Earlier in February I had the pleasure of recording an oral history interview with Athol Willoughby, former dancer with the National Theatre Ballet and other companies, and an esteemed Melbourne-based ballet teacher over several decades.
Tasmanian-born, Willoughby first took up ballet in Hobart with Beattie Jordan but soon moved to Melbourne to further his training at the National Theatre Ballet School under the direction of Lucie Saronova. Saronova played a particularly significant role in the early days of the Cecchetti Society in Australia and Willoughby recalls her fondly and discusses her teaching and her role in Australian dance history throughout the interview. Willoughby joined the National Theatre Ballet in 1952 and worked with two directors of that company—Walter Gore and Valrene Tweedie. Following a stint in the United Kingdom, where he took classes from a range of well-known teachers including Anna Northcote and Stanislas Idzikowski and performed with Western Theatre Ballet, he came back to Melbourne and devoted himself to teaching. He returned to the professional stage twice with the Australian Ballet—in a revival of Anne Woolliams’ Swan Lake, and as one of Clara’s émigré friends in Graeme Murphy’s Nutcracker: the story of Clara.
Naeidra Torrens, Noelle Aitken and Athol Willoughby in Swan Lake Act I pas de trois, final pose. National Theatre Ballet, 1955 or 1956. Photo: Walter Stringer. Personal collection of Athol Willoughby
Willoughby has always maintained strong connections with the Cecchetti Society. He taught Cecchetti technique, is a holder of the Cecchetti Diploma and was one of the most senior examiners for the Cecchetti movement in Australia. He also prepared a number of now highly-respected Cecchetti examiners for their role as examiners, namely Sandra Allen, Lorraine Blackbourn, Anne Butler, Sandra Clack, Carole Oliver and Jennifer Stielow.
The interview is significant from so many points of view. In particular, it contains considerable background to and information about the National Theatre Ballet, a company that has been somewhat neglected, I think, in present day Australian dance scholarship. The interview is also full of delightful anecdotes about life as a dancer and about the personalities with whom Willoughby came into contact in Australia and elsewhere!
The catalogue entry for the interview on the National Library of Australia’s catalogue is at this link. I hope in due course it will be made available as an online resource. It is well worth listening to and highlights how important oral history is in the recording of Australia’s dance history. So much of what interviewees give us through the medium of the oral history interview will never be recorded in any other way.
All photos reproduced are from the personal collection of Athol Willoughby.
Michelle Potter, 25 February 2013
Featured image: Valrene Tweedie and Athol Willoughby in Le Coq d’or. National Theatre Ballet, 1955. Photo: Walter Stringer. Personal collection of Athol Willoughby
The Centenary of Canberra Indigenous Cultural Program was officially launched today by Aunty Agnes O’Shea, an elder of the Ngunnawal people and local ACT identity, and Sir William Deane, patron of the Centenary of Canberra and former Governor-General. Following a welcome to country and assorted speeches, Tammi Gissell performed an excerpt from Liz Lea’s new work-in-progress Magnificus, magnificus in an outdoor setting beside the AIATSIS building on Acton Peninsula.
Magnificus, magnificus, a solo work for Gissell performed (at least on the occasion of the launch) to the accompaniment of didgeridoo and violin, builds on explorations into the habits of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo undertaken by Lea while choreographer-in-residence at the CSIRO Discovery Centre. Both Lea and Gissell have just recently returned from Bourke, New South Wales, where they engaged in ‘back to country’ activities. Their experiences will feed into the development of Magnificus, magnificus, which will have its full-scale production in October as part of the Centenary celebrations. Of that journey home Gissell wrote (in part):
Prior to the launch event I noticed Gissell going through the choreography before the performance. And what a setting she chose for her mini rehearsal—the huge, red, curling, concrete ramp that is the physical end of the National Museum of Australia’s ‘Uluru-axis’. The line it takes, which begins at the entrance to the Museum and follows a pathway past the AIATSIS building, appears to end with the curling ramp but in fact continues, in a conceptual sense, north-west to Uluru.
