The Marie Rambert Ballet

London: British-Continental Press/ The Artists of the Dance, 1930. Hardback. Good+. FIRST EDITION, with TLS & SIGNED POSTCARD by RAMBERT laid-in. 8vo, pp. 44, [6 catalogue] + 7 b/w plates. Quarter red cloth, buff paper boards, lettered in black. Top and fore-edged untrimmed. Tanned, edgewear, corners bruised, patch of rubbing to bottom board. Front hinge starting, Brian Hill's attractive monochrome ex libris, featuring a windmill and designed by "SLR," to front pastedown. One-page TLS from Rambert on blue Mercury Theatre/ The Rambert Ballet-headed paper (04.09.1950) addressed to Mr. Hill, plus a later Ballet Rambert sepia postcard, featuring "Marie Rambert, Warsaw, 1897" and signed in blue ink on reverse by Rambert, laid-in. Else, clean. Good+. A pleasing copy of Haskell's tribute to Rambert & her dancers, unusual with signed ephemera laid in. The Polish-born ballet dancer and teacher Marie Rambert (1888�1982, DBE) studied in Paris and London, before creating her own company, Ballet Club, in 1926. The first ballet company in Britain, it has passed through numerous name changes in its lifetime, from the Marie Rambert Dancers, to Ballet Rambert, later Rambert Dance Company, and currently Rambert. From 1933 (until 1987) the company's home was the The Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill Gate, London. Haskell's title is an early (passionate) celebration and advertisement for Rambert, her company and her techniques; he goes as far as to claim: "I am convinced that Marie Rambert, almost alone in Britain, has found the one way in which to save ballet and make it indigenous". In her 1950 TLS, Rambert thanks Brian Hill for sending on a pair of ballet shoes and tells him: "I tried them on for a joke and they fit me to perfection, so I do hope you don't mind me using them as I always wear ballet shoes for teaching".