Daily Inspiration Quote by Ninette de Valois

British ballet likes to tell a national story: homegrown discipline, quiet excellence, an island tradition refined into pointe shoes. De Valois punctures that myth with a clean, almost offhand provocation. “There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev” isn’t just gratitude; it’s an argument about cultural origin stories and how often they’re imported, sponsored, or smuggled in through charisma.

The intent is strategic. De Valois, a founding architect of what became The Royal Ballet, is not diminishing British achievement so much as identifying the catalytic force that made it possible. Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes didn’t merely tour; it rewired taste. It brought modernism, scandal, collaboration, and the idea of ballet as a total artwork to Western Europe. In Britain, that meant a young dance scene suddenly exposed to Stravinsky, Picasso, Nijinsky - and to the proposition that ballet could be contemporary, not museum-grade.

The subtext is about power and pedagogy. Diaghilev wasn’t a choreographer; he was an impresario, a talent-finder, a maker of ecosystems. De Valois’ phrase “wonderful influence” does a lot of diplomatic work: it softens a hard truth that British institutions often require an outside legitimizer before they’ll invest seriously. It also hints at her own lineage and authority. By locating British ballet’s birth in Diaghilev’s orbit, she claims a direct inheritance from the most disruptive, glamorous engine of early 20th-century dance - a pedigree that turns national ballet into international modernity.