Sir Anton Dolin

Table of Contents

Introduction References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Sir Anton Dolin

British dancer

Also known as: Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay, Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healy-Kay

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Quick Facts

Original name:: Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-kay

Born:: July 27, 1904, Slinfold, Sussex, Eng.

Died:: Nov. 25, 1983, Paris, France (aged 79)

Founder:: Camargo Society

See all related content

Sir Anton Dolin (born July 27, 1904, Slinfold, Sussex, Eng.—died Nov. 25, 1983, Paris, France) was a British ballet dancer, choreographer, and director who, with his frequent partner Alicia Markova, founded the Markova-Dolin companies and London’s Festival Ballet.

Trained by the notable Russian teachers Serafima Astafieva and Bronislava Nijinska, Dolin began his ballet career in 1921 in the corps de ballet of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. As a soloist with Diaghilev’s company, he created the leading role in Nijinska’s Train Bleu (1924) and an important role (one of two Servants) in George Balanchine’s Prodigal Son (1929). Dolin was considered to be one of the finest partners of his time. He eventually danced leading roles in numerous classical ballets but was also noted for such creations as Satan in Ninette de Valois’s Job (1931) and the title role in Michel Fokine’s Bluebeard (1941).

Active in the formation of many companies, Dolin helped establish the Camargo Society (1930–33), whose productions greatly influenced British ballet, and he danced leading roles in the first productions of the Vic-Wells Ballet (now Royal Ballet). He joined the Ballet Theatre, New York City (now American Ballet Theatre) at its inception in 1940, remaining until 1946 as a dancer and choreographer. He was also director and principal male dancer of the Markova-Dolin Ballet (1935–38; 1945–49). In 1949 he and Markova founded another company that in 1950 became London’s Festival Ballet; Dolin was premier danseur and artistic director until 1961. He then organized and toured with the troupe Stars of the Ballet, worked as choreographer and director of the Rome Opera Ballet, and served as artistic adviser to Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. He was knighted in 1981.

As a choreographer Dolin restaged Swan Lake, Giselle, and the last act of The Sleeping Beauty, which he presented alone as Princess Aurora (1941). His original ballets include Capriccioso (1940), The Romantic Age (1942), and Variations for Four (1957), a popular all-male divertissement. Dolin is particularly noted for his reconstruction (1941) of Jules Perrot’s classical divertissement, Pas de Quatre. His many books on the dance include Ballet Go Round (1938), Pas de Deux, the Art of Partnering (1949), Alicia Markova (1953), Autobiography (1960), and The Sleeping Ballerina: The Story of Olga Spessivtzeva (1966).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

ballet

Table of Contents

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova

For Students

ballet summary

ballet

dance

Written by Marion Kant , Ivor Guest •All

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Jun 15, 2025 • Article History

Key People:: Auguste Vestris; Igor Youskevitch; Pina Bausch; Yvonne Chouteau; Claudio Monteverdi

Related Topics:: en pointe; opéra-ballet; character dance; épaulement; attitude

On the Web:: NPR - Tracing Ballet's Cultural History Over 400 Years (June 15, 2025)

See all related content

ballet, theatrical dance in which a formal academic dance technique—the danse d’école—is combined with other artistic elements such as music, costume, and stage scenery. The academic technique itself is also known as ballet. This article surveys the history of ballet.

History through 1945

The emergence of ballet in the courts of Europe

Ballet traces its origins to the Italian Renaissance, when it was developed as a court entertainment. During the 15th and 16th centuries the dance technique became formalized. The epicentre of the art moved to France following the marriage of the Italian-born aristocrat Catherine de Médicis to Henry II of France. A court musician and choreographer named Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx devised Ballet comique de la reine (1581; “The Queen’s Comic Ballet”), which inaugurated a long tradition of court ballets in France that reached its peak under Louis XIV in the mid-17th century.

As a court entertainment, the works were performed by courtiers; a few professional dancers were occasionally participants, but they were usually cast in grotesque or comic roles. The subjects of these works, in which dance formed only a part alongside declamation and song, ranged widely; some were comic and others had a more serious, even political, intent. Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV frequently performed in them; the younger Louis was in time regarded as the epitome of the noble style of dancing as it developed at the French court.

Eventually, developments at the French court pushed the arts aside, and the court ballet disappeared. But Louis XIV had established two academies where ballet was launched into another phase of its development: the Académie Royale de Danse (1661) and the Académie Royale de Musique (1669). The Académie Royale de Danse was formed to preserve the classical school of the noble dance. It was to last until the 1780s. By then its purpose essentially had been abrogated by the music academy, the predecessor of the dance school of the Paris Opéra.

Ballet as an adjunct to opera

The Académie Royale de Musique was to become incalculably significant in the development of ballet. The academy was created to present opera, which was then understood to include a dance element; indeed, for fully a century ballet was a virtually obligatory component of the various forms of French opera. From the beginning, the dancers of the Opéra (as the Académie was commonly known) were professional, coming under the authority of the ballet master. A succession of distinguished ballet masters (notably Pierre Beauchamp, Louis Pécour, and Gaétan Vestris) ensured the prestige of French ballet, and the quality of the Opéra’s dancers became renowned throughout Europe.

The growing appeal of ballet to an increasingly broad public in Paris was reflected in the success of opéra-ballets, of which the most celebrated were André Campra’s L’Europe galante (1697; “Gallant Europe”) and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes (1735; “The Gallant Indies”). These works combined singing, dancing, and orchestral music into numbers that were unified by a loose theme.

In the early years the most accomplished dancers were male, and it was not until 1681 that the first principal female dancer, Mlle La Fontaine, appeared. Gradually she and her successors became nearly as well-known and respected as male dancers such as Michel Blondy and Jean Balon. From the 1720s, however, with the appearance of Marie Sallé and Marie-Anne Camargo, the women began to vie with the men in technique and artistry. The retirement of Sallé and Camargo in turn coincided with the debut of one of the most celebrated dancers of all time, Gaétan Vestris, who became regarded in his prime as the epitome of the French noble style; he played an important part in establishing ballet as an independent theatrical form.