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Royal honour Principal of The Bristol School of Dancing Angela Redgrave has recently received a British Empire Medal in The Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to Dance. This month, we look back at Miss Redgrave’s 70-year career and celebrate her life’s work...
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atching Queen Elizabeth II with 70 remarkable years of public service is Bristol dance teacher Angela Redgrave, 104, who recently received the British Empire Medal for her services to Dance in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Miss Redgrave has run The Bristol School of Dancing – the oldest established dance school in the city – since 1970 and continued to teach her students until March 2020. She now runs the school with her daughter, Felicity Redgrave. This month, we had the pleasure of speaking to Miss Redgrave about her life’s work, learning not only of her incredible passion for dance but her extraordinary attitude towards life. “All my life I never expected anything like this but I am so proud and so honoured to receive the British Empire Medal,” she says. “It’s lovely to have so many people – people I haven’t spoken to for years – ringing up and congratulating me.” Born in London in 1917, Miss Redgrave began dancing at the age of 10. She enrolled in the Watford Academy of Dancing before transferring to what was then regarded as the leading performing arts school in London – run by Miss Euphen Maclaren, a member of the Pavlova Company. Here, Miss Redgrave mainly focused on classical ballet but also learned musical comedy and tap. She soon began to appear in highly acclaimed shows at some of London’s most illustrious venues, including the Royal Albert Hall, where she performed in 22 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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JULY 2022
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No 212
Hiawatha. The musical, which is now too expensive to stage, most notably featured renowned conductor and composer Sir Malcolm Sargent, who is to this day regarded as Britain’s leading conductor of choral works. “It was a wonderful time,” Miss Redgrave recalls. “We had some of the most prestigious singers appear in the production. If I close my eyes, I can still hear them singing.” When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Miss Redgrave continued to work and dance at venues in the capital, often having to take shelter at the nearest underground station during air raids. After the war, she relocated to Somerset where she restarted her teacher training at The Maddox School in Bristol – the only Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) school in the area. The RAD is a UK-based examination board specialising in dance education and training, with an emphasis on classical ballet. The RAD was created with the aim of improving the standard of ballet teaching in the UK and a new teaching method and dance technique was devised. The RAD is one of the largest and most well-respected dance organisations in the world with over 14,000 members in 79 countries. After finishing at The Maddox School, Miss Redgrave ventured out on her own, opening a successful school in Nailsea, where she taught the RAD syllabus. It was while she was in Nailsea that she heard that the influential Bristol School of Dancing was up for sale.
