Dancer Rowena Jackson has died at the age of 98 in her home on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Jackson had an exceptional career with London’s Royal Ballet before returning to New Zealand, where she was born and where she and her husband, Philip Chatfield (1927-2021), became involved with a variety of dance activities. In 1993 Jackson and Chatfield moved to Queensland, to be closer to their family.
Jackson first came to Australia as a professional performer in 1957 to dance in Sydney and Melbourne as a guest artist with the Borovansky Ballet in a season that featured Margot Fonteyn. Her performances in Australia in 1957 were widely praised by critics with one writer remarking of Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge in the pas de deux from Don Quixote:
New Zealand can take a bow for Rowena Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge. Their pas de deux was an interlude of perfection. Two rubies in a velvet case … Precise and thrilling, their artistry was incontestable.*
Jackson returned to the southern hemisphere when the Royal Ballet toured to Australia and New Zealand in 1958-1959. Jackson and Chatfield led the company on that occasion and, during that tour, Jackson’s dancing was regarded as technically faultless. She had particular success as Swanilda in Coppélia often dancing alongside Robert Helpmann as Dr Coppélius.
Rowena Jackson died on 15 August 2024. Follow this link to read Jennifer Shennan’s obituary published in New Zealand by The Post on 2 September 2024.
Voices of the Italian Baroque
I don’t usually review music performances but circumstances were such that I ended up reviewing a one-performance-only event in Canberra by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. I really enjoyed the program, Voices of the Italian Baroque, and it was in fact the word ‘Baroque’ in the title that made me, hesitantly I have to say, volunteer to do it when no one else was available. The Baroque era, in terms of art and architecture, has long interested me, and I was curious to know whether the characteristics I associate with the art and architecture of the Baroque era were also present in music from the period. Here is a link to the review.
In the review I mention a sculpture by Bernini, which took my breath away when I saw it in real life (after paying to turn on a light so it could be seen properly!). Below is an image of that sculpture, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. It is often thought to have sexual undertones and is in a church in Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria.
I may never review another music performance, who knows? But I am glad of the experience I had with Voices of the Italian Baroque, including being present in a relatively new theatre space in Canberra, the Snow Concert Hall, with its exceptional use of wood as the stage floor, and as a decorative item on the walls.
I am looking forward to seeing Queensland Ballet’s production of Coco Chanel. Life of a fashion icon, which takes the stage in Brisbane in October. Choreographed by Belgian-Columbian artist Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, it has already been seen, as it is a co-production, in Hong Kong and Atlanta.
As these things happen, however, Chanel’s connections with the dance world have surfaced on and off as I have continued my reading of books that have sat unread on my bookshelves for a number of years. At the moment I am reading Richard Buckle’s In the wake of Diaghilev and have discovered that Chanel subsidised the Massine revival of The Rite of Spring in 1920 when (according to Buckle) no one could remember the Nijinsky choreography. Chanel also visited Diaghilev in his hotel the day before he died in August 1929. She also donated 10,000 French francs to the effort by Boris Kochno and George Balanchine to start up a new company following Diaghilev’s death.** (10,000 French francs was a large amount of money given that with 100 French francs you could, at the time, buy around a year’s worth of milk, or butter plus sugar, or 6 months of bread—according to information found on the web).
Just how much of Chanel’s diverse career and political life will be featured in the ballet is yet to be seen. Such is the interest in the work, however, that some nights in the season are already sold out!
– ‘Review: Royal New Zealand Ballet.’ Review of Solace, Royal New Zealand Ballet. Dance Australia, 5 August 2024. Online at this link. – ‘A five-star show when dance meets music.’ Review of Silence & Rapture, Australian Chamber Orchestra & Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 18 August 2024. Online at this link. – ‘Uneasy show that pulled no punches in its message.’ Review of Jurrungu Ngan-Ga [Straight Talk], Marrugeku. CBR CityNews, 24 August 2024. Online at this link. – ‘Voices bring beauty to music of Italian Baroque.’ Review of Voices of the Italian Baroque, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. CBR City News, 25 August 2024. Online at this link.
