Royal Academy of Dance
The Royal Academy of Dance was born at the Trocadero Restaurant in Piccadilly, London in 1920 on the 31st December, by a small group of eminent dance professionals. Brought together by Philip Richardson, Editor of the British magazine Dancing Times, the Group included five great European dancers: Adeline Genée, Tamara Karsavina, Lucia Cormani, Edouard Espinosa, and Phyllis Bedells. Between them, they represented the principal dance training methods of the time - Genée the Danish school, Karsavina the Russian school, Cormani the Italian school, Espinosa the French school, and Bedells the English school. Their concern was for the poor quality and badly organised state of dance training in Britain.If standards of ballet were to improve, they decided, something had to be done about the way it was taught. There and then they formed themselves into the Association of Teachers of Operatic Dancing in Great Britain.
