Jean Bedells talks about the 1930s as if it was yesterday. Full of detail and feats of memory, we are given an idea of the sense of foreboding that descended when their artistic home, Sadler’s Wells, was taken over as a refugee centre at the start of World War Two. In this interview, which was recorded in 2005, Jean Bedells talks to
former Royal Ballet principal dancer Bruce Sansom. The interview is introduced by Alastair Macaulay.
Jean Bedells was born in Bristol in 1924 as Jean McBain. She was the daughter of Phyllis Bedells, the great British ballerina, teacher and, later, a founding member and examiner for the Royal Academy of Dance. Jean Bedells first studied ballet with her mother and then trained at the Vic-Wells Ballet School for a year in 1936 before joining the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1937, making her debut as Clara in The Nutcracker. She had leave of absence from the company to dance as the Herald of Spring in Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall in 1937, 1938 and 1939. When she rejoined the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1938 she danced in Les Patineurs and The Haunted Ballroom, as Rose and Silver Fairies in The Sleeping Princess [The Sleeping Beauty], as Bathilde in Giselle, and in The Quest and, later, as one of the Three Fates in Adam Zero. She also appeared in a number of early films made of the company, notably as the Fairy Silver in The Sleeping Princess (1939), a Red Pawn in Checkmate (1939) and, later, a character role in a film of The Nutcracker (1958).
In 1946, Jean Bedells became ballet mistress for Sadler’s Wells Ballet when the company moved into the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. (The Vic-Wells Ballet was re-named Sadler’s Wells Ballet in the early 1940s.) She became a teacher after her retirement from the company, often teaching at The Royal Ballet School, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Her granddaughter, Anne Bedells, was a member of London Festival Ballet. Jean Bedells died in 2014.
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