As part of my current research project into the career of Kristian Fredrikson, I came across four designs in the National Library’s Fredrikson collection labelled Sleeping Beauty Act I. They were for four Princes: English, Indian, Russian and Saracen and so were clearly for the ‘Rose Adagio’. But I was a little puzzled by them as they were not for the Stanton Welch version of Beauty, which Welch choreographed for the Australian Ballet in 2005 and which was designed by Fredrikson. I was not aware of another Sleeping Beauty with Fredrikson designs.
The English Prince had the name DeMasson written on the back and Paul De Masson kindly identified the costume as one he wore while a dancer with West Australian Ballet. He recalled that in the 1970s he had partnered Elaine Fifield in the ‘Rose Adagio’ during a season that contained a number of divertissements.
After a bit more investigation I uncovered a flyer and some programs in the National Library’s Rex Reid collection. Reid directed West Australian Ballet from late 1969 to 1973 and in November 1971 presented a season of two programs, which included a number of divertissements, at the Octagon Theatre, Perth. It was the first program, staged from 8-13 November, that included the ‘Rose Adagio’. The printed program contained the following details:
Rose Adagio,
Producer: Bryan Ashbridge Music: Tchaikovsky Costumes: Kristian Fredrikson Choreography: Frederick Ashton ‘A new production by Bryan Ashbridge’
Princess Aurora: Elaine Fifield, Patricia Sadka Indian Prince: Robert O’Kell Saracen Prince: Laurence Bishop Russian Prince: Ron Deschamps English Prince: Paul DeMasson
I was also curious about the choreographic credit to Ashton, but the Ashton scholar David Vaughan has noted that Ashton created a ‘Rose Adagio’ in 1963 especially for a Royal Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Bryan Ashbridge, who produced the 1971 West Australian Ballet version, retired from the Royal Ballet in 1965 so could well have been part of that Royal Performance or subsequent stagings of this Rose Adagio.
Rex Reid’s second 1971 Octagon program, presented from 15-20 November, included ‘The Dying Swan’ as one of the divertissements. A design for ‘The Dying Swan’, which was danced by Fifield, is also part of the National Library’s Fredrikson collection.
More items to add to the growing ‘List of works designed by Kristian Fredrikson’.
Michelle Potter, 26 October 2011
Update, 31 January 2017. The Fredrikson material also contains a design, from the same production, for Aurora, a detail of which is the featured image on this post.
Gail Ferguson as a woman of the village in Yugen, 1965 or later. Photo by Walter Stringer. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Australia
While pursuing research into the career of designer Kristian Fredrikson I was surprised to find Fredrikson’s name mentioned in production credits for Yugen, Robert Helpmann’s 1965 one-act work for the Australian Ballet. Fredrikson, whose home base was Melbourne at the time Yugen was being created, is listed, along with William Miles, as having made the headdresses.
Yugen was designed by Desmond Heeley who tells me that he worked on the designs in London and sent the drawings to Australia by mail with copious instructions to the wardrobe department at the Australian Ballet. Helpmann requested, however, that the costume for the leading role of the Goddess, danced in the original production by Kathleen Gorham, be made by costume makers who had worked with him on previous occasions at Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden, including Hugh Skillen who made the very delicate headdress worn by Gorham and those who followed in the role.
Fredrikson’s interest in headdresses and wigs—millinery in general—can be traced back to his very first works made in New Zealand. For what is reputed to be his first theatrical commission, the Strauss operetta A Night in Venice, one reviewer wrote:
An intriguing effect has been created for the doxies in the opera by giving them flowing wigs in vivid purple, green, blue and orange. Making these wigs occupied two days—they had to be dyed, teased, shaped, curled, brushed and, where necessary, lacquered.
His interest in framing the face in some way can also be followed throughout his career and many of his designs on paper contain detailed instructions to the millinery department of the companies for which he worked.
In 1965 Fredrikson had just a few design commissions behind him, perhaps the most prestigious being designs for Aurora’s Wedding for the Australian Ballet in 1964. Making the Yugen headdresses to Heeley’s designs was no doubt an important and prestigious step for him and he often mentioned Heeley as an influence on his own work.
