British dancer Joan Benesh and her husband Rudolf develop the Benesh system of dance notation

Jerome Robbins creates the ballet The Concert, to music by Chopin

The Sadler's Wells Ballet, dancing now at Covent Garden, is renamed the Royal Ballet

Russian dancer Galina Ulanova proves a sensation on tour in Europe and the USA in her late forties

The ballet Spartacus, with music by Aram Khachaturian, has its premiere in Leningrad

Latvian-Canadian dancer Ludmilla Chiriaeff founds the Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal

Lynn Seymour creates the first of many roles for MacMillan, dancing the Adolescent in The Burrow

John Cranko's version of Romeo and Juliet, to Prokofiev's score, is premiered by La Scala Ballet in Venice

A group of dancers leave the Netherlands Ballet and establish their own Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague

French choreographer Maurice Béjart is the first director of Belgium's new Ballet of the 20th Century

British choreographer John Cranko becomes director of the Stuttgart Ballet

Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Kirov company at Le Bourget airport and seeks political asylum in France

Rudolf Nureyev makes his first appearance in a western company, dancing in The Sleeping Beauty for the Marquis de Cuevas

US choreographer Glen Tetley creates a ballet to the music of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire

British dancer Peggy van Praagh is appointed the first director of the newly formed Australian Ballet

British choreographer Frederick Ashton creates Marguerite and Armand for Margot Fonteyn and her new partner, Rudolf Nureyev

Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, retires after building the company to international stature

Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley begin a famous partnership in Ashton's The Dream

The Beijing ballet company goes political with The Red Detachment of Women, supervised by Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing

Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev dance together in the premiere of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet

US choreographer Robert Joffrey founds a new company that becomes known (from 1977) as the Joffrey Ballet

Paul Newman and Robert Redford star in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova defects to the west while on tour with the Kirov company in London

The Dance Theatre of Harlem, founded by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook, gives its first performance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York

Hip-hop originates as a dance style in New York among young African Americans