Alexander Levitoff. Impresario
…1950 but by the mid 1950s he was back in Paris where he died in 1957. His obituary in Dance News notes that he was survived by his wife about whom I have as yet been unable to find information. © Michelle Potter, 21 January 2011 BIBLIOGRAPHY Anna Northcote (Severskaya), Personal Archive. Private Collection Papers of Harcourt Algeranoff, MS 2376, National Library of Australia Various documents relating to Alexander Levitoff, National Archives of A…
Dance diary. July 2021
…Coast in 1993 in order to be closer to family members. Jennifer Shennan’s obituary for Chatfield is not yet available, but a link will be added in due course. UPDATE: Follow this link to read the obituary. Philip Chatfield as Franz and Rowena Jackson as Swanilda (right image only) in Coppélia. The Royal Ballet, Melbourne 1958. Photos: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia, Walter Stringer Collection, Album 994 For more on the Royal Balle…
Dance diary. December 2020
…posts were most popular over the course of the year. Leading post was the obituary for Athol Willoughy (and 2020 is not the first year that an obituary has taken first place). Following on were Thoughts on Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring (still popular after all these years); Romeo and Juliet. The Australian Ballet; Terrain. Bangarra Dance Theatre; and Moon Water. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. Most visits came from Australia followed by the Un…
Shirley McKechnie (1926–2022)
…ey McKechnie, 2006. Photo: © Julie Dyson Note on source materials for this obituary: Much of the material in this obituary comes from items held by the National Library of Australia in Canberra, including Papers of Shirley McKechnie (MS 9553), and a short biography from the website Australia Dancing (which was established at the National Library in ca. 2002 but which has not been active since 2012). I have directly taken sections from this biograp…
Tatiana Stepanova (1924-2009)
…Hall and many show the expressiveness of her upper body and her long and exquisite line. Hugh P. Hall, Tatiana Stepanova and Michael Panaieff in ‘The Sylphide and the Scotsman’, Graduation Ball, Original Ballet Russe, Melbourne. National Library of Australia. An obituary of Stepanova appeared earlier this month on the ballet.co.uk site. It was written by Renee Renouf Hall who had also been working with Stepanova on her memoirs. UPDATE: Unfortunate…
Dance diary. May 2024
…nd elsewhere. He was a truly generous person. I can’t call this comment an obituary, but for what I would call an obituary see the article in Stage Whispers. Listen, too, to van Straten discuss the nature of Tivoli performances as recorded by Philippe Charluet on film at this link. Oral historian Bill Stephens has also recorded an interview with van Straten for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. It currently requires written…
Reliving the past
…the father, Kerry-Anne Gilberd the mother, Kim Broad the son, with Warren Douglas powerfully leading the haka that challenged a love interest across the racial divide. It’s always intriguing to think about what keeps some dance memories alive for decades while others fade. Kerry-Anne Gilberd and Stephen McTaggart in a scene from Tell Me a Tale. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 1988. Photographer not identified. Courtesy Gray Veredon In 1989, Haythorne c…
New Zealand School of Dance: Performance Season 2023
…a striking solo for a masked male, danced here with much aplomb by Joshua Douglas (a 2nd year student already headed for a career opportunity at Queensland Ballet). The Handel sarabande is sublime dance music and the choreography etches its way into a beautiful response to that, inviting a fine performance. It would have been fascinating to watch a Contemporary dance student, maybe a female, in a following repeat performance, to help us all see a…
Dance diary. February 2020
…2011. Oral histories Early in February I had the pleasure of interviewing Douglas Gautier, CEO and Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival Centre. The interview was part of the Australia-China Council Project currently being conducted by the National Library of Australia. Douglas Gautier spent a considerable amount of time in Hong Kong and had many connections with arts organisation in the region. The interview is not yet available online. My…
Ballet Rambert in Australasia 1947–1949
…see two of the dancers who made a particular impact in Australia, Belinda Wright and John Gilpin, both very young at this stage in their careers. In many respects the Rambert tour has been somewhat neglected compared with the attention that has been given to the Ballets Russes companies whose tours to Australia took place largely in the mid to late 1930s and in 1940. Today I only have 10 minutes to talk to you about the Rambert tour, which I delv…