Scene from the Australian Ballet production of Yugen, 1965 or later. Photo by Walter Stringer. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Australia.
I have commented elsewhere on this site and in The Canberra Timeson the legacy tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, now drawing to an end. The tour has generated all kinds of reviews over the almost two years of its run to date, not the least of which is a recent one by Clement Crisp published in The Financial Times of 6 October 2011, which relates to a Cunningham season at the Barbican in London. I love reading Crisp’s reviews, which are often outrageously opinionated (in my opinion!!), but which often also contain many words of wisdom born of many years of experience.
Given that choreography has been a point of discussion among readers of and contributors to this website recently, the following extract from Crisp’s Cunningham review is more than interesting.
‘The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as the choreographer left it when he died two years ago, will cease to exist at the year’s end. Cunningham’s wish that his troupe should cease must be seen as wise. The keepers of the flame who proclaim that “this is what our Dear Master intended” are among the added indignities to mortality.
Choreography mutates, Chinese-whispers fashion and for all the stern guardianship that seeks to protect dance, it alters, as do bodies and training and the social attitudes of an audience. Today’s Ashton, even today’s carefully guarded Balanchine, change as transmission of a text oh-so-insidiously erodes a step, an emotional point. Cunningham decided his company—dancers with whom he worked on a daily basis—must end ‘as near as dammit with him’.
The Canberra Times recently published ‘Pushing 50 but still dancing’, my preview of the Australian Ballet’s 2012 season.
What didn’t get covered in that article was the Australian Ballet’s use of the term ‘triple threat’ in relation to the triple bill of new Australian works by Graeme Murphy, Stephen Page and Gideon Obarzanek, which is due to open in Melbourne in February. In subscriber brochures and media material these three choreographers are being described as the ‘triple threat of Australian dance’.
At first sight this looks like a typo. I almost fell into the trap of thinking this way, but thanks to a watchful editor I escaped.* It’s probably not a typo (although one can never be sure) since a ‘triple threat’ is, it seems, someone who excels in three areas, be it in baseball (where perhaps the term originated to describe someone who can catch, bat and run with equal skill) or show business, where apparently it can mean having skills in any three areas of activity.
But a ‘triple threat’ can also be something rather than someone. It can be a sports bar of the edible variety (with three ingredients?), or a game show—check your favourite search engine for more. There is also an interesting opinion piece published in The Guardian in 2006.
So where does this leave the Murphy/Page/Obarzanek trio? What are the three areas in which we might expect them to excel in this triple bill? I am a little amused at the idea of being threatened by them or by what they come up with, but quite honestly I’d rather be challenged, excited, enthused, or any number of other more appropriate expressions. The use of ‘triple threat’ is a gimmick in my opinion and takes its place alongside those images of dancers in costumes representing no ballet and taking poses from no ballet, which the Australian Ballet is currently so fond of using. And I know that it’s a bit hard to put dancers in costumes that haven’t been made yet but this fashionista thing has been going on for a while now.
It is a real thrill to see the 50th anniversary program containing so much new Australian choreography and I can’t wait for the season to begin. But it would be equally thrilling to see the Australian Ballet proudly promoting itself as an organisation with an understanding of the qualities that make dance the great art form that it is, rather than as a bunch of people at the forefront of the latest trendy but artistically empty ideas.
Michelle Potter, 18 September 2011
*On the subject of typos, the ‘Pushing 50’ article notes, wrongly, that Canberra audiences have been seeing Graeme Murphy’s choreography since the 1960s. It should read the 1970s!
Back in May of this year I was lucky enough to see the exhibition of works by photographer E. O. Hoppé at the National Portrait Gallery in London. My post relating to that show concerned portraits of Margot Fonteyn and Olga Spessivtseva. The National Portrait Gallery’s show, Hoppé portraits: society, studio & street, closed shortly after I’d written that post but images of American dancer Ted Shawn, which were part of the Portrait Gallery show, have continued to resonate in my mind ever since.
