Building a Ballet
The Lyric Feature returns for a new series opening with Building a Ballet one of the five Lyric Features shortlisted at this weekend’s IMRO awards.
In 1956 Blanaid Ó Brolcháin, niece of Joseph Plunkett, invited former Russian Prima Ballerina Nadine Legat to Dublin to help her find a teacher of Russian-style ballet for the ballet school her daughter Ester attended. This led to an unlikely match with one of Legat’s former pupils, Patricia Ryan, then married to artist & publisher John Ryan.
This documentary traces the seven years of intense creativity that followed, during which Patricia Ryan and her exceptional students transformed their small ballet school, season by season, into the ‘National Ballet Company’ or ‘Ballet Náisiúnta’.
It explores the productions of this now forgotten ballet company, including collaborations with Patrick Kavanagh, Donagh MacDonagh & composer AJ Potter, as well as the role its dancers played in the first Raidió Teilifís Éireann broadcast. It considers the behind-the-scenes lives of the women involved, including Ryan’s affair with artist Patrick Collins, and poses questions not only about why the Company failed, but also about why women’s artistic legacies are so often forgotten.
Drawing on the archive collection of Ryan’s daughter Penelope Collins, this documentary includes letters from Legat, Ninette de Valois, Patrick Collins, Samuel Beckett and Micheál Mac Liammóir which have not been previously broadcast or published.
Producer and Narrator: Joanna Marsden
Series Producer: Eoin O Kelly
Production Co-Ordinator: Michael O’Kane
Commissioned for RTÉ lyric fm with support from the Coimisiún Na Meán Sound and Vision Fund and RTÉ Independent Radio Productions from the television license fee.
(First broadcast 10th March 2024)
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 6th October, 6pm-7pm