I am thrilled to publish, on behalf of former student of Xenia Borovansky, Elizabeth Kennedy, this tribute to Joy Dalgliesh (1936-2024). As a result of her long friendship with Joy Dalgliesh, Elizabeth is able to reveal to us an image of Madame (as Xenia Borovansky was known to her students and others) that is quite different from what has been written elsewhere. Along the way she introduces us to other little known features of the world of the Borovanskys and I am sure readers will enjoy learning more about the Borovansky family, of which Joy Dalgliesh was clearly a member. Michelle Potter, 27 August 2024.
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Remembering Joy Dalgliesh Elizabeth Kennedy
I first encountered Joy Dalgliesh in 1968 when I began lessons at the Borovansky Ballet Academy in Melbourne with Madame Xenia Borovansky. I cannot offer a completely dispassionate account: Joy and I shared many opinions on ballet matters and were bound to share biases as well.
In 1970 I received the first of what would become several invitations to accompany Madame on her annual summer holiday in Daylesford, initially staying at the Villa Camellia, the property of the Russian singer Mara de Renroff.
The author (centre) with Madame and her brother V.R. Smirnoff at Daylesford railway station
Shortly afterwards, Madame bought a holiday house of her own in Daylesford, and on and off over the next ten years I would visit her there or at her house at Grandview Grove where Joy, when not visiting her parents for the weekend, would sometimes be present.
The author at Madame’s with her two dogs Mushchka and Sharek
In 1980 I left Australia to live and continue my university studies in Scotland. On departure Madame gave me a signed photo of herself.
Madame’s apparent pessimism in this dedication was not justified
In the 1990’s Joy and I resumed contact, albeit from different continents, and from the early years of 2000 were in frequent communication. Our last contact was at the end of 2023, shortly before she died.
In 2013 Joy sent me some hand copied excerpts from some of the cards she received from Madame:
Joy arrived in Melbourne from Wodonga in the early 1950’s to work at a solicitors’ office, in the city of Melbourne, first training in book-keeping and subsequently as a paralegal. She worked in that capacity into her 50’s and then worked at the head office of The Age in Melbourne. She initially lived with an elderly Polish lady called Mrs Krause, a client of her employers, first at Kew and then in Burke Road, East Hawthorne, Melbourne. Joy was destined to live in that part of Melbourne for the next thirty years.
Through her work connections and in conjunction with those of the lady called Mrs Mackay, an invitation was extended to Joy to go and stay at 14 Grandview Grove, East Hawthorne, the Borovansky residence in Melbourne. Madame Xenia Borovansky had just been widowed, was effectively on her own, and inevitably vulnerable to the dubious characters who batten onto rich old widows. Madame Borovansky had no extended family in Australia who could give her security and comfort. Mrs Mackay, a close friend, called on Joy to lend what support she could. Joy accepted the invitation to stay with Madame—a short distance from where she was living at the time with Mrs Krause, just the other side of Burke Road. She became Madame’s family, her extended family, a shield, a rock and—in the final years—her carer.
Joy taken by V.R. Smirnoff, Madame Borovansky’s brother, at Grandview Grove sometime in the 1970s
Joy’s love of ballet started in her childhood when she had private lessons while still in Wodonga. Once in Melbourne, for a long time outside her day job hours, she trained mostly with Martin Rubinstein who took her under his wing. When he was absent, examining, he nominated her to step in for him and take his classes—as an associate or, as Joy would say, his ‘sidekick. There was an occasion once for Boro to be present—always on the lookout for potential Borovansky Ballet candidates—so the critical eye of the dancing master did behold Joy briefly! But it was not to be—Joy’s great merit lay elsewhere, unbeknown at the time.
Edouard and Xenia Borovansky were great celebrities, moving in exalted circles on the Australian scene at the time. They had exceptional connections prior to their arrival in Australia: Pavlova, Fokine, Colonel de Basil, Picasso (the last two particularly well known to Boro): the whole world of beauty and glamour that classical ballet stood for in those days.