One, taken in 1922, is a head and shoulders portrait of Shawn in Tillers of the Soil, a stylised dance he created in which he and his wife, the dancer Ruth St Denis, represented an ancient Egyptian couple tilling the soil. The portrait of Shawn is a bold one. And Shawn was a strong, athletic man whose contribution to world dance included the founding of a dance centre in the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts where he trained a group of male dancers, young college athletes who worked on the farm during the morning and trained in the barn during the afternoons. This centre is still used for dance and is the home of the famous Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
Ted Shawn in Tillers of the Soil, June 1922
Shawn also brought his distinctive brand of dance to Australia in 1947 at the invitation of an enterprising woman in Perth, Ida Beeby, director of the Patch Theatre Guild and Dance School. Shawn gave a series of lectures and several solo programs of dance in Perth. His repertoire was eclectic and uncompromisingly his own. It included dances of American Indian origin, a Japanese sword dance, some Flamenco dances, and an American cowboy number ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ From Perth he took a side trip to Arnhem Land and entertained indigenous dancers at Delissaville, who in fact had come to entertain him, with his rendition of a whirling dervish dance. After Perth he moved on to perform his solo shows in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Like most artists who visited Australia in the first decades of the twentieth century, Shawn was not averse to making predictions about the future of Australian dance. He wrote regarding Perth:
‘Perth, due to its unique isolation, is ideally the place where a new dance form, growing out of this continent, using the forms of other countries and of the past as a sort of cultural “humus,” can be born, nourished until its integrity is fully established, and then ray out to the rest of Australia and the world’.
Shawn’s visit to Australia has scarcely been examined in this country. A small collection of programs from his Perth seasons is part of the ephemera collection of the National Library of Australia. But Edward Pask in Ballet in Australia. The second act, 1940–1980, the only survey we currently have of Australian dance covering the period of Shawn’s Australian interlude, makes no mention of the visit. I believe, however, there may be archival film footage of his Australian visit in the Jacob’s Pillow Archive at Becket, Massachusetts.
A comment from a New York friend and colleague, whose much admired teacher at the School of American Ballet was Anatole Oboukhoff, along with some subsequent correspondence with Anna Northcote’s niece, have prompted me to post the image below. It shows Oboukhoff with Vera Nemchinova and the captain of the R. M. S. Kenilworth Castle, the ship on which the dancers of the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet travelled from England to South Africa for the first leg of their 1934–1935 tour.
Oboukhoff and Nemchinova on board the ‘Kenilworth Castle’, 1934
One can’t help but admire Nemchinova’s posed right leg with its beautifully slim ankle. Nor can one fail to admire the elegant way in which both Nemchinova and Oboukhoff are dressed. Shipboard life has changed since 1934! I was also delighted to discover on Andros on Ballet the following recollection of Nemchinova, the teacher:
‘There was a time when ballerinas dressed and acted like the stars they were. Madame [Nemchinova] always dressed to come to class, and left the same way. By chance, I rode the elevator with her. She had on a pill box hat with a veil, a two-piece suit, high heeled shoes and to top it off, a fur stole. The highest of high fashion was her daily wear’.
On tour, however, the dancers did enjoy some relaxed moments. In South Africa, for example, they picnicked in Durban, visited the zoo in Pretoria and watched Zulu dancing in Johannesburg. Even on such occasions though they rarely forgot the fundamental attitudes of the day.
Members of the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet on a picnic in Durban, 1934
They continue to surprise with the way in which they each embraced the life of a touring dancer in the 1930s.
Michelle Potter, 19 July 2011
Photos: Anna Northcote (Severskaya). Personal archive, private collection
The following schedules and lists from the 1934–1935 tour by the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet are taken from my article ‘The Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet 1934–1935: Australia and beyond’ published in Dance Research (Edinburgh University Press), 29:1 Summer 2011.
The information has been gathered from various sources including newspapers (advertisements and reviews) and programs. In particular the following newspapers provided useful information, The Argus (Melbourne), Cape Times (Cape Town), The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), De Locomotief (Semarang), The Star (Johannesburg), The Straits Times (Singapore), The Sydney Morning Herald, The Times of India (Bombay), and The West Australian (Perth). The letters and 1935 clipping books of Harcourt Algeranoff (MS 2376, National Library of Australia) also provided some useful material, particularly about Ceylon, India and Egypt, as did the personal archive of Anna Northcote (Severskaya).
