It was on my return to London, in March, 1951, that I saw the _première_ of the first of their new productions, _Pineapple Poll_, a ballet freely adapted from the Bab Ballad, “The Bumbeat Woman’s Story,” by W. S. Gilbert, with music by Arthur Sullivan, arranged by a young Australian, Charles Mackerras, a conductor at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. The scenery and costumes were by Osbert Lancaster, noted architectural historian and cartoonist, and the choreography by John Cranko, who had worked in collaboration with Lancaster and Mackerras. The work had its first performance at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre on the 13th March, 1951. The entire programme I saw that night was made up of Cranko works, and I found myself seated before a quartet of works, highly varied in content and style, all of which interested me, some, to be sure, more than others. The evening commenced with Cranko’s _Sea Change_. A tragic work in a free style, a character ballet whose story was moving, but a ballet in which I never felt music and movement quite came together. The score was the orchestral piece, _En Saga_, by Jan Sibelius. The new work, _Pineapple Poll_, was the second ballet of the evening. I was enchanted with it. I had always been a Sullivan admirer, and here were pieces from nigh on to a dozen of the Sullivan operas, woven together with great skill and brilliant orchestration into a marvelous integral whole by Charles Mackerras, a complete score in itself, as if it might have been directly composed for the ballet. I watched the dancers closely, and it was impossible for me to imagine a finer interpretation. Elaine Fifield, in the title role, was something more than piquant; she was a genuine _ballerina_, with a fascinating sense of character, her whole performance highly intelligent. There was no “mugging,” no “cuteness”; on the contrary, there were both humor and wit, and I noted she was a beautifully “clean” dancer. David Blair was a compelling officer, and his “hornpipe” almost on points literally brought the house down. Three other dancers impressed me: Sheillah O’Reilly, Stella Claire and David Poole. Osbert Lancaster’s sets were masterful, both as sets and as architecture. This, I decided, was a Cranko masterpiece, and it impressed me in much the same way as some of Massine’s gay ballets. _Pineapple Poll_ was followed by a delicate fantasy by Cranko, _Beauty and the Beast_, an extended _pas de deux_, set to some of Ravel’s _Mother Goose Suite_, and beautifully danced by Patricia Miller and David Poole, who were, I learned, a pair of South Africans from the Sadler’s Wells School.