Born on 12 November 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Grace Kelly rose to fame in the early 50s, famously starring in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. In May 1955, Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier III at the Cannes Film Festival. On 18 April of the next year, they were wed.
As a child and young woman, Grace studied ballet and aspired to be a professional dancer, but she was considered too tall to be a classical dancer of that era. In 1975 Princess Grace Academy in was founded following Princess Grace and Prince Rainier III’s desire to establish a high level dance school in Monaco, which later became the official school of the Monte Carlo Ballet.
Princess Grace narrated the documentary The Children of Theater Street (1977), which followed students at the Vaganova Ballet Academy of Leningrad, Soviet Union (during the cold war era) showing the training of a professional ballet dancer.
We tell the story of Princess Grace Kelly Ballet Legacy as part of our Ballet & Identity Talk Series.
Credits
Princess Grace of Monaco – Photo by Monaco Tribune