Dancers of the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet in Carnaval, 1934 or 1935. Anna Northcote (centre), Travis Kemp as Pierrot. Personal archive of Anna Northcote (Severskaya). Private collection
I have standardised spellings of names of works in the repertoire using what I think is the most commonly used form today. The material contained in these appendices should not be considered as necessarily complete or definitive at this stage.
APPENDIX A: REPERTOIRE and PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
SOUTH AFRICA [1934]
Cape Town: Cape Town Opera House
Program 1 (18-26 May)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 2 (28 May-2 June)
Carnaval, Visions, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
Program 3 (4-9 June)
The Magic Flute, Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Durban: Theatre Royal
Program 1 (13-17 June)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 2 (18-20 June)
Carnaval, Visions, Divertissements
Program 3 (21-23? June)
Unknown repertoire *
* A third program is mentioned in an undated newspaper clipping in the Anna Northcote archive although no specific details are given.
Pietermaritzburg 24-26 June; Pretoria 27-30 June
No evidence has yet emerged of performances in these two cities. That the company stayed for several days in each city suggests, however, that at least one program may have been scheduled in each city.
Johannesburg: His Majesty‘s Theatre
Program 1 (2-7 July)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 2 (9-14 July)
Visions, Carnaval, Divertissements
Program 3 (16-21 July)
Les Sylphides, The Magic Flute, Divertissements
Program 4 (23-28 July)
Egyptian Ballet, Swan Lake (Act II), Divertissements
Lourenço Marques (Maputo) : Teatro Varieta
Program 1 (3 August)
La Fille mal gardée, Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
SINGAPORE [1934]
Capitol Theatre
Program 1 (2-4 September)
Swan Lake (Act II), La Fille mal gardée, Divertissements
Program 2 (5-6 September)
Les Sylphides, The Magic Flute, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
INDONESIA [1934]
Batavia (Jakarta): theatre unknown
Batavia (Jakarta) (12-16 September)
La Fille mal gardée (complete repertoire unknown)
Bandoeng (Bandung): theatre unknown
Program 1 (18-19 September)
Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia (complete repertoire unknown)
Soerabaia (Surabaya): theatre unknown
Program 1: 22-23 September
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Divertissements
Program 2: 24-? September
Repertoire unknown
AUSTRALIA [1934–1935]
Brisbane: His Majesty‘s Theatre
Program 1 (10-12 October)
Swan Lake (Act II), La Fille mal gardée, Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 2 (13, 15-16 October)
Visions, Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
Program 3 (17-19 October)
Les Sylphides, The Magic Flute, Divertissements
Program 4 (20 October) matinee and evening shows
Swan Lake (Act II), Egyptian Ballet, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Program 5 (22-23 October)
Les Sylphides, Egyptian Ballet, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Sydney: Theatre Royal
Program 1 (27 October-2 November)
Swan Lake (Act II), La Fille mal gardée, Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 2 (3- 9 November)
Les Sylphides, The Magic Flute, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Program 3 (10-16 November)
Visions, Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
Visions, Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
Program 5 (29-31 December)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Perth: His Majesty‘s Theatre
Program 1 (8-12 January)
The Magic Flute, Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Program 2 (14-16 January)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 3 (17-19 January)
Visions, Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
CEYLON [1935]
Colombo: Regal Theatre
Program 1 (31 January)
Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Program 2 (1 February)
Repertoire unknown
INDIA [1935]
Madras
May or may not have performed in Madras
Calcutta: Theatre unknown
9-23 February: Repertoire unknown
Delhi: Theatre unknown
Dates and repertoire unknown
Bombay: Excelsior Theatre
Program 1 (2-5 March)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Pogram 2 (6-8 March)
Visions, Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
Program 3 (9-12 March)
The Magic Flute, Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Program 4 (13-15 March)
Egyptian Ballet, Les Sylphides, Venusberg, Divertissements
EGYPT [1935]
Cairo: Alhambra Theatre
Program 1 (27-29 March)
La Fille mal gardée, Swan Lake (Act II), Polovtsian Dances, Divertissements
Program 2 (30 March-2 April)
The Magic Flute, Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Program 3 (3-5 April)
Visions, Carnaval, Suite from Coppélia, Divertissements
Program 4 (9-11 April)
Egyptian Ballet, Swan Lake (Act II), Venusberg, Divertissements
Alexandria: Alhambra Theatre
Program 1 (13 April?-?)
