Joan Lawson
Joan Lawson (1907–2002) was an English ballet dancer and writer on dance. She danced with the Nemtchinova-Dolin Ballet around 1933–1934, then focused on teaching and writing. She directed the Royal Academy of Dance's teacher training course from 1947 to 1959 and was the Royal Ballet Society’s character and mime teacher from 1963 to 1971. Lawson also worked as a dance critic for Dancing Times between 1940 and 1954 and served as vice-chair of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.
Born in London, she studied at the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, the Vaganova Academy, and the Seraphina Astafieva School of Dance, learning from Serafina Astafieva and Margaret Morris. During World War II she lectured on education for the armed services (1940–1947).
In 1952 she helped found the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing’s National Dance Branch, to study folk dance in depth. Lawson published many books on dance, including Ballet in the U.S.S.R. (1945), The Rake's Progress (1949), European Folk Dance (1953), Mime (1957), Classical Ballet: Its Style and Technique (1960), A History of Ballet and Its Makers (1964), and Teaching Young Dancers: Muscular Coordination in Classical Ballet (1975). She also edited and translated works and contributed to encyclopedias and journals.
She received the Imperial Award for special services to national dance. She died on 18 February 2002. The Arnold Haskell Dance Library of the Royal Ballet School holds records of her career and writings, including correspondence, notes, photographs, and programmes.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:06 (CET).