OTD in early British television: 16 January 1935
John Wyver writes: on the evening of Wednesday 16 January 1935, a 40-minute, 30-line broadcast featured singers Maisie Seneshall and Harold Scott, along with prima ballerina Lydia Sokolova with Harold Turner as her junior partner. Both Turner and, to a greater extent, Sokolova are important figures in the history of British dance, including in the process by which television contributed significantly to the development of dance in Britain in the pre-war years,
For many Harold Turner (1909-1962) is ‘modern British ballet’s first male virtuoso’. He studied with Marie Rambert and joined the Vic-Wells Ballet in the year of this broadcast. As Wikipedia details:
At the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells theatres, he danced major roles in productions of both classical and contemporary ballets, including the Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, Franz in Coppélia, Albrecht in Giselle, and Harlequin in Le Carnaval as well as in new works by Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois. Of the numerous roles he created during his five years with this company, the two most memorable are the Red Knight in Checkmate by de Valois and the Blue Boy in Les Patineurs (The Skaters) by Ashton.
He appeared on eight occasions on the 30-line service, performing in 1934 and 1935 as the low-definition Baird process was refined and as ballet became a key element in its offerings. In five of these broadcasts he partnered Sokolova. Between 1936 and 1939, for the 405-line service from Alexandra Palace, he danced on more than 30 occasions, mostly with the Vic-Wells company and including performances of Checkmate and Les Patineurs.
On 16 January he ‘assisted’ Sokolova in a pair of polkas, a waltz and the can-can from La Boutique fantasque (‘The Magic Toy-shop), a one-act ballet choreographed by Leonid Massine to music by Ottorino Respighi working with themes from Rossini.
Born Hilda Tansley Munnings in Essex, Lydia Sokolova (1896-1974) had an even more celebrated career, training with Anna Pavlova and others and making her professional debut in 1910. She joined Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes in 1913, and it was Diaghilev who gave her her stage name of Lydia Sokolova. She partnered Nijinsky and in the 1920s was the principal ballerina with the company until it disbanded following Diaghilev’s death in 1929.
She returned to England to coach and to choreograph, and remarkably she continued to perform until 1962. Her first performance on 30-line television, at the invitation of producer Eustace Robb, was in February 1934, when she was also assisted to Turner, and she contributed as a dancer and as a choreographer to more than 20 transmissions by the Baird process.
As an enthusiastic collaborator in Robb’s mission to broadcast ever more lavish presentations, she first adapted the one-act Cléopâtre (billed as Cleopatra) which Fokine had originally choreographed for Diaghilev in 1909. Susan Salaman, a regular Rambert designer, painted the Egyptian backcloth with pyramid outlines and a sphinx.
Sokolova followed up with an adaptation of Balanchine’s The Gods go a’Begging, performed to Handel arranged by Thomas Beecham, and in the summer of 1935 her greatest triumph was a version of Fokine’s Carnaval. The reviewer for the Daily Telegraph was a fan: ‘To crowd such complex movements on to the narrow screen capable of showing only two or three figures simultaneously was a considerable feat.’
Sokolova also performed two solos on the last night of the 30-line broadcasts on 11 September 1935, but that is perhaps to get ahead of ourselves, and we shopuld save that story for an OTD in the autumn. Her appearances from Alexandra Palace were fewer, although her choreography for A Stained-Glass Window was featured in November 1937, and she was not too proud to be one of ‘the Balalaika girls’ for a fancy dress night on Cabaret Cruise in August 1938.
Her 1960 memoir Dancing for Diaghilev, edited by Richard Buckle, is a recommended read if you are interested in this world.
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