Turned Out Proud

Turned Out Proud was a BBC commission shown in the Music at Ten series and was MacMillan’s third television work after Punch and the Child and The Dreamers , an adaptation for television of Somnambulism . Broadcast live from the former Lime Grove studios in Shepherd’s Bush, London, it was Margaret Dale’s first project for the BBC. A former dancer with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Dale in years to come adapted and directed much of The Royal Ballet’s work for television.

Turned Out Proud was a danced revue in nine parts, introduced by an opera-cloaked impresario (actor John Neville of the Old Vic). The dancers came from the two Sadler’s Wells companies, along with one star guest, Violette Verdy. According to Dance and Dancers , a pas de deux for Verdy and Gilbert Vernon was ‘the highlight of the evening’. There was also a 1920s pastiche for Julia Farron, who, dancing in a park, tried to distract four boys from reading their newspapers. “The programme closed”, Dance and Dancers recorded, “with a rousing blues of those terrible twenties and the days of New Orleans jazz. Verdy, brandishing a long cigarette-holder, might almost have wandered in from I am a Camera ”.