Joy attended many of the spectacular shows put on in Melbourne by the Borovansky Ballet Company and had many fond memories of these, including seeing Barry Kitcher dance in Graduation Ball. Through the good offices of Michelle Potter, Joy was able to make contact with Barry in recent years and get news of Martin Rubinstein and reminisce and exchange some ballet secrets. Of course, Joy well remembered seeing Boro himself perform in ballets such as Carnaval and Coppélia. She considered the Borovansky Nutcracker productions absolutely ‘the best’, compared to others she had been able to see in different formats over the years: the Borovansky ones, in her opinion, were ‘particularly true to the original conception of this Christmas ballet as actual childrens’ world of magic’. Joy also particularly observed that, unlike with ‘ballet companies these days where there’s a stream of directors Boro did everything himself’—not to mention the fact that ‘he spent all of his earnings on his dancers’ salaries and company costumes’, while his wife Xenia had to foot the entire purchase price of the matrimonial home at Grandview Grove herself. (The house was in her name alone).
A Borovansky Australian Ballet Christmas card. On the inside the pre-printed message reads, ‘With all Good Wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Edouard and Xenia Borovansky, 14 Grandview Grove, Hawthorn E. 3., Melbourne, Australia, Photography by: Allen Studios’
Over many years, part of the inner sanctum of Madame’s private world, Joy was able to observe and hear much that went on in Madame’s life, both prior to arriving in Australia and after Boro’s early death at the end of 1959. For that, Joy was envied and maligned in equal measure—albeit nothing would deflect her from what became her life’s mission. She knew the back stories to the gossip and trouble alluded to by Frank Salter in his book on the Borovansky phenomenon in Australia. She would relate with amusement or deliberation, as the case may be, many anecdotes. One such goes back to the time of Anna Pavlova when she was in Monte Carlo with her ballet company. The dancers were not greatly remunerated in those days, in fact, they were all quite poor and at times had to scrape around to feed themselves. On this particular occasion somebody came up with a solution: they pooled all their current resources and sent Feodor Shevlugin off to the Casino to gamble in order to secure the necessary funds for some provisions. Off he went and a while later returned with stacks of baguettes and onions. The onions were duly fried, spread out inside the baguettes and eaten with relish; they did all this self-catering in the part of the hotel which was at the other end to where Madame Pavlova had her rooms, but the feast was sufficiently fragrant for her easily to detect.
Another of Joy’s anecdotes concerned Robert Helpmann and Rudolf Nureyev. When Nureyev staged Don Quixote for the Australian Ballet Company, during the Arts Festival held in Adelaide in 1970, he and Helpmann had been staying at a house belonging to Mrs Mackay’s family. Whereas Nureyev graciously paid the rental for his share of the accommodation, Helpmann did not. Apparently, Joy said, ‘he considered himself entitled’.
With Madame’s influence over the world of ballet for many years it was natural that Joy would look for beauty and perfection in the Vaganova Method. In recent years she would spend hours on her iPad watching YouTube videos and purchasing DVDs of some of the latest fabulous dancers representing that school. She adored Svetlana Zakharova, Ulyana Lopatkina and Svetlana Lunkina. Joy considered Lunkina ‘the best Giselle’ and that Zakharova ‘had the best feet’. In contrast, watching Margot Fonteyn in Ondine and the Rose Adagio in The Sleeping Beauty she noticed how Fonteyn, ‘sickled her foot when doing the retiré and développé,’ and ‘sickled her left foot behind the leg in pirouettes’. Of the male dancers in more recent times, Joy adored Roberto Bolle and referred to him as ‘the most beautiful chap’.
In contrast, she would say of Robert Helpmann ‘Helpmann couldn’t dance’. Indeed, she reserved her greatest scorn and criticism for this fellow Australian and the mythology that went into overdrive surrounding him. She found particularly distasteful the means Helpmann, van Praagh and other anti-Borovansky fellow travellers, deployed over the decades to undermine the Borovanskys’ achievements, and their attempts to relegate to obscurity the company and its huge contributions to Australia.
Joy was not alone in Australia in casting a jaundiced eye in Helpmann’s direction, as correspondence in The Herald in 1968 makes clear.
Clipping from The Herald with sections marked in red pencil, preserved by Joy. Sent to the author in 2016
The 1980 gala tribute celebrating Borovansky’s work as the founder of ballet in Australia, was held at the Sydney Opera House by the Australian Ballet under the directorship of Marilyn Jones, and attended by Madame Borovansky, her friend Mrs Mackay, Sanderman, and Edna Busse; alas, Joy stayed behind at Grandview Grove looking after the house.
