There are achive films of famous dancers and companies on the British Pathe News archive website at: http://www.britishpathe.com/

Try searching, Alicia Alonso, Natalya Makarova.Russian Ballet etc and watch a harrowing interview by the press at London Airport as Dame Margot Fonteyn tries
to explain she does not know ehere her husband is, there is a short film in German of Balanchine's Nutcracker made in 1965.
Search Paris Ballet or French Ballet and you get a miscellany of news reports all with dance sequences of some sort .
Dancers from Radio City Music Hall Ballet perform 'water lily dance' in the Gardens of the Nations on the roof of the Rockefeller Building.

A few of the films are mute.

Thank you!!

Thank you thank you thank you Leonid for this hint...! You just made my day.

For those without time to search here are some gems:

Olga Preobrajenska teaching in 1959

Ballet 1932 Paris Charity Ball

Pavlova feeding her swans 1930

Paganini 1960

Spectre: Bessmertnova / Liepa 1968

Karsavina 1921

Zizi Jeanmaire and Roland Petit 1961

Bejart 1964

Gayane 1957

Plisetskaya 1964

Maximova and Vasiliev 1967

innopac! Maximova was spectacular in the last video ("Nutcracker").

More from the suggestions at the bottom of each video:

Romeo and Juliet-1959 Is this Ulanova?

Plisetskaya in Bach's "Prelude"-1968

Vladimir Vasiliev in "Spartak"-1968
Oh, I'm in love again...

Beryl Grey at Bolshoi in "Swan Lake"-1958
Beryl Grey at Bolshoi in "Swan Lake" 2-1958

Beryl Grey at Bolshoi in "Giselle"-1958

Plitsetskaya in "Carmen Suite"-1957

Tales of Hoffmann at Palais de Chaillot-1948

Cuevas-Lifar Duel-1958

Samsova and Rona in "Cinderella"-1963

Red Poppy Ballet at Bolshoi-1957

Young Girls in Class at Bolshoi Choreographic School and Plisetskaya in "Don Quixote"-1957

(must stop now -- missed breakfast watching videos!)

Struchkova perhaps?

You are absolutely correct.

I think she is wonderful and I never forget her and Liepa in Romeo and Juliet on stage which I saw four years later.

Thank you so much! I was playing the video and tried to stop it to get a still on her face to match her to photos, and I obviously didn't do so well Struchkova was marvelous in that clip.

Sometimes it really is delightful to watch in silence. Her every movement is defined so clearly.

I really appreciate the opportunity to watch this on British Pathe's high-quality film, created to be projected on large theater screens. I wish we had the same for U.S. ballet in that period, so we didn't have to rely almost entirely on telecasts meant to be shown on fuzzy 7- or 9-inch television screens.

My big disappointment in Helene's group was Beryl Grey: both her Giselle and her Odette/Odile. I've never seen her on video and somehow expected more and ... different.

I tried searching for Svetlana Beriosova and found these:

Princess Margaret opens the Royal Ballet School

(Ninette de Valois teaching the RB company class, talking to Beriosova and Nerina)

Edinburgh Festival 1960

(Right at the end, Beriosova and Macleary rehearsing)

Ladies Day at the Savoy Hotel

(Lots of beautiful close-ups of Beriosova - what a pity there's no sound!)

Royal Ballet 1969

(RB preparing for an American tour - only about 2 seconds of Beriosova but more of Sibley and Dowell (who looks all of 17) rehearsing the pd2 from the last act of Sleeping Beauty, and some shots of Michael Somes. But WHAT does the commentator call the pas de deux?)

These are only snippets but given how little film of Beriosova there is, they are priceless.

Dance of the Dollies???????????????????????????

Well, that's what I thought it sounded like - but????????

Some more clips from British Pathe News.
Does anyone know of an American equivalent
showing ballet sequences?


An 88 year old Olga Preograjenskaya teaching a class
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=64308

A curiosity. Paris Opera Ballet corps dancing round and round 1932
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=9010

New production of Gayane at the Bolshoi 1957 with Raisa Struchkova, Marina Kondratieva and Yaroslav Sekh
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=66693

Another curiosity, Man and woman tap dancing en pointe.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=49761

Mayfair Ballet School London 1932
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=19117

Margarita Drozhdova of the Bolshoi 1968.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=72220

Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev with the briefest extract from Raymonda
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=41204

Sonya Henie dances “The Swan” on ice. 1934.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=5037

Lots here to catch up with! I tried the two-minute Balanchine Nutcracker clip. The tempo in the snow scene is unbelievably fast! (The orchestra, as well as the dancers, can keep up, though.) Thanks, leonid!

I only saw Beryl Grey at the very end of her career and it appeared to me that something had been their once, but the spirit of the dance had left her. She was however more technically competent than in the clips you watched and I have a number of friends who subscribe to her having real technical ability..

speaking of Grey, does everyone believe it is she in the GISELLE clip? to me - and i never saw her live - it doesn't look much like her but i suppose it could be the hairstyle etc.

You are quite right it is not Beryl Grey.

I wonder if these are in fact Liane Dayde and Michel Renault, who danced with the Bolshoi shortly after Beryl Grey was there?

There's a newspaper report from the time on Dayde's website.

Well spotted Jane.
Renault is familiar to me from the Serge Lido books and I checked Dayde with postcards rg posted last year.
If you compare the costumes in the film to those shown in the newspaper, there is a match. Dayde's coloured skirt does not show very well in the newspaper photograph as it is such a bad print.