Choreographic Collaborations: Yeats and Ninette de Valois

Dance is perhaps the most important nonverbal component of Yeats’s later work in the theatre. This chapter casts new light on the crucial contribution made by one of his collaborators, the dancer and choreographer Ninette de Valois. It explores her considerable contribution to the artistic life of the Abbey Theatre and the setting up of its associated School of Ballet. Delving into her background, including her development under Diaghilev at the Ballets Russes, illuminates how her choreographic aims intersected with Yeats’s notions of performance in the late 1920s. Her conception of bodily movement is seen to have particularly influenced Fighting the Waves (1929) – a chorographic reworking of Yeats’s earlier drama The Only Jealousy of Emer that he conceived specifically for her. It was also manifest in other aspects of the Abbey’s programming in this period, as well as Yeats’s ongoing dramatic development.