What did Mona Inglesby and International Ballet Company clear plaque do at Royal Festival Hall?

The Story

# The Story of Royal Festival Hall Standing before the gleaming modernist facade of the Royal Festival Hall in 1951, Mona Inglesby made history by bringing her International Ballet Company to this newly opened jewel of the Festival of Britain—the first ballet company ever to grace its stage. For a decade prior, from 1941 to 1953, Inglesby had been quietly revolutionizing British ballet, but it was here, in this very building during the Festival celebrations, that her vision reached its apotheosis: presenting classical ballets faithfully reconstructed from the notations that her collaborator Nicolai Sergey had painstakingly preserved from the legendary Maryinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. This performance was more than just another show; it was a cultural resurrection, allowing post-war British audiences to witness authentic Russian imperial ballet tradition at the precise moment the nation was celebrating its creative renewal. For Inglesby, dancing and directing on this stage represented the culmination of her artistic mission—to rescue and reimagine the classical ballet heritage that had seemed lost to history, and to prove that a British company could hold its own among Europe's great institutions.