Valentin Zeglovsky. Some Australian notes

Some recent correspondence with a friend of the family of the Ballets Russes dancer Valentin Zeglovsky sent me in search of further information. I was curious in the first instance about Zeglovsky’s name as it seems to have had a number of variant spellings. While this is not surprising in the context of the Ballets Russes, where names were changed for stage purposes and often Russianised for maximum theatrical effect, the Zeglovsky situation was a little different. There is no doubt that his stage name was Valentin Zeglovsky as this name appears on programs for the Covent Garden Russian Ballet season in Australia as well as in programs for seasons by the Borovansky Ballet and the Kirsova Ballet, in which Zeglovsky danced after he elected to remain in Australian at the end of the season by the Covent Garden Russian Ballet in 1939. But online references to documents held in the National Archives of Australia consistently indicated that his name was Valentins Zeglovskis. The family, however, while acknowledging his stage name regarded Valentin Zeglovskis as his ‘real’ name and believed that Valentins was a misnomer.

zeglovsky-cropped — Portrait of Valentin Zeglovsky, 1940s. Photographer unknown. Courtesy National Library of Australia, Geoffrey Ingram Archive of Australian Ballet. Reproduced with permission.

Examination of the hard copy records in the Archives revealed an interesting situation. During his time in Australia, Zeglovsky spent some of his time teaching in Sydney. He set up a school in a studio in the house in which he lived in Macdonald Street, Potts Point, in the early 1940s. From there he submitted four patent applications to the Sydney office of the Commonwealth of Australia’s Registrar of Copyrights. The applications were for four ballets, The Red Poppy, Les Amoreux, Miralda and Morning Noon and Night. They were probably never realised but the libretti were submitted and approved between late 1942 and mid 1943. On these applications the name Valentins Zeglovskis appears quite clearly both in typewritten and handwritten form, including as an official signature. Not only that, Zeglovsky applied to be naturalised in 1945 and this was achieved in 1946. On naturalisation documents held by the Archives, including copies of newspaper declarations of his intent to seek naturalisation, his name appears as Valentins Zeglovskis. It seems that this situation remained until his Australian passport, issued in 1949, was cancelled and his naturalisation certificate returned to the Department of Immigration in Canberra in 1954 from the London office of the High Commissioner for Australia. In 1954 he registered as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. So for some reason he clearly wanted to be known officially, at least in Australia, as Valentins Zeglovskis.

While names will always be somewhat capricious, especially in the situation in which Zeglovsky found himself during his years in Australia, research into those archival documents revealed other fascinations about the life of a dancer in Australia in the 1940s. They will be the subject of a future post.

© Michelle Potter, 19 August 2010

Paul Knobloch

Paul Knobloch, former soloist with the Australian Ballet, is back in Australia briefly to visit his family and conduct master classes in Canberra. Knobloch left the Australian Ballet in 2009 to join Béjart Ballet Lausanne.

Knobloch counts dancing the opening night of a season in Paris, when he partnered Russian-born Daria Ivanova in Béjart’s Webern Opus 5, as the highlight of his career to date with Béjart Ballet Lausanne. He returns to Switzerland in September when Béjart Ballet Lausanne will begin working with Tokyo Ballet on a joint staging of Béjart’s version of Rite of Spring. Knobloch’s own work Valetta, commissioned by David McAllister for an Australian Ballet gala in 2007, will be on the program for the Australian Ballet School’s graduate exhibition in Melbourne this September.

Michelle Potter, 16 August 2010

Of earth and sky. Bangarra Dance Theatre

23 July–28 August 2010, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Bangarra Dance Theatre, which was founded by Carole Johnson in 1989, has entered its twenty-first year with a program of two works under the generic title Of earth and sky. Riley, a work by emerging choreographer Daniel Riley McKinley, represents the sky of the title, while Artefact choreographed by well established dancer and choreographer Frances Rings represents the earth. The program as a whole suggests a potential new direction for Bangarra.

The inspiration for Riley came from the work of the late indigenous photographer and film maker Michael Riley, in particular from his series of photographic prints in which an object is digitally manipulated to float against a background of a soft blue sky dotted with clouds. They are single objects, a feather, a locust, a bible, a boomerang, a broken wing, an angel, and they reflect McKinley’s own indigenous background in rural New South Wales and, at times, the conflict between Aboriginal and Christian spirituality.

Riley’s cloud photographs are projected in turn onto a screen and McKinley’s choreography grows from and is shaped by his reflections on the objects. The choreography for the boomerang image, for example, swirls and turns, while that for the locust gathers strength of movement so that it buzzes and swarms as David Page’s electronic music develops an insistent power. The highlight is a duet, Angel, danced by Waangenga Blanco and Leonard Mickelo. They carry each other shoulder high, proudly and powerfully, as a stone angel hovers as the background image.

