OUR HISTORY AND HERITAGE
The Academy exists to promote knowledge, understanding and practice of dance internationally.
Students outside Fairfield Lodge, 1949 Photo: Chris Ware
The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) is one of the world’s largest and most influential dance education, training and membership organisations. With approximately 13,000 members, its influence has now spread to 79 countries represented by a network of 34 international offices. The Academy aims to build on its historic foundations by responding to the needs and aspirations of its members and students in today’s world.
Rachel Cameron teaching class, 1978 Photo: RAD Archive
OUR HISTORY The Royal Academy of Dance was established in 1920, at the Trocadero Restaurant in Piccadilly, London, by a small group of eminent dance professionals. Brought together by Philip Richardson, former editor of The Dancing Times, the group represented the leading European schools of ballet: Adeline Genée (the Danish School), Tamara Karsavina (the Russian School), Lucia Cormani (the Italian School), Edouard Espinosa (the French School) and Phyllis Bedells (the English School). Their concern about the poor quality and badly organised state of dance teaching in Britain at the time led to the emergence of the ‘Association of Teachers of Operatic Dancing in Great Britain’.
Over the next decade, the Association flourished, growing rapidly in size and influence and, at the last Privy Council Meeting of King George V’s reign (in 1935), it was granted a Royal Charter and became the Royal Academy of Dancing. On the death of Queen Mary in 1953, HM Queen Elizabeth II became Patron of the Royal Academy of Dancing.
The Academy was granted charitable status in 1963 and continued to develop its ballet syllabi with the introduction of a new children’s syllabus devised by the then President, Dame Margot Fonteyn.
As the RAD expanded within the UK, moving to its present headquarters in Battersea, London, it began to spread its wings and in 1983 the first international office outside of the UK was established in Australia.
Iris Truscott teaching PDTC Students, 1983 Photo: Chris Davies
In 1991 Antoinette Sibley was elected President of the Academy. A year later the first full-time university-validated degree programme, the BA (Hons) Art and Teaching of Ballet, commenced, replacing the three-year Teacher Training Programme. 1999 saw the appointment of Luke Rittner as Chief Executive and the formation of the Faculty of Education under the leadership of the Director of Education, Professor Joan White. Both appointments signalled a period of unprecedented review and change.
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