100 Years of the RAD

The RAD began life as the Association of Teachers of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain, a cumbersome title subsequently shortened, in 1935, to the Royal Academy of Dancing. The organisation owes much to its five original founders, each of whom represented one of the great classical ballet traditions: Adeline Genée (the Danish school), Edouard Espinosa (French), Lucia Cormani (Italian), Phyllis Bedells (English) and Tamara Karsavina (Russian). The combination of their knowledge and expertise informed the first syllabi and examinations framework and enabled the Academy to set new standards in dance teaching.

The education and training of dance teachers was a priority of the RAD under its first President, Adeline Genée. By 1939 she had formulated plans for a full-time teacher training course which would elevate the dance teacher to a qualified professional, recognised within state education and academia. A lecture by Miss E.R. Gwatkin, given at the RAD in January 1939 and subsequently published, set out an ambitious and far-sighted plan to ‘educate’ rather than simply train dance teachers. The outbreak of the Second World War delayed activities until 1945, when the first full-time course for ‘teachers of dancing’ was launched. From the beginning, RAD teacher education employed a wide curriculum, drawing on the fields of human sciences, history and, of course, education studies. The early programmes also included teaching practical skills necessary for ballet teachers: the making of tutus, darning pointe shoes, deportment and voice coaching. As the decades passed, the needs of a rapidly expanding and increasingly international RAD exerted an influence. Graduates from the full-time Teacher Training Course were to ensure the accuracy, reliability and validity of the syllabus and examinations framework, from pre-school to the final stage of vocational training. From 1976, The College (which occupied the top floor of the RAD headquarters in Battersea) produced generations of graduates whose status as Licentiates of the Royal Academy of Dancing was recognised in the private dance sector internationally.

By the early 1990s, the withdrawal of local council funding and the introduction of degrees in dance meant that a new direction was needed, and it came from an unlikely source. The Academy’s former President, Dame Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991), had been Chancellor of the University of Durham, a link which was to open the door to the first RAD degree programmes and, the creation of the Faculty of Education. Access to funding for students followed and the rest, as they say, is history.

From 1999 to 2010, the Faculty of Education created a portfolio of degrees and professional awards to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse dance teaching profession. The work continues, with the refining of content and expansion of delivery to reach student teachers across a global network, pioneering developments in distance learning. As this prospectus shows, the defining characteristic of the Faculty of Education today is ‘choice’: certificates, diplomas, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, part-time and full-time study, on-site and distance learning, private and state sector contexts, ballet specialism and dance diversity – the opportunities are endless. It may have taken one hundred years but this is, without a doubt, a cause for celebration.

Keith Lester & Teacher Training Course students, 1970

“Education is wider than teaching, a thing which all teachers, especially specialist teachers, need ever to keep in mind.”

E.R. GWATKIN, 1939

June Mitchell with college students, 1996