Ballet has been called the art of kings in that it evolved from court pageants and was favoured by monarchs, including Louis XIV and Nicholas II.
You still see aristocratic hierarchy in today's graded ranks of dancers, and dance patterns that echo the chevrons of royal infantry. Ballet heroines are often regal, with bewitched princesses as popular as ever.
However, this is only part of ballet's story. Ballet is also the art of example, with roles handed down from dancer to dancer, making the history of ballet the history of its teachers. It's also the history of its choreographers, who craft the steps the dancers perform.
And unlike the aristocracy, ballet is meritocratic. Balletic ability is unconnected to wealth or background, but a combination of body type and innate artistry - and a hothouse training that starts in childhood.
Those in any doubt need look no further than Carlos Acosta, the Royal Ballet dancer and son of a truck-driver whose surname comes not from his African forebears but from the Cuban plantation where they worked.
The White Lodge Museum is the UK's first museum of classical dance, and it deftly combines all these histories, as well as the history of the building itself.
Grand vistas
The museum, which also has an attached resource centre housing the archive, is based at White Lodge, the home of the Royal Ballet School since 1955. Built in 1727 as a hunting lodge for George II, it's set in sumptuous parkland, from which a later 18th-century resident, Princess Amelia, excluded the peasantry.
Ever since, the great and good have graced its airily elegant rooms, until Royal Ballet founder Ninette de Valois turned it into the home of her Royal Ballet School.
Many think they've seen White Lodge in Stephen Daldry's film Billy Elliot, but they actually saw a much grander pile doubling as the Royal Ballet School which, by the standards of most Royal residences and many vocational schools, is a compact building. Until much-needed renovations began in 2004, it was also unsanitary.
Along with proper facilities, the five-year redevelopment shoe-horned a small ballet museum into the Grade I neo-classical villa - the Victoria and Albert Museum's new Theatre and Performance Galleries are almost 10 times the size of the ballet museum.
Visitors approach the museum via Richmond Park, and enter through the Long Gallery, just off the East Portico. They walk past several bronzes, including a larger-than-life Rudolf Nureyev by Richard MacDonald, and a maquette of White Lodge, which provides helpful orientation.
Classical works
The museum itself comprises the single swoop of the south crescent, one of a pair that links the main house to its twin pavilions. Surprisingly, given it was a hunting lodge, the gallery is plain, with low-key decor and few design references to royalty or the red plush of Covent Garden, where the most talented White Lodge students will dance.
On the left-hand wall is an illustrated timeline tracking the history of ballet alongside the story of White Lodge. Devised by the writer Siân Busby with designer Kate Kneale and White Lodge curator Anna Meadmore, this clear narrative brings charm and calm to what could be a fact-burdened tale.
It also draws parallels between classical dance and classical architecture, explaining that harmony, grace and balance are characteristics of both disciplines.
The gallery is divided down the middle by 2.7m-high fixed translucent panels. This aids visitor flow, guiding people down one side and up the other, with the first leg telling the story of ballet and White Lodge, and the return leg the history of the Royal Ballet School and Company.
The dividing units also provide integrated display space. This includes printed panels, audiovisual screens, spotlit cases and four interactive 'discovery drawers', which open to reveal the story of tutus and pointe shoes, plus ballet notation and the ballet school's uniform.
There's also a 'postcard wall', with a dozen postcard-sized screens displaying still and video images of Ninette de Valois, or "Madam" as this formidable lady was known.
Something for all
This playful approach will appeal to the young, although there's also material for more knowledgeable visitors. One display features neatly typed letters to Madam from the economist John Maynard Keynes, whose support was vital to British ballet in the 1930s.
There's also a perfectly preserved tutu worn by Margot Fonteyn in a glass case, and an excerpt of Giselle projected onto a niche in the left-hand wall. Its architrave forms a natural proscenium arch, and its centre a mini-stage, a nice theatrical touch in a museum educationally inclined.
Curator Anna Meadmore says she expects several types of visitor. There are the pupils who may take a ballet lesson a week, plus GCSE and more advanced students who study dance history. White Lodge will also attract dance enthusiasts and gallery goers, as well as those interested in its architecture.
Despite its merits, one criticism is the occasional use of dull fixtures. The blue carpet may match the Royal Ballet School's colours, but it's more airport lounge than ballet magic.
Also out of synch is the baffling use of faux-looking pine on some of the panels - it's not a heritage timber in keeping with the building, it's not traditionally balletic, and it's not a forward-looking material suggesting ballet's future. A detailed guide is also missing, which would be useful as both plan and souvenir.
But overall, White Lodge Museum is beguiling. It makes sense of its many histories, with clever design and a tight edit of its extensive collection. It has, like many smaller museums, limited funding and there's work to be done cataloguing its archive, although some material is available online.
And it's only open by appointment two afternoons a week, a disappointing if understandable restriction given White Lodge is a boarding school and the term-time home of 11- to 16-year-olds.