The Australian Ballet 50th Anniversary Gala in 2012 was received by Joy with sadness: ‘There was no scenery, little pieces and it wasn’t classical AND no mention was made of the Borovanskys. For a long time, people called the Australian Ballet Company The Borovansky Ballet Company.’
This was the background against which Joy’s mission in life crystallised. Australia, she felt, owed the Borovanskys a debt of honour and something needed to be done. As a proud Australian, in her own modest fashion, she committed her life to the surviving member of this extraordinary couple, dedicating herself to Madame—at work, in the Borovansky Ballet Academy studio, and (increasingly) at Madame’s home. It was Joy who secured the state pension for Madame, when Madame was told, in no uncertain terms, that none would be forthcoming in her case. It was Joy who was there for Madame when fire ripped through one of the flats forming part of 14 Grandview Grove, through the negligence of a tenant. It was Joy who looked after and kept house for Madame. And when cancer was taking increasing toll over Madame’s ability to look after herself independently, Joy became her constant carer and companion enabling Madame to stay in her own home to the very end.
A Russian Orthodox priest was called the night before Madame died. Mrs Mackay (who lived very close at ‘the grandest place in Burke Road’ and visited regularly in the evenings to play Chinese chequers with Xenia) arrived by taxi an hour before she died. Joy was already there on her knees by the bedside.
Edna Busse arrived from Wagga Wagga to find Joy waiting to set off to the funeral. Joy told me that Miss Busse pointed to her saying to the undertakers ‘Oh, she’s just a tenant’, and demanded that Joy ‘take off those black shoes and those black clothes!’ Some tenant! Although comically snobbish, Joy was hurt and reflected afterwards on what had possibly produced the outburst—her only hypothesis was that Miss Busse was wearing one of her light-coloured, signature vintage ‘Jumper’ dresses of her own making and realised Joy was perhaps more appropriately dressed.
After Joy left Grandview Grove she lived for another 38 years. She remained very loyal to the memory of Madame and Edouard Borovansky.
She died just short of her 88th birthday. A Memorial Service was held on 26 July 2024 in Doncaster, Victoria. Joy was one of those rare Australians—a national treasure.
Edouard and Xenia Borovansky —The Young Australian Pioneers
Books referred to in the text:
Kitcher, Barry. From Gaolbird to Lyrebird—a Life in Australian Ballet (2001 edition now sold out) new eBook edition (BryshaWilson Press, 2016) now with over 340 images compared with around 100 in the 2001 printed book.
Salter, Frank. Borovansky. The Man Who Made Australian Ballet, Wildcat Press, Sydney, 1980.
Elizabeth Kennedy, 25 August 2024
Featured image: Extracted from ‘Joy taken by V.R. Smirnoff, Madame Borovansky’s brother, at Grandview Grove sometime in the 1970s’. (Full image above)
Barry Kitcher, who has died in Melbourne aged 89, is probably best known for his role as the Male (the Lyrebird) in Robert Helpmann’s 1964 ballet The Display. In an oral history interview recorded for the National Library of Australia in 1994* he recalled what he saw as the highlight of his career—taking a solo curtain call at Covent Garden when the Australian Ballet staged The Display there during its international tour in 1965.
A highlight of my career was taking a curtain call on that incredible stage where the butterfly curtain goes up. There were the two lackeys at Covent Garden, in powdered wigs. They parted the curtain and I took a solo curtain call. Never did I think as a country kid from Victoria that one day I would be taking a curtain call at Covent Garden. Princess Margaret came to the performance and she told me how much she enjoyed the performance. She was fascinated by the mechanism [of the costume] and asked me if I could open the tail, which I did.
Kathleen Gorham and Barry Kitcher in The Display. The Australian Ballet 1964. Photo: Australian News and Information Service
But Kitcher had an extensive career in Australia and overseas, which encompassed so much more than his performances in The Display, despite the fame that that one role gave him. His introduction to ballet came when, in 1947, aged 17, he saw a performance in Melbourne by the visiting English company, Ballet Rambert. He was inspired, as a result, to take classes with Melbourne teacher Dorothy Gladstone but eventually moved on to study at the Borovansky Academy. There he took evening classes with Xenia Borovansky while working as a clerk with Victorian Railways during the day.
He spoke of his impressions of Xenia Borovansky, again in his National Library oral history interview.
