Ballet on British television 1948–1949, part I: Company debuts • teleballets • recitals

Abstract

By 1948, BBC television had been back on the air for eighteen months after its wartime closure, but like the rest of the country it was still in the grip of austerity. There were an estimated 200,000 viewers, including family groups and their invited friends and neighbors, in an area of some thirty miles radius of the country's sole transmitter, situated in Alexandra Palace in north London. As far as dance was concerned, new developments added variety to the staple diet of repertory ballets, mostly from smaller English companies (discussed in my last article). New in the years 1948 and 1949 were an experimental series called Mirror to Music; appearances on television by the Metropolitan Ballet, the Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo, and Les Etoiles de la Danse; two ballets created especially for