The Ashmolean Museum’s exhibition ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design’ is a thrilling revelation of nineteenth-century Britain’s widely unrecognised visual vibrancy. Jane Pritchard’s DANSOX lecture, attended by the exhibition’s curators, took this one step further, demonstrating that a greater understanding of the use of colour on the Victorian stage also overturns many of our assumptions about contemporaneous English ballet. Taking the Ashmolean exhibition as her starting point, Pritchard argued that by thinking across boundaries and following the archival evidence on the use of colour in theatrical design, we can begin to recover the largely forgotten fifty years of dance in England that lie between the romantic ballet period and the arrival in London of the Ballets Russes.

A brief introduction by Professor Stefano Evangelista (an expert on fin de siècle literature and visual culture) described how the ‘Colour Revolution’ exhibition breaks down the barriers between the fine and the decorative arts, and helps us to see that the Victorian era was not sepia-tinged and sombre, (a look epitomised by Queen Victoria’s mourning dress), but a world of flamboyant colour, partly thanks to the invention of aniline dyes.

In similar vein, thinking in terms of colour, Pritchard showed that the over-simplified image of the romantic ballerina dressed entirely in white against a setting of pastel colours, followed by a half-century hiatus in which ballet dropped off the radar until the Diaghilev Ballet’s explosion of colour, is mistaken. By approaching Victorian theatrical dance history through the medium of colour, and examining the documentary evidence for costume and set design, we can begin to reimagine what ballets looked like and understand how ballet in England connected to the past, the future and the wider international dance scene of the time.

Focussing on the designs of ‘Wilhelm’ (William John Charles Pitcher, 1858-1925), who created extraordinarily beautiful and detailed costumes, Pritchard showed how costume and set designers filled the skilfully-lit stage with glorious colours. Wilhelm, who was fascinated by blue is known to have taken great care to acquire materials of the correct shade (Pritchard cited the trouble he took over a hyacinth dress), and his designs were an integral part of the productions such as the ballet Old China (1901). Elaborate costumes, sometimes intended only for decorative effect and worn by performers who did not dance, could in themselves convey layers of meaning; for example, the gorgeous dresses based on floral imagery that also represented different nations in the ballet Rose d’Amour (1888). Although the end results might look fantastical, such as the birds in Le Voyage dans la Lune (1883), Wilhelm often took nature as his starting point.

Pritchard’s approach also reveals the missing link to the romantic ballet: ‘ballets blancs’ did not disappear, but were reincarnated as ‘snow ballets’, one of which survives to this day in The Nutcracker (first performed in 1892). There are other, wider, geographic and temporal connections to be found: Wilhelm worked with the Danish ballerina Adeline Genée, and there are also designs in the V&A for dancers such as the Italians Pierina Legnani (who danced in St Petersburg) and Francesca Zanfretta (who taught both Ninette de Valois, and Mary Skeaping). As Pritchard pointed out, it is significant that performers of such distinction danced on the London stage during this period, and we should rethink our understanding of the era.

A lively question and answer session followed, introduced by Professor Sue Jones, Director of DANSOX, and discussions continued afterwards over wine and pancakes (it was Shrove Tuesday). Great thanks go to DANSOX, St Hilda’s, and not least to Jane Pritchard herself for so generously sharing her research.

Maggie Watson

18th February 2024