London Festival Ballet

What you are looking at

A vivid promotional poster for the London Festival Ballet, rendered in a striking modernist style dominated by deep blue and burnt orange. The composition centers on a single male dancer captured mid-leap, his body arched in a dramatic diagonal that cuts across the frame. His musculature is rendered in sharp, graphic orange silhouette against the blue ground, emphasizing the explosive power of the jump. One arm extends fully to the left while the other is raised toward his body; both legs are extended in a split or near-split configuration suggesting either the height of elevation or an illusion of weightlessness. The dancer wears what appears to be a sleeveless shirt or singlet and tights. Arranged in a regular grid pattern across the upper and lower fields of the poster are repeated small white silhouettes of the theatre itself—the Dominion Theatre—establishing the venue and creating a rhythmic visual echo. At the base, elegant script lettering identifies 'London Festival Ballet' and dates the performance to March 6–31, 1979. The typography at the top reads 'live' above 'DOMINION THEATRE,' with horizontal lines framing the text in a geometric, Art Deco-influenced manner. The overall effect is one of dynamic energy and theatrical glamour.

The dancing

A single male dancer dominates the composition, captured in a soaring vertical leap with maximum extension. His body is fully arched, displaying the considerable flexibility and control required for this height and shape. The arms are positioned with sophisticated spatial awareness—one reaches away from the body, the other gathered near—creating a sense of controlled momentum rather than flailing. Both legs are extended in what appears to be a lateral split or a wide extension suggesting both height and flexibility. The dancer's silhouette is clean and decisive, with particular attention to the articulation of the limbs and the angle of the torso, suggesting the artist understood the demands of trained ballet technique.

The dance depicted

This is contemporary classical ballet as performed by the London Festival Ballet in 1979. The imagery captures the hallmark vocabulary of mid-twentieth-century ballet promotion: the soaring vertical leap, the extended limbs, the apparent defiance of gravity. The dancer's posture and the height of the jump suggest classical training in the tradition of Russian or European ballet schools. The aesthetic of the pose—with its emphasis on line, extension, and weightless elevation—belongs to the neoclassical or contemporary classical ballet vocabulary that characterized major companies of this era. The London Festival Ballet (founded 1950) was one of Britain's leading ballet companies, known for both classical repertoire and contemporary works.

How it was made

This is a lithographic poster, a medium that allowed for bold areas of flat color and graphic simplification ideally suited to theatrical promotion and street display. The artist—Anthony Crickmay, a photographer and graphic designer—has used the possibilities of lithography to create a design of striking visual economy: the human figure reduced to essential musculature and line, the color palette stripped to two dominant hues plus white. Lithography's ability to produce fine detail in the facial features and anatomical definition of the torso is evident here, while the medium's capacity for bold graphic areas gives the background and repeated motifs their commanding presence. This technique allowed for economical large-scale reproduction suitable for cinema hoardings and poster sites, ensuring visibility and impact in the urban environment where ballet companies needed to attract audiences.

About this work

This is a promotional poster for the London Festival Ballet's season at the Dominion Theatre in London during March 1979. It represents the aesthetic vocabulary of mid-twentieth-century ballet marketing: the celebration of the male dancer's athleticism, the emphasis on vertical extension and weightlessness, the graphic modernism that positioned ballet as contemporary and dynamic rather than archaic. The work sits at the intersection of theatrical design, graphic modernism, and dance promotion, documenting both a specific historical moment in a major British ballet company's seasons and the visual language through which ballet presented itself to the public during this period. As a poster, it is a primary document of how dance was sold, how dancers' bodies were represented to potential audiences, and how the aesthetics of modernist design shaped the visual culture of performance.

How to look at it

Attend first to the moment of maximum extension the artist has chosen: the dancer is captured not in a preparatory state or a landing, but at the apex of the leap, fully extended and seemingly suspended. This freeze-frame captures the ideal form toward which ballet training aspires. Notice how the artist uses silhouette and color contrast to emphasize musculature and line—the rendering is not realistic but graphic, distilling the figure to its essential geometry. The repeated theatre silhouettes create a visual rhythm that mirrors the pulse and repetition of performance, while the spare color palette and clean lines situate the image within modernist graphic design conventions. The composition is asymmetrical and dynamic, using negative space to amplify the sense of vertical lift.

The artist

Anthony Crickmay (1919–2010) was a British photographer and graphic designer who became renowned for his dance photography and theatrical design, particularly his work documenting and promoting British ballet and modern dance throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century. He photographed extensively for major companies including the Royal Ballet and the London Festival Ballet, and his graphic design work—such as this poster—brought the aesthetics of modernist graphic design to dance promotion. His visual language combined the documentary clarity of his photographic practice with the bold geometric abstraction characteristic of mid-century poster design, creating images that were both dynamically artistic and commercially effective.

The period

In 1979, classical ballet in Britain was enjoying significant public presence, with the London Festival Ballet and the Royal Ballet as the two major national companies competing for audiences and funding. The aesthetic of this poster—with its emphasis on the spectacular athleticism of the male dancer—reflects a broader shift in ballet's self-presentation during the 1970s, when male technique and virtuosity had become central to the art form's appeal, particularly in the wake of dancers like Mikhail Baryshnikov and a general cultural embrace of physical display and bodily perfection. Graphically, the poster belongs to the international idiom of modernist poster design, with echoes of constructivism and art deco, filtered through the commercial aesthetics of 1970s theatrical promotion. The date also coincides with the height of the London Festival Ballet's prominence and international touring success.

Where it lives

This poster is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum as a theatrical poster. It represents the category of printed promotional materials produced for commercial distribution and public display, documenting both the aesthetic conventions and the commercial strategies of mid-twentieth-century British ballet companies.

Dance in this work

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