A recent meeting with Anna Volkova clarified one of the issues that went through my mind as I looked through the album assembled by James Upshaw, which was the subject of a recent post. I was interested in several photos that showed some of the dancers wearing sweatshirts with a logo for an organisation with the acronym F.A.E on them. F.A.E., it turns out, stands for an organisation in Rio de Janeiro called, in English, Student Assistance Foundation, and in Portuguese, Fundação de Assistêcia ao Estudante. Volkova explained that some of the dancers, including Volkova herelf, gave a performance for this Foundation while in Rio. She identified the dancers in the photos for me, with the exception of a Brazilian dancer who had only recently joined them and whose name she no longer recalled. At this stage I’m not entirely sure when the performance took place.
Update (1 February 2013): Tatiana Leskova has been kind enough to pass on some extra information about the photograph above and the concert in which the dancers performed. The Brazilian dancer was Leda Youky and the concert took place in Rio’s Teatro Municipal in, she believes, 1945. The dancers performed choreography by Vaslav Velchek—Anna Volkova danced to music by Mussorgsky (‘The Bumblebee’), Tamara Grigorieva and Tatiana Leskova to music by Rachmaninoff (Grigorieva to his ‘Prelude No. 2’, Leskova to his ‘Prelude No. 5’). Nini Theilade also performed, dancing her own choreography.
Grateful thanks to the irrepressible Mme Leskova.
Vija Vetra
I was a little surprised, but of course pleased, to receive a message through this website’s contact box from Latvia. The message concerned Vija Vetra, a dancer born in Riga, Latvia, who had studied in Vienna with Rosalie Chladek, had come to Australia in 1948, had joined the company of Gertrud Bodenwieser shortly afterwards and had toured with the company to New Zealand and around Australia. With Bodenwieser she performed in most of the repertoire from 1948 until the mid-1950s including as the Bride in The Wedding Procession (choreography Bodenwieser, costumes Evelyn Ippen, music Grieg), in which she is seen in the image below. She also danced one of the Aboriginal mothers in Beth Dean’s Corroboree during the Royal Gala season of 1954.
Vetra moved to New York around 1964 and is still living there giving classes, lecture-demonstrations and workshops. She returns to her native Latvia frequently and is seen in the image below with a young student, Rasa Ozola, after a concert ‘Dejas sirdspuksti’ (Dance heartbeat) in Riga in June 2012.
The 2010 publication Australia dances: creating Australian dance 1945–1965by Alan Brissenden and Keith Glennon contains a brief summary of Vetra’s career in Australia (see page 224). An interview with Vetra recorded in New York in 2011 is at this link.
More Bodenwieser news
In January I was pleased to renew my contact with Barbara Cuckson, initially as a result of a request from the Dance Notation Bureau in New York relating to Gertrud Bodenwieser’s early work Demon Machine. Cuckson’s mother, Marie Cuckson, was responsible, with Bodenwieser dancer Emmy Taussig, for maintaining a collection of archival material relating to Bodenwieser’s life and career, which is now now housed in the National Library of Australia. Barbara Cuckson’s father, Eric Cuckson, filmed several of Bodenwieser’s works and this footage is now housed in the National Film and Sound Archive. Barbara Cuckson continues to promote the work of Bodenwieser in many ways.
The conversation turned to Errand into the Maze, which Bodenwieser made in Australia in 1954. German dancer/choreographer Jochen Roller is currently leading a project to investigate the ways in which Bodenwieser structured her ideas and themes, for which reconstructing Errand into the Maze is part. Cuckson provided me with the image below of a rehearsal conducted as part of the reconstruction process.
Strelsa Heckelman, 1950. J. C. Williamson collection. National Library of Australia
Strelsa Heckelman Lording, who danced under her maiden name Strelsa Heckelman in several early Australian ballet companies in the 1940s and 1950s, has died in Melbourne aged 87.
Described by friend and dancing colleague Athol Willoughby as ‘a sparkling dancer with a strong technique’, Heckelman began dancing early in her life in her home town of Brisbane. By the time she was thirteen she had passed all her Royal Academy of Dance examinations and shortly afterwards she was invited to take part in classes with Colonel de Basil’s Original Ballet Russe during the company’s 1940 Brisbane season. De Basil then invited her to follow the company to Sydney, which she did.