Sarah Frater is a freelance journalist
You still see aristocratic hierarchy in today's graded ranks of dancers, and dance patterns that echo the chevrons of royal infantry. Ballet heroines are often regal, with bewitched princesses as popular as ever.
However, this is only part of ballet's story. Ballet is also the art of example, with roles handed down from dancer to dancer, making the history of ballet the history of its teachers. It's also the history of its choreographers, who craft the steps the dancers perform.
And unlike the aristocracy, ballet is meritocratic. Balletic ability is unconnected to wealth or background, but a combination of body type and innate artistry - and a hothouse training that starts in childhood.
Those in any doubt need look no further than Carlos Acosta, the Royal Ballet dancer and son of a truck-driver whose surname comes not from his African forebears but from the Cuban plantation where they worked.
The White Lodge Museum is the UK's first museum of classical dance, and it deftly combines all these histories, as well as the history of the building itself.
Grand vistas
The museum, which also has an attached resource centre housing the archive, is based at White Lodge, the home of the Royal Ballet School since 1955. Built in 1727 as a hunting lodge for George II, it's set in sumptuous parkland, from which a later 18th-century resident, Princess Amelia, excluded the peasantry.
Ever since, the great and good have graced its airily elegant rooms, until Royal Ballet founder Ninette de Valois turned it into the home of her Royal Ballet School.
Many think they've seen White Lodge in Stephen Daldry's film Billy Elliot, but they actually saw a much grander pile doubling as the Royal Ballet School which, by the standards of most Royal residences and many vocational schools, is a compact building. Until much-needed renovations began in 2004, it was also unsanitary.
Along with proper facilities, the five-year redevelopment shoe-horned a small ballet museum into the Grade I neo-classical villa - the Victoria and Albert Museum's new Theatre and Performance Galleries are almost 10 times the size of the ballet museum.
Visitors approach the museum via Richmond Park, and enter through the Long Gallery, just off the East Portico. They walk past several bronzes, including a larger-than-life Rudolf Nureyev by Richard MacDonald, and a maquette of White Lodge, which provides helpful orientation.
Classical works
The museum itself comprises the single swoop of the south crescent, one of a pair that links the main house to its twin pavilions. Surprisingly, given it was a hunting lodge, the gallery is plain, with low-key decor and few design references to royalty or the red plush of Covent Garden, where the most talented White Lodge students will dance.
On the left-hand wall is an illustrated timeline tracking the history of ballet alongside the story of White Lodge. Devised by the writer Siân Busby with designer Kate Kneale and White Lodge curator Anna Meadmore, this clear narrative brings charm and calm to what could be a fact-burdened tale.
It also draws parallels between classical dance and classical architecture, explaining that harmony, grace and balance are characteristics of both disciplines.
The gallery is divided down the middle by 2.7m-high fixed translucent panels. This aids visitor flow, guiding people down one side and up the other, with the first leg telling the story of ballet and White Lodge, and the return leg the history of the Royal Ballet School and Company.
The dividing units also provide integrated display space. This includes printed panels, audiovisual screens, spotlit cases and four interactive 'discovery drawers', which open to reveal the story of tutus and pointe shoes, plus ballet notation and the ballet school's uniform.
There's also a 'postcard wall', with a dozen postcard-sized screens displaying still and video images of Ninette de Valois, or "Madam" as this formidable lady was known.
Something for all
This playful approach will appeal to the young, although there's also material for more knowledgeable visitors. One display features neatly typed letters to Madam from the economist John Maynard Keynes, whose support was vital to British ballet in the 1930s.
There's also a perfectly preserved tutu worn by Margot Fonteyn in a glass case, and an excerpt of Giselle projected onto a niche in the left-hand wall. Its architrave forms a natural proscenium arch, and its centre a mini-stage, a nice theatrical touch in a museum educationally inclined.
Curator Anna Meadmore says she expects several types of visitor. There are the pupils who may take a ballet lesson a week, plus GCSE and more advanced students who study dance history. White Lodge will also attract dance enthusiasts and gallery goers, as well as those interested in its architecture.
Despite its merits, one criticism is the occasional use of dull fixtures. The blue carpet may match the Royal Ballet School's colours, but it's more airport lounge than ballet magic.
Also out of synch is the baffling use of faux-looking pine on some of the panels - it's not a heritage timber in keeping with the building, it's not traditionally balletic, and it's not a forward-looking material suggesting ballet's future. A detailed guide is also missing, which would be useful as both plan and souvenir.
But overall, White Lodge Museum is beguiling. It makes sense of its many histories, with clever design and a tight edit of its extensive collection. It has, like many smaller museums, limited funding and there's work to be done cataloguing its archive, although some material is available online.
And it's only open by appointment two afternoons a week, a disappointing if understandable restriction given White Lodge is a boarding school and the term-time home of 11- to 16-year-olds.
Sarah Frater is a freelance journalist
