Grimaldi’s run

The clown Joseph Grimaldi was so popular that he often appeared at two different theatres on the same night, running between them through the London streets. Veronica Horwell’s unique audio tour brings a stage phenomenon to life.

Veronica Horwell | features | Issue 14 – Oct 2025

Joseph Grimaldi in 1822. Illustration: Metropolitan Museum

Grimaldi’s run

Veronica Horwell | features | Issue 14 – Oct 2025

In this special audio feature, we follow a route first taken over 200 years ago by one of the most famous performers of the early 19th century. Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was the king of clowns, the potentate of pantomime, a dancing master of rare skill.

Adored by audiences – including the novelist Charles Dickens, who wrote his biography – Grimaldi was so much in demand that he often performed in two major London theatres at the same time: Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden, a mile and a half apart. When their seasons overlapped, he would finish his show at Sadler’s Wells and then hotfoot it into town.

Our audio tour traces Grimaldi’s run. The writer Veronica Horwell shepherds us from Sadler’s Wells (still a leading dance house) to Covent Garden, now home to the Royal Ballet, via other significant places in Grimaldi’s career. Veronica takes us inside this visually spectacular, financially perilous world, where delighted audiences would bellow Grimaldi’s catch phrase: ‘here we are again!’

Dance Gazette · GRIMALDI_

LOOK

Grimaldi in his time… and follow Grimaldi’s run in photos by Rhodri Thomas

Veronica Horwell is a writer for the Guardian among other publications.

Sarah Myles is an award winning podcast producer whose projects include Intersections, Teacher’s Voices and Why Dance Matters, the RAD podcast.

SEND YOUR FEEDBACK

Veronica Horwell Issue 14 – Oct 2025 features

REST OF Issue 14 – Oct 2025

Inside RAD post Inside RAD

A place to grow

Iain Mackay, Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet School, addressed successful graduates at RAD Graduation in September, in London’s Cadogan Hall. This is an edited version of his heartfelt speech.

Dance Gazette

features

Dancing city

Ballet class, samba, clubbing: you can dance all day long in São Paulo. As The Fonteyn comes to Brazil’s largest city, photographer Pablo Albarenga follows São Paulo’s dance from morning to night.

Pablo Albarenga

interviews

Passion project

Mayara Magri is a Principal with the Royal Ballet and now the commissioned choreographer for The Fonteyn in São Paulo. The Brazilian ballerina discusses her passion for dance and creating her new solos.

David Jays

reports

Opening doors

How can we rethink dance classes to bring greater joy to autistic students? JJ O’Donoghue investigates.

JJ O’Donoghue

interviews

Ballet x Broadway

She juggles multiple roles at New York City Ballet. He has spent eight years in a single hit musical. Diep Tran asks a ballerina and a Broadway hoofer to compare notes on their working lives.

Diep Tran

interviews

Ballet with benefits

Australian teacher Rachel Ward recently won the RAD’s Dance for Wellbeing Award due to her research into dance’s health benefits and her work with Silver Swans. Jane Albert joins her class in Sydney to hear her story.

Jane Albert

RAD Q&A post RAD Q&A

Max McIlvenny

The first winner of the RAD’s Robin Windsor Dance Award describes how dance has helped him overcome adversity and improve mental wellbeing.

Dance Gazette

Big Picture post Big Picture

A Midsummer Night

‘Great teaching lays the foundation for great artistry,’ says Federico Bonelli of Northern Ballet – just one of the ballet stars supporting dance education at a special RAD event.

Dance Gazette

Playlist post Playlist

Daniela Severian

Daniela Severian was principal dancer at Wiesbaden Opera, Aalto-Theater Essen and at Companhia Nacional de Bailados. This year, she is coaching at The Fonteyn – but what are her most precious musical memories?

Dance Gazette