But, despite impressing de Basil, she did not join the Ballets Russes. Instead she continued her training as a full-time student with Hélène Kirsova in Sydney at Kirsova’s studios at Circular Quay and, when Kirsova started a ballet company herself in 1941, Heckelman joined it. She danced with the Kirsova Ballet until the company folded in 1944. With Kirsova she was part of the unique collaborative activities that Kirsova initiated when she commissioned composers, including Henry Krips, and designers such as Loudon Sainthill to work with her company.
Heckelman then joined Edouard Borovansky’s Borovansky Ballet performing in the company’s regular repertoire as well as in musical shows that Borovansky choreographed for the J. C. Williamson organisation. Later she danced with Laurel Martyn’s Melbourne-based company Ballet Guild, and in the early 1950s danced again in J. C. Williamson musicals, including Song of Norway and Oklahoma. Leading performers in musicals in the fifties were almost always brought in from overseas and Heckelman danced to considerble acclaim in both Song of Norway and Oklahoma with star American jazz dancer Matt Mattox.
Her final professional performances before retiring in 1953 to have her children were with the National Theatre Ballet in Melbourne. With the National her repertoire included the full-length Swan Lake, the Giselle peasant pas de deux, which she danced with Ray Trickett, and the Head Girl in Kira Bousloff’s staging of Graduation Ball. She also alternated with Valrene Tweedie as Columbine in Tweedie’s 1953 production of Carnaval for the National.
Strelsa Heckelman in the peasant pas de deux from Giselle. National Theatre Ballet, 1952. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia
Athol Willoughby recalls a somewhat incredible feat that took place during a rehearsal for the National’s Swan Lake. He says: ‘Our rehearsals for the 1952 season were conducted in a large church hall in the suburb of Hawthorn. At a rehearsal for “Swan Lake” Act 3, Strelsa was dancing in a cardigan because she had a cold. She began the 32 fouettes of the coda when her nose began to run. Without missing a beat she took a handkerchief from a pocket in the cardigan, blew her nose, put the hanky back in the pocket concluding the series of fouettes without moving from the spot. That seemed to me to be quite an achievement!’
In between jobs with a ballet companies, Heckelman worked in a photographer’s studio and later in the perfume department of the Melbourne department store, Georges. Following her stage career she established her own ballet school and also taught for other teachers in the Melbourne area. She remained active in the dance world in her later years and in 2002 became patron of the Tasmanian Ballet Company.
Heckelman once recalled that she never tired of dancing. She thought of every night as an opening night and always relished the overture starting, the curtain going up and seeing the lights in the theatre. That was the magic of the theatre for her.
Strelsa Heckelman married Jack Carruthers in 1951. After the death of Carruthers, Heckelman married Tom Lording in 1984. He died the following year. Heckelman is survived by a son, Ian, and a daughter, Lynn, from her first marriage.
Strelsa Heckelman Lording: born Brisbane, 20 July 1925; died Melbourne, 28 December 2012
Hannah O’Neill is now half way through her second year with the Paris Opera Ballet, having successfully negotiated another temporary contract at the annual examinations the company conducts each year.
In her second year with the company O’Neill has taken particular delight in performing in George Balanchine’s Serenade, part of a program of three Balanchine ballets that began the 2012‒2013 season. Sadly for her Australian admirers however, she is not coming to Sydney for the Paris Opera Ballet’s season of Giselle to be staged in January‒February. She says that, as she is still on a temporary contract, she wasn’t expecting to tour but that the bonus is that she will be performing in Paris in February in Jiri Kylian’s Kaguyahime. With a company of over 150 dancers, the Paris Opera Ballet has the luxury of being able to tour while maintaining a regular program in Paris at the same time. Kaguyahime, a spectacular piece of theatre, will be O’Neill’s first experience dancing a contemporary work since she has been in Paris.
Michelle Ryan: new artistic director at Restless Dance Theatre
Early in December Michelle Ryan was appointed artistic director of Restless Dance Theatre in Adelaide. Many will remember Ryan I am sure from her performance days with Meryl Tankard. She joined the Meryl Tankard Company in Canberra in 1992 and then moved to Adelaide in 1993 remaining with Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre until it disbanded. More recently Ryan has been working as rehearsal director with Dance North.