She was very tall, extremely tall—she towered over Boro—and she wore high heel shoes as well. She was so regal and elegant and when she walked into a room it was like a star. She had rather bulbous eyes. You really stopped and looked at Madame Boro as she came in … she was a very impressive lady. Her carriage and her stature were outstanding.
He joined the Borovansky Ballet for the 1950–1951 season when the company reformed after a period in recess. He took on many roles with the Borovansky company over the years, but recalls in particular dancing in Pineapple Poll when it was staged by its choreographer, John Cranko; taking on the role of the Strongman in Le beau Danube after Borovansky’s death; and dancing as one of the three Ivan’s in The Sleeping Princess.
At the end of his first season with the Borovansky Ballet, the company went into recession once more and Kitcher spent time appearing on the Tivoli circuit. He then left Australia in 1956 to try his luck in England, as did so many of his dancing colleagues at the time.
In London he took classes with legendary teacher Anna Northcote and later with Marie Rambert; danced at the London Palladium as a member of the George Carden Dancers, with whom he appeared in a number of shows including Rocking the Town and a Christmas pantomime The Wonderful Lamp; joined Sadler’s Wells Opera Ballet and appeared in the The Merry Widow; and danced with London City Ballet.
He returned to the Borovansky Ballet in 1959 and then went on to dance with the Australian Ballet from its opening season in 1962 until 1966.
After leaving the Australian Ballet he joined Hoyts Theatres and trained as a theatre manager working in various Melbourne-based cinemas. Eventually he successfully applied for a position as theatre manager with the newly opened Victorian Arts Centre where he worked for several years.
Portrait of Barry Kitcher
But for all his achievements across many areas, Kitcher was probably most proud of being a member of the Borovansky Ballet. He was responsible for many organisational details associated with the various reunions of former Borovansky dancers, which began in 1993, and throughout his oral history interview he spoke constantly of the artists he worked with, including Borovansky himself as well as Xenia. He loved in particular discussing the nature of the company and the closeness he felt there was between those who worked with it.
My favourite quote from his oral history comes from Kitcher’s recollections of time spent touring in New Zealand, which the Borovansky company did frequently. Speaking of the unofficial concerts the company staged amongst themselves, especially one held in Christchurch at the Theatre Royal, he recalled:
To raise money for our big farewell party in New Zealand (we had a wonderful party) we had a big fete onstage during the afternoon at the Theatre Royal in Christchurch. The stagehands and everybody joined in. Boro contributed a fish that he’d caught—he was a great fisherman, loved fishing. That was his relaxation away from the theatre—fishing and painting. All the principal ladies, Kathy [Gorham] and Peggy [Sager], made cakes and things like that. Oh, we had a wonderful time … It was a great company and, as dear Corrie [Lodders] said, ‘It was a company of family’ … We were very, very lucky to be part of that era.
Listen to this quote.
Barry Kitcher was a kind and thoughtful man. He never forgot me as his interviewer for the National Library’s oral history program and helped me on many occasions when I needed to confirm certain details about the companies he worked with. Vale Barry.
Charles Barry Kitcher, born Cohuna, Victoria, 6 September 1930; died Melbourne, Victoria, 10 December 2019
Michelle Potter, 13 December 2019
Featured image: Barry Kitcher as the Male (Lyrebird) in The Display. The Australian Ballet 1964. Photo: Walter Stringer.
* Interview with Barry Kitcher recorded by Michelle Potter for the Esso Performing Arts and Oral History Project, August 1994. National Library of Australia, TRC 3102
Please consider supporting my Australian Cultural Fund project to help Melbourne Books publish Kristian Fredrikson. Designer in a high quality format. Donations are tax deductible. See this link to the project, which closes on 31 December 2019.
Former Borovansky Ballet dancer, Edna Busse, has just celebrated her 100th birthday. Busse was born in Melbourne in 1918 and received her early dance training with Eunice Weston. She was for a time junior assistant to Weston but later studied with Xenia Borovansky at the Borovansky Ballet Academy and subsequently danced with the Borovansky Ballet from its earliest days. With that company she danced a variety of roles including those in Borovansky’s restaging of Anna Pavlova’s Autumn Leaves and in Frederick Ashton’s Façade staged by Laurel Martyn. She also danced in the classics as produced by Borovansky, as well as in a number of Borovansky’s own works such as L’Amour ridicule and Fantasy on Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
Edna Busse and dancers of the Borovansky Ballet in Autumn Leaves, 1946. Photo: Hugh P Hall. National Library of Australia
By 1946 she was prima ballerina with the company and the first fully Australian trained dancer to reach the rank of principal. Her most frequent partners were Martin Rubinstein and Serge Bousloff.
