Marie Rambert
Frederick Ashton
Christopher Bruce
Anthony Tudor
History
Marie Rambert began teaching in London in 1919. In her autobiography she wrote, "In 1920 I collected the various pupils I had into a class and began teaching professionally." This was the beginning of Rambert School which, in these early days, was based at Notting Hill Gate. Out of it grew Rambert Dance Company.
The school began as it was to go on. It was, and remains, a place of dance innovation based on a sound technical training. While encouraging new choreography Rambert records, "[I] taught by insisting on the classical line with all my might." Individuality was, as it is now, prized and encouraged. Rambert famously said her School was not to be, "a sausage factory". It has always been a place that fostered personal creativity, integrity, intuition, perhaps even querkiness and certainly work of the highest quality.
The emphasis on individuality and innovation naturally finds expression in choreography. This has been, during most of its history, a principal concern at the School. Out of Rambert School have come a number of the most significant of British Choreographers such as Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor and Christopher Bruce. Graduates of the present School continue to form their own companies and win choreographic awards.
Perhaps related to the fact that it has tended to be a place of innovation the School has, on a number of occasions, reinvented itself. On each occasion it has developed a distinct character while remaining within the Rambert tradition. The creation of the present incarnation of Rambert School was aided by the fact that by the late 1970s Ballet Rambert found it had grown away from what had been its School in a number of senses. The company, and its supporters, thus founded what grew into the present School at Twickenham. There were indeed, for a while at this time, three Schools operating under the name "Rambert". Two merged and the third disbanded leaving only the Rambert School of today.
This School was formed within the West London Institute of Higher Education which was later subsumed into Brunel University. In 2003, for artistic, educational and financial reasons the School established its independence from Brunel.
Deliberately remaining small the School is one of the world's great centres of professional dance education and training. Graduates, now within the dance profession, can be found all over the world. They work as dancers, directors, choreographers and teachers. The graduates of the present school can expect to follow in the footsteps of recent students who have taken up work in Ballet Companies like Dutch National Ballet, Northern Ballet Scottish Ballet, Boston Ballet, the Cape Town Ballet and the Seoul Ballet and Contemporary Companies like Rambert Dance Company, Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Merce Cunningham Company, Richard Alston Dance Company, Munich Dance Theatre, Phoenix Dance Company and Scottish Dance Theatre.