For more about the history of Restless Dance, a contemporary company working with people with and without a disability, the National Library holds an extensive interview with Kat Worth, artistic director of Restless Dance 2001–2006.
Meryl Tankard: an original voice
Here are some shout-lines from some who have read Meryl Tankard: an original voice: ‘It has a sense of drama but also balance, and it brings Meryl and her work to life’; and ‘The best and most comprehensive study of Tankard I have read’.
Site news
I am always interested to see which tags are being accessed most frequently by visitors to this site. It usually changes slightly from month to month depending on what has been posted in any particular month. But it is perhaps more telling to look at which tags have been accessed over a full year. In 2012 the Australian Ballet topped the list. Here are the top ten:
When I first wrote about what Canberra dance audiences are likely to see in 2013there was no mention of what Liz Lea, current artistic director of Canberra Dance Theatre, would be presenting over that year. Well, not surprisingly, Lea has a number of shows in development for 2013.
Over the past several months, Lea has been choreographer-in-residence at CSIRO Discovery in Canberra where she is researching bird flight, feathers and behaviour, and examining how the paths of history might inform current dance practice. Many of her plans for 2013 will build on the research and work-in-progress activities she has engaged in as part of the residency. A major venture is Seeking Biloela, which Lea will direct at the Street Theatre, Canberra, on 26 and 27 October. The show will consist of two solo works, ‘Magnificus, magnificus’ and ‘Kaught’.
‘Magnificus, magnificus’, performed by Tammi Gissell and directed by Lea, develops the work-in-progress that Lea showed at CSIRO Discovery during Science Week in August 2012 and in which Gissell made such an impression.
In its expanded form the work is inspired by the red-tailed black cockatoo, as indeed the work-in-progress was as well, and the developed work will, as Lea puts it, ‘explore the nature of being a performer, where we come from and how we go forward’.
‘Kaught’, created and performed by Lea, is inspired by the writings of the freedom fighter Ahmed Kathrada, who was imprisoned alongside Nelson Mandela for 26 years. In particular, ‘Kaught’ focuses on Kathrada’s favourite Hindi song about a trapped bird. In addition to Lea, ‘Kaught’ will feature the ARIA Award winning tabla player Bobby Singh, along with composer and saxophonist Sandy Evans.
The creative team for Seeking Biloela 2013 also includes lighting designer Karen Norris, whose work for Bangarra Dance Theatre’s recent production, Terrain, was so impressive, and Japanese-Australian fibre installation artist, Naomi Ota.
Also during 2013 Lea will direct a company of four dancers to present InFlight, a work inspired by early Australian aviators and Australian bird life. This show has a two day season on 31 May and 1 June at the National Library of Australia. Other projects include a series of dance and science lectures at CSIRO Discovery in February; DANscienCE—a festival of dance and science at CSIRO Discovery and Canberra Dance Theatre studios for National Science Week in August; and a project in June at the National Gallery of Australia as part of Canberra’s Centenary celebrations.
More as information comes to hand but bouquets to Lea for her input into the Canberra dance scene. A bit of alternative dance life is definitely something the city needs.
I am delighted to have renewed just recently my connections with two of the dancers who performed in Australia with the Ballets Russes companies of Colonel de Basil—Tatiana Leskova and Anna Volkova. Both feature in the photograph album that was the subject of a recent post, James Upshaw and Lydia Kuprina in South America, sometimes together, sometimes alone or with others. They were and still are great friends.
(left) Tatiana Leskova and Anna Volkova in South America, ca. 1942. (right) Anna Volkova in Cotillon. Private collection
Both remembered Upshaw and Kuprina quite clearly and Leskova was able to tell me that Upshaw died in France, although exactly when is still unclear.
Leskova celebrated her 90th birthday in December—’I turned 17 on the boat coming to Australia’, she recalls—and is still very active in the dance world. Her biography, written by Suzana Braga and published in Brazilian Portuguese (Tatiana Leskova: uma bailarina solta no mundo) in Rio de Janeiro in 2005, has recently been translated into English. In addition, the irrepressible Leskova has just published a book of photographs. I hope to write about these publications at a later date.
