Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic “It’s like a cabinet of curiosities,” says director Katy Rudd. She’s talking about the set design, with its multiple doors and levels, for her new National Theatre production of Ballet Shoes — but she could be talking about the novel itself.Many of us have a go-to book as child — a favourite we read over and over again, a world we want to fall into. Ballet Shoes was mine. Noel Streatfeild’s tale of the Fossil girls seemed impossibly romantic: three wildly different adopted children growing up in 1930s London in a rambling old house full of dinosaur bones, attending a stage school run by a formidable Russian ballet teacher and sharing their lives with an eccentric set of boarders. Even the rituals of tea and buns and walks along the Cromwell Road had the whiff of an earlier world, somehow comforting in its routine.I was far from alone. Since it was published in 1936, Ballet Shoes has never been out of print. The task for Rudd — who previously directed a spellbinding version of Neil Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane — is to bring the distinctive world of the novel to life, armed with Kendall Feaver’s stage adaptation. She suggests that the book’s longevity is down to the fact, despite all the period detail, that it’s remarkably forward-looking.“I think it was hugely ahead of its time,” Rudd says. “Noel Streatfeild wrote a novel that encouraged young people to enjoy making art, encouraged little girls to be ambitious and to make something of their lives for themselves. That was a big idea in the 1930s. And I do still feel it’s pretty revolutionary: that idea that you can be anything.“There’s also a really strong thread in it, which again is revolutionary, about adopted and found families. In the strict family structures of the 1930s, that’s huge — to say, ‘What is a family? Can you choose each other?’”The story’s for boys as well. I hope people will be reminded of the transformative power of art: that it helps young people understand who they areIn the novel, Great Uncle Matthew, explorer, palaeontologist and loveable oddball, finds three baby girls and, having deposited them with his niece and her nurse, disappears off on his travels again. That leaves the women in charge of the house and the girls in charge of their destinies. Posy wants to be a dancer, Pauline an actress, but Petrova, who loathes all the fuss and frills, dreams of being a pilot.Despite the title, then, it’s not all pliés and pirouettes — it’s far grittier than that. As with much popular children’s fiction, it’s about being resourceful, finding your way and working out your values. It is, as Rudd, says, a love letter to theatre, but it’s frank too about auditions, stage fright and the crueller aspects of show business. And there’s a quiet feminism to the depiction of a house full of strong, capable women and the emphasis on self-definition. The sisters vow to write their name into history “because it’s our very own and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers”.Rudd hopes that will prove inspiring on stage. “It’s for boys as well, she says. “I hope people will be reminded of the transformative power of art: that it helps young people understand who they are, understand others, build empathy. That’s so important today in a world where arts are cut in schools and communities . . . And it has this naughty spirit. That’s what we’ve been trying to capture in the production — a sort of playfulness.”Key to that is motion. In the rehearsal room, Rudd and choreographer Ellen Kane are building a vibrant world bustling with action. Kane, who worked on Dear England, James Graham’s play about the England football team, explains that movement is woven into the storytelling.“The string that’s tying it all together is this sense of movement in the house,” she says. “The energy, youth and playfulness of the girls is making the world move.”I watch that principle in practice as Kane rehearses the passage where the girls first join the academy. Suddenly the space is filled with mirrors, barres and bodies and the cast launches into a series of fondus, developés and arabesques (the entire company has been taking ballet class every day). It’s like being pitched into the midst of a dance lesson — a dizzying whirlwind of movement that then bleeds into the girls’ domestic routines: one dance move becomes a yawn; another segues into tooth-cleaning.“What I tried to do in Dear England was expose the idea of jeopardy and tension,” says Kane. “But here it’s about the idea that things are moving really fast for the girls. So we’re not having to go “six weeks later”, “six months later”, it’s about achieving that information so that it’s coming at you, and coming at you without you even knowing it.”As the cast reset for the next sequence, I peer at what’s pinned to the rehearsal room wall. It’s an eclectic mix: articles about palaeontology, Indian independence and the African-American aviator Bessie Coleman sit cheek by jowl with images of the dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Olga Sapphire and of little girls in white rompers being instructed by a stern-looking ballet teacher in black.It’s all highly evocative — but also a reminder of the political and social context of the novel. Mr Simpson, a boarder involved in the rubber trade in Malaysia, where the British colonial government maximised profits and exploited plantation workers, has been cut from the stage version. Is that right? Should the show not retain elements that demonstrate the racism, imperialism and snobbery of the times?“It’s a postcolonial text, but doesn’t know it is,” says Rudd. “We have talked a lot about that. So we have decided to replace Mr Simpson with a character who came from India and had a different journey. And of course the war is brewing . . . I hope I will recreate the world but with a modern lens that means young people today don’t see it as a museum piece.” Ballet Shoes joins a throng of adapted children’s novels, many of which have become box-office gold. The RSC’s Matilda is still running in the West End; the National Theatre’s War Horse has played across the globe. But there’s always the risk, in adapting a beloved book, that you clash with people’s memories of the original.“There’s a lot of expectation,” Rudd agrees. “So you’ve got to make sure you’re telling the clearest story for people who’ve never read the book while also respecting it for the diehard fans.“As I make it, I’m thinking about what seven-year-old me would have liked. I’m inside all three protagonists’ heads, trying to tell their story. These girls have been adopted. They’ve been abandoned or left, so there’s huge pain and grief for them that they are trying to overcome. Art gives them resilience; it helps them survive. And it brings this family together. When you find your family, hold them close.”‘Ballet Shoes’, November 26-February 22, nationaltheatre.org.ukFind out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
