Cyril W. Beaumont

Cyril W. Beaumont, OBE (1 November 1891 – 24 May 1976) was a British dance historian, critic, technical theorist, translator, bookseller, and publisher. Author of more than forty books on ballet, he is considered one of the most important dance historians of the twentieth century.

Cyril William Beaumont was born in London, brought up in a cultivated, middle-class family, and educated at local schools. As a youth, his parents directed him toward a career as a research chemist, but he was not a good student. Interested in theatre history, languages, and fine books, he abandoned his scientific studies to pursue a career in bookselling. In 1910, when he was nineteen, his father bought a small shop at 75 Charing Cross Road, in central London, and set him up in business as a seller of literary classics and rare books. There, he was introduced to dance by Alice Mari Beha, his shop assistant, who encouraged him to attend ballet performances by Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin in 1911 and by the Ballets Russes de Sergei Diaghilev in 1912. As a result, he became a budding balletomane. In December 1914, Beaumont married Alice Beha, who shared his interests and who was instrumental in making their business successful.

In 1917, Beaumont expanded his sphere of operations by founding the Beaumont Press and beginning to publish fine books of poetry, essays, and other literary works. However, as his affinity for ballet developed into a deep passion, the inventory at his shop gradually changed from a focus on general literature to a concentration on dance. He began writing and publishing articles on ballet and increasing his inventory of books on dance and the theatrical arts. By 1920 his shop had become a centr for ballet lovers as well as fans of other dance forms. With a large and diverse stock of books in dance literature, it was internationally known as a source of works in history, criticism, and appreciation of the art. It remained so until it closed in 1965, after fifty-five years of operation.

Over those years, Beaumont became friend and mentor to countless dancers, teachers, and researchers throughout the world. Among his friends was the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, who took him in 1918 to observe a class taught by the Italian ballet master and pedagogue Enrico Cecchetti. Beaumont was favourably impressed by what he saw. He soon became a friend of Cecchetti's and a strong advocate of his method of training students. At Cecchetti's urging, he spent the next four years working with the maestro and dancer Stanislas Idzikowski to codify and preserve the Cecchetti method of teaching. Their collaboration resulted in a technical manual (1922) that is still used today to train dancers around the world. Beaumont also worked as coauthor with Cecchetti-trained dancer Margaret Craske in producing a work on allegro technique, published some years later.

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