Thank you to those who have logged on to my website over the past year, especially those who have kept the site alive with their comments. I wish you the compliments of the season and look forward to hearing from you in 2013.
The best of 2012
Lists of the ‘best of’ will always be very personal and will depend on what any individual has been able to see. However, here are my thoughts in a number of categories with links back to my posts on the productions. I welcome, of course, comments and lists from others, which are sure to be different from mine.
Most outstanding new choreography: Graeme Murphy’s The narrative of nothing(despite its title), full of vintage Murphy moves but full of the new as well.
Most outstanding production: Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Terrainwith choreography by Frances Rings and outstanding collaborative input from the creative team of Jennifer Irwin, Jacob Nash, Karen Norris and David Page.
Most disappointing production: The Australian Ballet’s revival of Robert Helpmann’s Display. I’m not sure that anyone in the production/performance really ‘got it’ and it became simply a reminder that dance doesn’t always translate well from generation to generation, era to era.
Surprise of the year: Finucane and Smith’s Glory Box. While some may question whether this show was dance or not, Moira Finucane’s performance in Miss Finucane’s Collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria (Get Wet for Art) was a wonderful, tongue-in-cheek comment on the angst-ridden works of Pina Bausch, and as such on Meryl Tankard’s more larrikin approach to serious issues.
Dancer to watch: Tammi Gissell. I was sorry to miss the Perth-based Ochre Contemporary Dance Company’s inaugural production, Diaphanous, in which Gissell featured, but I was impressed by her work with Liz Lea in Canberra as part of Science Week 2012 at CSIRO and look forward to the development of that show later in Canberra in 2013.
Beyond Australia: Wayne McGregor’s FAR, in which the choreography generated so much to think about, to talk over and to ponder upon.
Most frustrating dance occurrence: The demise of Australia Dancing and the futile efforts to explain that moving it to Trove was a positive step.
Following requests from a number of readers for a copy of Meryl Tankard: an original voice, which appeared in eight parts on this website between July and September, the book is now available in print form. [UPDATE: This book is no longer available]
Please note that this is a self-published initiative and has not had the benefit of professional design; nor does it include any illustrations. Both were beyond the scope of this venture. It does however include material not published online including a preface, introduction, bibliography, index and the full list of choreographic works, updated with the addition of Cinderella (2011) for Leipzig Ballet, which will be restaged early in 2013 in Leipzig, and The Book of Revelation, the film directed by Ana Kokkinos that Tankard choreographed in 2006.
Canberra news
The Canberra Critics’ Circle announced its annual awards during November. The dance panel gave two awards this year. One went to Adelina Larsson ‘for her initiative in facilitating the development and performance of contemporary dance in Canberra, in particular for her work as director of short + sweet dance, and for her collaborations with independent artists from across Australia to bring a broad spectrum of contemporary dance to Canberra’. Another went to Jordan Kelly local dancer and choreographer in musical theatre ‘for his body of work as an outstanding dancer, and consistent achievements as a talented choreographer, as evidenced in a number of musicals throughout 2012’.
In November, the ACT Government also announced its nominations for the Australian of the Year awards. At this ceremony the ACT Local Hero Award was presented to dancer and mentor, Francis Owusu. There is an enormous amount of community dance currently being practised in the ACT and Francis Owusu founded Kulture Break, a not-for-profit charitable creative arts organisation with a community focus. It acts as an outlet for young people to build self-confidence through dance.
The Canberra Times this morning published an abbreviated version of a story I wrote on the retirement of Rachel Rawlins. As the article was shortened, however, I am posting the full story below, in particular because it contains a further comment from Dell Brady, one of Rawlins’ early teachers, and more from Ty King-Wall, and indeed from Rawlins herself.
Rachel Rawlins, principal artist with the Australian Ballet, has announced that she will retire at the end of this year. She will give her final performance in Sydney in December in the dual role of Odette/Odile in Stephen Baynes’ newly choreographed version of Swan Lake. ‘I’ve never danced the lead in a complete, traditional production of Swan Lake so I am looking forward to leaving on a high note by fulfilling that ambition,’ Rawlins says.