Riley is an impressive, if occasionally unsophisticated, choreographic beginning for McKinley. With its abstraction from any form of narrative it is quite different from much of the material we have seen from Bangarra over the previous two decades.

Artefact is the latest in a string of works made for Bangarra by Rings, who has recently been appointed resident choreographer for the company. It looks at objects of the earth such as string bags, grinding stones, bodies, weaving and coolamun (an aboriginal carrying vessel) for its inspiration. The opening sequence, called Museum, sets the scene for what follows. In it Daniel Riley McKinley and Travis de Vries, the latter a dancer on secondment to Bangarra, alternately wrap, hide and present themselves in an enormous possum skin cloak, a museum artefact that resonates nevertheless with the spirituality with which it was originally imbued. Rings appears also to be moving more towards abstraction and her choreography unfolds smoothly and organically, even lyrically at times, with some arresting movement for groups of dancers.

Bangarra has always been known for the strength of its visual aesthetic and Of earth and sky is no exception. In particular its lighting by the team of Damien Cooper and Matt Cox is subtle and evocative. But perhaps what emerges most strongly from this production is the potential movement towards abstraction, or away from strongly narrative works, by its choreographers. It could be an interesting new decade.

Michelle Potter, 5 August 2010

Night. Time. Quantum Leap

‘As dusk falls, everyone chooses their moment. Snuggled in bed or out on the town, the night world is different through every window’—program note for Night. Time.

Quantum Leap’s annual full-scale performance, this year entitled Night.Time, was a step up from previous years. Consisting of five separate sections by five different choreographers—a familiar format—two aspects of the show stood out. First, there seemed to be a greater coherence in the production so that the show seemed like one work with five parts. In large part this was a result of seamless changes from section to section rather than there being clear-cut divisions between the work of individual choreographers—well designed lighting by Guy Harding helped. I hope this kind of coherence will be pursued as a feature of future Quantum Leap productions. Secondly, we saw some adventurous choreography involving partnering on a sometimes quite daring level for the young Quantum Leapers.

For me the stand out section was Jodie Farrugia’s contribution Night. Stir, which centred on the inability to sleep. Farrugia used her background in physical theatre and circus to push the boundaries of ‘youth movement’ with a range of demanding lifts, leaps and turns. She was rewarded (as was the audience) by some strong performances by dancers who clearly relished the challenges she set them.

Following closely for the pick of the night for me was Night.Life, the section choreographed by Adam Wheeler. Like Farrugia, Wheeler had high physical expectations and the dancers responded with some outstanding, fast -paced dancing. Wheeler it seems involved the dancers in developing the theme of his section, which dealt with the activities in which the dancers imagined they might like to engage as part of their night life. No doubt their direct involvement in a highly relevant (to them) part of life added to their adrenalin charged performances. I felt they lost their sense of being onstage at times and seemed to muddle along a little, especially as the section drew to a close, but overall Night. Life was successfully and excitingly achieved. Other sections were choreographed by Marnie Palomares (Night. Light), Anton (Night. Mind) and Ruth Osborne (Night. Scape).

As in previous years extensive use was made of video material as set design. It was well integrated into the production and rarely overpowered the dancing. Adam Ventoura again provided a score, which was suitably ‘youthful’ to match the production. Costumes by Victoria Whorley were effective. A show deserving bouquets on many levels.

Quantum Leap dancers in *Night. Time*. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Michelle Potter, 31 July 2010

Algeranoff in Melbourne

The dance interests of Harcourt Algernon Essex, better known simply as Algeranoff, were extraordinarily diverse. In the earlier years of his career, as he toured the world with companies that included that of Anna Pavlova, the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes companies of Colonel de Basil, he was forever watching, taking lessons in, and lecturing on the dance of the countries he visited. A lot of his research fed into a series of divertissements that he performed while on tour, as special demonstrations or simply as part of the regular company program, which in the case particularly of the Dandré-Levitoff company each night always included a selection of about ten divertissements across a range of dance styles.

But it seems that Algeranoff was also an interesting character off stage. During some recent research into the Dandré-Levitoff company I came across the following in the Melbourne magazine Table Talk, now long defunct, and would like to share it with others who may be as surprised and delighted as I was by the evocative and personal account of Algeranoff.

‘I used to be a little in awe of Algeranoff: to see him walking down the street in his corduroys, with a paisley handkerchief about his throat, another round the waist, his typewriter, sachel [sic] packed to bursting point with costumes and make-up, and his sandals, that reveal feet stained with some indelible Oriental dye, one could hardly imagine him to be what he is, a fresh and unaffected chap, with lots of humour, and—ssshhhh—an English accent’.

—from Table Talk, 20 December 1934. Find more resources on Algeranoff in Trove.

Algeranoff in one of his divertissements—*The Faun.* Photo by Gustav Thorlichen. National Library of Australia. Reproduced with permission

Michelle Potter, 15 July 2010