Archives of the Dance (24) The Alhambra Moul Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum Jane Pritchard

RESUMEN: This article in the "Archives of the Dance" series looks at one specific collection held in the Theatre & Performance Collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. At first glance, the Alfred Moul Collection (THM/75) appears a small collection filling only half a dozen archive boxes plus some photographs and press cuttings books. Nevertheless its content is very revealing about the management of the Alhambra Palace of Variety, Leicester Square, during the years 1901-1914, and the ballets created there. It is not exclusively a dance archive but places the work of the theatre's ballet company in the context of variety theatre and the full range of turns presented there. The collection focuses on the final decade of the fifty years from 1864 in which the Alhambra dominated the ballet-scene in London. This final period was a time of decline and competition for the ballet company. The collection reveals the management's awareness of competition and the consequent need to embrace a wide range of genres; the word ballet was used to cover all forms of theatre dance and, as the collection reveals, the wide search for new dance stars for productions; it enhances our knowledge of dance and dancers from France, Russia, America and Denmark as well as our knowledge of dance in Britain immediately before the full impact of the Russian ballet was felt.