Repertoire unknown
Program 2 (16 April-?)
The Magic Flute, Les Sylphides, Promenade (Old Vienna), Divertissements
Port Said: Theatre unknown
24-25 April: Repertoire unknown
Two further appendices (B: Australian Divertissements and C: Dancers appearing in Australia) are contained in the full article but are not reproduced here. All textual material contained in these appendices and in the article is the intellectual property of The Society for Dance Research and should not be reproduced without permission. Full bibliographic details.
Michelle Potter, 22 June 2011
Featured image: Dancers of the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet in La Fille mal gardée, 1934 or 1935. Tzigane group left to right: Vera Sevna, Eileen Keegan, Anna Northcote, Molly Lake. Personal archive of Anna Northcote (Severskaya). Private collection.
What treasures are still to be found in archival repositories around the world! Still on the trail of Olga Spessivtseva in Australia, I went through the process of gaining access to the archives of the museum and library of the Paris Opera, now part of the National Library of France. With formalities completed, I discovered, to my absolute delight, a folder of contracts for various of Spessivtseva’s engagements. Ít included a collection of documents relating to her engagement by Victor Dandré for the Javanese and Australian component of the 1934–1935 world tour by the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet.
Several versions of the contract have been preserved, including some early versions heavily annotated in more than one hand. The earliest version indicates that Dandré began with the standard contract issued by Alexander Levitoff to other dancers in the company and altered that contract to suit Spessivtseva’s (and his own) requirements. Although no signed version exists in the collection, several copies of what appears to be the final version are intact. This version makes clear that the contract was a personal one between Dandré and Spessivtseva.
According to this final version, which is undated but from other contextual information in the Paris collection was probably written in June 1934, Spessivtseva was to leave Europe no later than 20 July 1934 to be in Batavia—present day Jakarta—before 15 August. Her contract was to begin on 15 August and was for a period of 20 weeks until 2 January 1935. It was to cover Java and Australia, or if required other countries (with the exception of Europe). The management reserved the right to extend the contract for a period of not more than 3 months, not including the return to Europe. This of course turned out to be a non-issue as Spessivtseva did not dance with the company after the Sydney season, which concluded on 28 November. She returned to Europe on the London-bound R. M. S. Orama, sailing from Sydney on 22 December.
Spessivtseva’s monthly payment under this contract was 15,000 francs (or the equivalent in foreign currency) payable fortnightly. While I have not yet been able adequately to compare this seemingly large figure with any average earnings in France in 1934, I found some evidence that in 1930 a French university professor was earning a monthly salary of around 4,000 francs. In addition, all Spessivtseva’s travel was to be in first class cabins, or sleeping compartments if travel was by train.
One has to imagine that Dandré cancelled Spessivtseva’s contract after Sydney, although there is as yet no evidence to support this. The Paris document stipulates, however, that the management reserved the right to terminate the contract if illness prevented the artist from taking part in performances for more than one week.
While much of the mystery of Spessivtseva’s Australian interlude still remains, this contract fills in a few more details of the puzzle.
Back in 1995 I wrote an article on Hélène Kirsova for Dance Research. During the course of writing that article I came across a clipping in the Kirsova Archive held by the National Gallery of Australia, in which it was reported that Kirsova had had to postpone a Sydney season planned for September 1944 because she was unable to obtain the ration permit she needed to buy materials to make costumes. The article caused something of a stir and a rejoinder was published the following day from the deputy director of rationing, a Mr Hudson, who reported that Kirsova had in fact been given costume material far in excess of that given to any other similar company in Australia.