Rawlins can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to dance. ‘My desire to dance,’ she says, ‘happened really before I can recall. It was something I felt passionately about before I realised what dance was. When I look at the children of some of my friends I recognise that same desire today in some of them. They just love moving to music.’
Rawlins took her first ballet classes in Canberra, largely at the Dell Brady School of Ballet. She remembers those early years fondly and recalls that Brady was strict but in a way that made her pupils understand that it was important to dance properly. She passed on to her students her own passion for dance.
Brady for her part recalls that it was absolutely clear from the beginning that Rawlins was talented, ‘Even now when I look back on the photos of the first show she did with me when she was a ‘rose fairy’—a role she shared with Pia Miranda, now a successful film actor—her lovely long slender legs and beautifully pointed feet signalled what was to come. She was also very determined—in a quiet way—and when she was given a challenging role, as she was in subsequent shows at the ballet school, she would always push herself to achieve her best.’
From Canberra Rawlins went on to further study in Melbourne eventually at the Australian Ballet School. She counts getting a contract with the Australian Ballet at the end of her training as the first major highlight of her dancing life. It was the beginning of a stellar career, which subsequently included two years in London with the Royal Ballet in addition to her eighteen years with the Australian Ballet where she has been a principal since 2004.
She still has strong memories of preparing for her first principal role with the Australian Ballet, that of the Sylph in the iconic Romantic ballet, La Sylphide. ‘I worked intensively with Maina Gielgud, then artistic director of the company, on that role. Maina made sure that I was thoroughly prepared so that when I went on in that role I felt really confident and could enjoy being onstage’.
Other highlights for her have included dancing in the several ballets by Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian that the Australian Ballet has in its repertoire, Bella Figura, Sinfonietta, Forgotten Land, Petite Mort, for example. She admires Kylian’s musical choices and his ability to make choreography that is so in tune with that music. But also she notes that as a principal dancer it is lovely to work sometimes as part of a group. Kylian makes works that are somewhat democratic in nature compared with more traditional ballets where there are obvious principal roles. Rawlins explains that it is a special experience to feel the freedom of movement that comes with being part of a group and being able to bond with other dancers onstage.
But of course she has consistently danced leading roles in more traditionally structured ballets and has been acclaimed for her performances in classical works and dramatic ballets such as The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Manon, Onegin, Madame Butterfly, Romeo and Juliet and a host of others.
A frequent partner in recent years has been Ty King-Wall, currently a senior artist with the Australian Ballet. He recalls in particular dancing the pas de deux from Giselle with her, both in Canberra earlier this year and then in New York on the company’s recent overseas tour.
‘I have loved partnering Rachel’, he says. ‘She has such a natural sense of movement, such a rare quality I think. Dancing Giselle with her was a real highlight for me. The role suits her so well and the experience of dancing with her in the pas de deux has given me a taste for it. Now I’d love to do the complete ballet. I love watching her in rehearsals too. She has such humility and is unassuming about her talent.’
Rawlins says that she will go to Melbourne for a family Christmas and then maybe spend time at the beach. She has nothing planned yet in terms of the future direction her life will take but acknowledges that the Australian Ballet has a number of strategies in place for retraining dancers. She will look into possibilities a little later.
‘As a dancer I have aimed to bring my own experiences to my work and to give performances that reflect who I am’, she says. ‘Now I want to be realistic that that part of my life is coming to an end. I have been incredibly lucky in my career and done everything I have wanted to do with ballet. But it’s a hard, physical life, a travelling life. I’m sure I will miss being onstage but not so much the hard work that it takes to get onstage.’
King-Wall sees her retirement as one of those bitter-sweet moments. ‘We will miss her of course, but she is going while at her peak, which is something we all hope to do.’
Brady, her former Canberra teacher, says, ‘As I have continued to watch Rachel in nearly all her major roles over the years, it has been truly satisfying and often very moving to recognise the development of Rachel as an artist; an all too rare spectacle on the ballet stage today. I will miss seeing her taking up the challenge, as she always has, and I will miss the depth and intensity of interpretation she brought to all her performances.’
