‘It’s such a shame they moved Covent Garden market,” says Dame Beryl Grey. “You used to go into the Opera House and you could smell the cabbages! It was wonderful,” she smiles.
This was in the 1940s and 50s, the early days of British ballet. Grey was there shaping it, a dancer of warm, joyful presence and dazzling technique. Her name hasn’t lived in the public consciousness like her contemporary Margot Fonteyn, but she should be celebrated. In her heyday, there was a poem about her in Punch. She was the subject of This Is Your Life and even appeared on Call My Bluff. It’s hard to imagine a current Royal Ballet principal being invited on Would I Lie to You?
Grey was a precocious talent, a north London girl with a natural aptitude and a strong work ethic, who completed all her ballet exams by the age of nine, joined the nascent Vic-Wells ballet, precursor to the Royal Ballet, and danced her first Swan Lake on her 15th birthday, a huge feat of stamina and strength. Among her many achievements, she went on to be the first western ballerina to perform with Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet in 1957 and became director of the London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet) in 1968, rescuing the company from crisis.
At 92, Grey is still involved in the ballet world, although she slowed down following an operation for bowel cancer in 2017. How is she now, I ask. “Oh, fine!” she says breezily. This is the woman who once danced Swan Lake with a stomach bug, vomiting between acts. Ballet dancers are tough. She’s frailer now, but still sharp, warm and always elegant, dressed in blouse and pearls. We sit in the conservatory of her Sussex home with photos on the wall, of her husband Sven (who died a decade ago) and backstage snaps of glamorous dance luminaries.
“I’ve been very lucky,” she says. “It’s been a lovely life. Dance meant everything to me. Dancing is a very personal expression of happiness.” It must have been difficult to be dancing at the same time as Fonteyn, I say, when everyone else was in her shadow. “And under her spell,” interjects Grey. There was no resentment, she says, because they were as bewitched by her as anyone else. What was so compelling? “I suppose her simple honesty. She was perfect for the company because she always did what she was told. She was very beautiful, but she was very kind and sweet and never big-headed.”
Grey mostly did what she was told, but she had her own mind, too, and left the Royal Ballet in 1957 to broaden her horizons. Performing at the Bolshoi was momentous. This was in the depths of the cold war, but Grey played her own small part in thawing relations. “After my first performance, the British ambassador had a party and it was the first time any of the Bolshoi had been to the British embassy, so that was a good breakthrough.”
She loved performing there. “It’s wonderful when you go on stage to be surrounded by everyone so totally ‘in’ what they’re doing. You’re just lifted up.” The Russians “lived to dance” she says – she still thinks Russian ballet dancers are the best in the world – and their commitment was rewarded. “I don’t think people realise quite how controlled a communist country is,” says Grey. “But ballet is so respected and loved in Russia, the dancers were free and most of them were allowed a car, which is very unusual. They all had a flat. They had extra food coupons and could go to certain shops that other people couldn’t.”
Not all Soviet dancers were content, however, and famous defectors did much to raise the profile of ballet in 60s Britain, notably Rudolf Nureyev, who worked with Grey at Festival Ballet. The stories of Nureyev that Grey tells in her autobiography are shocking, from everyday rudeness and erratic moods to kicking a dancer who displeased him. You wouldn’t get away with that now, I say. “No, he would have been sued, quite right,” she says. “But, you see, his background was so totally different. He had this enormous passion for dance and couldn’t bear anyone doing something which, in his opinion, wasn’t right.”
Can such outrageous bad behaviour be forgiven when someone is a genius? “I don’t think you have to forgive anyone,” says Grey. “You just accept it as part of that person’s personality. He was a very generous person really. Impatient, demanding, so talented. The greatest possible artist, and absolutely impossible to deal with. He certainly caused chaos. I remember our press representative at Covent Garden saying to me: ‘I think the Russians have sent Rudi in to destroy the Royal Ballet!’” Why does she think Nureyev was so erratic? “I don’t know.” She thinks. “I know he wanted terribly to go back to Russia to see his mother. He was a strange person. He was shot into fame and quite difficult to handle. But I think he loved the publicity.” She smiles, lost in reverie. “He could be so naughty. Such a rogue!”
Grey has watched dance develop across almost a century. Is she as excited about ballet as she ever was? “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘excited’,” she says. “Interested, and still part of it.” She likes the choreographer Liam Scarlett. “I think his work seems effortless, you know. Not agonisingly created.” She laments the loss of the art of mime in ballet. “Mime is so important. When you’re speaking through mime to someone, it’s beautiful. And if it’s done with conviction, it should be easy enough to follow.” And she’s suspect about the “acrobatics” of modern productions. “I think audiences are looking for some excitement, spectacular feats, legs very, very high. I remember under Ninette de Valois [founder of the Royal Ballet] she never wanted legs too high because it would spoil the line. She was very strict about that.” Whereas now you wouldn’t get a job in a ballet company if you couldn’t lift your foot up to your ear, I say. “No, probably not.”
“Ninette often used to engage slightly plump dancers,” adds Grey, “which surprised me, because we all tried to be as thin as possible. But slightly plump dancers often had wonderful elevation [jumps]. Fashion demands very thin dancers now. If you look at early photos of Margot, she had very plump legs. She worked hard to refine her body.” In that case, do you think a young Fonteyn wouldn’t get a job with the Royal Ballet today? Grey demurs. “Well, she might, because of her personality. And by sheer hard work.”
Which ballets would she revive from her own era? “Oh, I don’t think one wants to go back too much,” she says. “Go forward and get new things.” She misses some of the dancers, especially her great friend Gillian Lynne – best known for choreographing Cats – who died last year. “She was always sparkling. I can’t imagine her still for a moment. We all had this wonderful joy of dance.” That’s what makes a good dancer, she says, “personality, a joy of movement, not necessarily a good technique”.
“It’s very demanding really, ballet, and very abnormal. You need great strength – it’s amazing what the human body can take. It’s difficult to get good dancers,” she says. “You need to cherish them.”
