NEWS
Vale Valrene tweedie - australia's 'russian' ballerina
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Australia lost a vital figure in its dance community with the death of Valrene Tweedie in early August 2008 at the age of 83. Tweedie was the only Australian dancer to audition successfully for the Ballets Russes companies that visited Australia between 1936 and 1940. She received her early dance training with Mischa Burlakov, Louise Lightfoot and Leon Kellaway, auditioning for Col. Wassily de Basil and joining his Original Ballet Russe in 1940 at the age of 14. As Irina Lavrova she danced with the company in Australia before leaving for the Americas. For more see Australia Dancing and the Valrene Tweedie Gallery |
Kiril vassilkovsky - dancer, choreography, teacher - dies at 89
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On 18 October 2008, Kiril Vassilkovsky died in hospital after a short illness. He was 89. Vassilkovsky came to Australia on Col. Wassily de Basil's invitation after studying in London with Marie Rambert and Igor Schwezoff. After some years touring, he worked as assistant to Bronislava Nijinska in Paris. There, on the street, he encountered Edouard Borovansky, who was recruiting dancers for the Borovansky Ballet. 'Boro' invited Vassilkovsky to come to Australia to stage various Ballets Russes productions and become a ballet master. He also began to choreograph. His ballets were often considered demanding by dancers of the Borovansky Ballet, but one in particular, Candide, was very successful. He may also hold the honour of creating Australia's first cross-cultural ballet with an Indonesian composer for the West Australian Ballet. Vassilkovsky established his first regional school at at Busselton in south Western Australia and later new schools in other centres. This meant he would drive some thousands of kilometres every year to teach students. Many remained close to him after his retirement in 1991, at the age of 72. See more in Australia Dancing |
irina baronova HANGS UP HER DANCING SHOES
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Irina Baronova, the last of the 'baby ballerinas' who became overnight stars during the 1932-3 season of Col. Wassily de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, died peacefully at her home near Byron Bay in June 2008. She was 89. Just three weeks earlier she had been joyously celebrated at the Ballets Russes Symposium at the University of Adelaide and recorded for a television documentary on the Ballets Russes in Australia. The National Library is very lucky to have recorded two oral history interviews with Mme Baronova in February 2007, talking about her life, the great artists she worked with, and the contribution she continued to make to the dance profession since her retirement in 1945. The Irina Baronova Gallery of images from her visit is a fitting testament to her vital, sunny personality, and her wonderful gift for story telling. |
COVENT GARDEN rUSSIAN BALLET TOUR PICTURES GALLERY
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Australian balletomane Patricia Mary Cape befriended the dancers of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet travelling to Australia on the Maloja in 1938. Cape photographed the dancers at play on deck, sunbathing and rehearsing Leonide Massine’s ballet Symphonie Fantastique. An unexpected passenger was a tiny gazelle, named Aden after the Yemini port where the ship stopped. Kira Abricossova and Irina Baronova went ashore to stroll along the docks. There amongst the sheds they observed with horror two boys dragging a small gazelle on its side, her legs tied together with a rope. Baronova records the encounter in her memoir, Irina – ballet, life and love.
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Reminiscences of Leonide Massine’s ‘symphonic ballets’ by his ballerinas
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When Leonide Massine created his first symphonic ballet Les Presages to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in 1933, his radical approach inspired the Ballets Russes dancers. Rich, flowing movement, speed, athletically challenging solos and massed choric groupings gave them a freedom they had never experienced on stage before. When Massine announced his second ballet in this style, Choreartium, to Brahms’s Fourth Symphony later that year, they were ecstatic. Three years later he used Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique with great success. All three ballets were triumphs for the company and individual dances and audiences clamoured for them year after year as the company toured Australia from 1938 to 1940. Three of Massine’s ballerinas – Irina Baronova, Valrene Tweedie and Anna Volkova, who all live in Australia – share reminiscences of their experiences of Massine’s innovative use of symphonies for these radically modern ballets in Issue 26 of Brolga – an Australian journal about dance*. They are reproduced on the web site by kind permission of the publisher, the Australian Dance Council – Ausdance.
In the Brolga issue Dr Mark Carroll, Senior Lecture in Music, University of Adelaide, investigates critical and popular responses to Massine’s daring and, to some people, almost blasphemous use of symphonies for new and modern choreography. * Brolga is available by subscription. Enquiries can be made by telephone on 02.6248 8992, or via the organisation’s website: http://www.ausdance.org.au/resources/journals/brolga.html |
Hugh P. Hall collection of photographs, 1939-1940
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Late in 2006, the National Library purchased a magnificent collection of 1182 photographs by Melbourne solicitor Hugh P Hall. He took them at His Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, during Col. Wassily de Basil’s Ballets Russes company performances from 1938 to 1940. Hall’s passion for ballet was revealed in his famously coveted 1948 book, Ballet in Australia: From Pavlova to Rambert, filled with dynamic and atmospheric action shots taken during performances. Hall remained enamoured of the ballet and went on to photograph every international visiting dance artist and company, from Anna Pavlova in 1929 to the Ballet Rambert in 1948. He also photographed Australia’s early professional companies established by Helene Kirsova and Eduoard Borovansky. The images from the book, and a thousand more, have undergone preservation and cataloguing and are progressively being digitised, ballet by ballet - all 28 of them. This stunning and richly detailed collection will be invaluable to researchers, writers, artists and balletomanes alike. To view the digitised images, see Hugh P. Hall collection of photographs, 1938-1940. For more on Hugh P Hall, see his entry in Australia Dancing. |