Recently a file held by the National Archives of Australia, Melbourne branch, in which the events are more fully spelled out became available and was brought to my attention. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the correspondence contained in this file emerges from letters between Kirsova and the director of rationing, a Mr J. B. Cumming, written largely during August and September 1944. Cumming wrote to Kirsova early in August explaining that his advice was that the Kirsova Ballet was a non-commercial concern, similar in nature to the Borovansky Ballet and the National Theatre Ballet. Such companies, he noted, gave performances for charitable, educational or cultural purposes and as such had a maximum allowance of material imposed upon them. The correspondence pointed out that Kirsova donated the proceeds of her performances to a charity, as indeed she did. Kirsova had set up a charity to provide playgrounds for children in depressed inner city suburbs in Sydney.
Kirsova was, however, not impressed with the designation ‘non-commercial’ and she replied that the Kirsova Ballet ‘has been conducted on an entirely professional basis from its very inception and my dancers and all other artists are paid by me in accordance with existing Awards.’ She was at unhappy being classed with the Borovansky Ballet, which, she suggested, until the season sponsored by the J. C. Williamson organisation in 1944 had ‘never before toured or appeared outside Melbourne’ and had been conducted ‘on an entirely amateur basis, confining itself to an occasional presentation of a few performances and studio club concerts.’ Kirsova intimated that if she were unable to obtain the necessary permit her company would have to close down and in fact this is what happened. Although Kirsova was invited to submit a proposal for material required for the following year, in the end (after appeals to the Prime Minister on her behalf and further discussion about what constituted a professional company) the last performance by the Kirsova Ballet was the one that had taken place in Brisbane in May 1944.
There has always been speculation about why the Kirsova Ballet disbanded and this new correspondence adds fuel to the speculation that Kirsova was a determined woman and not one to compromise. To be classed as an amateur company and to be put into the same category as the Borovansky Ballet was for her simply beyond the pale.
In his memoir Ballet mystique, George Zoritch remarks that Ludmilla Schollar accompanied her husband, Anatole Vilzak, to Australia on the 1934–1935 tour by the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet. Vilzak was the leading male dancer for a major part of that tour performing main roles in Java, Australia, Ceylon, India and Egypt. In Australia he partnered Olga Spessivtseva in Brisbane and Sydney, and then, following Spessivtseva’s departure, Natasha Bojkovich in Melbourne and Perth. But Schollar?
Schollar was a dancer of renown in her own right having graduated from the Imperial Theatre School in St Petersburg in 1906. She had danced at the Maryinsky Theatre and with Diaghilev and later with Ida Rubinstein’s company and with Bronislava Nijinska.
There is no record, however, of her having performed in Australia or elsewhere on the Dandré-Levitoff tour. Other than Zoritch’s comments, the only mention of Schollar in relation to the tour that I had been able to find was on a passenger list in the issue of 27 September 1934 of the Dutch newspaper De Locomotief (published in Semarang, Java). A ‘Mrs Anatole Vilzak’ is listed as being on board the ship that was taking the Dandré-Levitoff company from Surabaya to Brisbane.
However, two photographs in the personal archive of Anna Northcote were recently brought to my attention. Neither photograph has any form of identification associated with it but they appear to show Schollar with others from the Dandré-Levitoff company. The photographs may have been taken in Australia in Melbourne or Perth. The dancers in Swan Lake costume in the line-up on stage are, I think, Vilzak and Bojkovich, which suggests that the photographs probably post-date Sydney where it was usually Spessivtseva who danced Odette. My identification of those in the photos is tentative at this stage and I would welcome any further information or comments.
l-r: Vladimir Launitz (conductor and musical director), Anatole Vilzak, Ludmilla Schollar, Natasha Bojkovich, unidentified gentleman. Personal archive, Anna Northcote (Severskaya). Private collectionLudmilla Schollar with Vladimir Launitz standing behind her. Personal archive, Anna Northcote (Severskaya). Private collection
My extended article on the full 1934–1935 tour by the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet will be published shortly in Dance Research, Vol. 29 (No. 1, Summer 2011) pp. 61–96.
