dancing, then stationed at Drury Lane and headed by Lanner. These refusals seem to indicate a wish for freedom on Rampino’s part, and may also imply that Rampino was financially secure enough at this point to refuse invitations from respected theatres, possibly suggesting that her ballet classes were, by then, relatively well-established.  

Speculating backwards, one can suppose that to have been established enough by the early 1890s to have drawn the notice of someone like Marta Draeger, Rampino would need to have started giving lessons by at least the mid 1880s, possibly even earlier, meaning that her retirement from the stage of La Scala would have had to have taken place before that.

In any case, Draeger seems to have trained with Rampino from at least the spring of 1891, upon her return from her engagement at the Königliche Oper. Draeger would continue to be a frequent student of Signora Rampino’s, presumably working with Rampino to continually refine and develop her Italian-based technique.

It is not known whether Rampino worked with others either beside her or under her, but she seems to have given classes to prominent dancers from theatres such as Covent Garden, Her Majesty’s, the Alhambra, the Empire and Drury Lane. We also know that at least by the time Draeger was taking her classes in 1891, Rampino was teaching out of a rented studio in the Lyceum Theatre. We do not know if Rampino also choreographed for the theatre, but it is plausible that she did, more likely on an ad-hoc basis than as an official balletmistress à la Lanner.

Speculations aside, we can say that by the early 1890s Rampino was known within the London ballet scene. She gave both private lessons and “open” classes for a fee, though even her “open” classes were not, strictly speaking, open to all. Draeger was perhaps the most famous student, but other Covent Garden dancers such as Anna Blunt, Giulia Moretti and Jane Wheaton are confirmed as having trained with Rampino, with several other prominent names also suspected as having studied with her. Thompson and later Richard Hague seemingly had a habit of sending promising dancers to train with Rampino (presumably paid for partially or completely by the theatre) and it would not be unreasonable to assume that the Royal Opera House was not the only theatre that did so.

A notable exception to the prominent attendees of Rampino’s classes is Sarah Nicholson. She does not, despite rumours circulated to the contrary, seem to have ever attended a class of Rampino’s, only mentioning Rampino twice in her memoirs, first in relation to Marta Draeger and then in relation to Jane Wheaton. She firstly states Draeger often studied with Rampino, and later on she secondly states that Hague sent Wheaton to study with Rampino, “Draeger’s teacher”, to have her “finished,” by which one can assume Nicholson meant a final refinement of Wheaton’s technique.

Given Nicholson’s vocal distaste for the “unbridled acrobatics” of some, though not all, Italian dancers, it would not be implausible to suggest that she believed that she had no need for Rampino. It would seem likely then, that the connection between the two may well have been fabricated for publicity’s sake, possibly by Rampino herself, as she certainly would have benefited from such an association.