One of the most remarkable works in which she took the leading role during her career with the Borovansky Ballet was The Black Swan, Borovansky’s second ballet on an Australian theme following on from his Terra Australis of 1946. Danced to music by Sibelius and with designs by William Constable, The Black Swan was based on an historical incident in 1697 when a Captain Vlaming from the Dutch East India Company encountered and named Rottnest Island and the river on which the city of Perth now stands. He was particularly struck by the number of black swans on the river and his crew captured several and took them back to Java. A libretto, written around this incident by M. Millet, told the story of the Captain entranced by a black swan as a symbol of a new (to him) land. The work was first performed in 1949. Busse took the role of the Black Swan in productions of 1950 and 1951.
Scene from The Black Swan. Borovansky Ballet, 1951
Busse went to London in 1952 where she danced at the Palladium in a variety of shows, including in the pantomime Cinderella in 1953. While overseas she studied with Mathilde Kschessinska in Paris but came back to Australia in 1955 when family illness required her return. In Australia she was given a contract by entrepreneur Harry Wren and continued to dance for another few years, including in the Tivoli Circuit’s production of The Good Old Days (1956–1957) and as a guest artist with Laurel Martyn’s Victorian Ballet Guild. Injury forced her to retire. Busse then taught in Melbourne for several years before opening a ballet school in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, in 1968. With the support of a local consortium she established Inland Ballet and, over many years, produced both the classics and new works for this company.
Edna Busse was interviewed for the National Library of Australia’s Oral History and Folklore Program in 2014 and her time in Wagga Wagga is discussed in more detail there. The interview, which has been debated somewhat on this website, is not available online but copies are available via the National Library via the ‘order a copy’ tab.
Michelle Potter, 9 August 2018
Featured image: Edna Busse and Kenneth Gillespie in The Black Swan, Borovansky Ballet, 1950–1951. National Library of Australia
American ballerina Jocelyn Vollmar has died in San Francisco at the age of 92. Born in San Francisco, Vollmar began her dance training aged 12 at San Francisco Ballet School under William Christensen and Gisella Caccialanza. As a student she danced in the first American Coppélia and the first American full-length Swan Lake in 1940. She joined San Francisco Ballet in 1943 and her roles in the following years included the Snow Queen in Nutcracker in 1944, and Myrthe in Giselle in 1947 with guests Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin. In the late 1940s she danced as a principal with New York City Ballet and Ballet Theatre and studied further in Paris with Lubov Egorova and Olga Preobrajenska. She also danced with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas in the early 1950s.
Vollmar was invited by Edouard Borovansky to come to Australia as ballerina with his Borovansky Ballet for his season beginning in 1954. Her first role with the Borovansky company was the Street Dancer in Le beau Danube where critics praised her ‘talent for mime’ and her ‘spirited dancing.’ Over the course of a two year term with the Borovansky Ballet, Vollmar danced leading roles in all the company’s productions including the classics such as Giselle, Les Sylphides, Nutcracker in a new production by David Lichine, and Swan Lake Act II, and in the Borovansky Ballet’s stagings of the Ballets Russes repertoire including Petrouchka, Les Presages: Fifth Symphony, La Boutique fantasque, Scheherazade and Le beau Danube. Her partners with the Borovansky Ballet included Vassilie Trunoff and Royes Fernandez and fellow principal dancer, Peggy Sager, spoke of the great versatility she brought to the company during her brief time with them.
Vollmar returned to San Francisco when the Borovansky Ballet went into recess in 1956 and, although invited to return to Australia for the next Borovansky season, she decided to stay in her home city. She danced with San Francisco Ballet until 1972. On retirement from performing Vollmar took up teaching and when Helgi Tomasson took over San Francisco Ballet in 1985 he invited her to teach in the company school, where she taught and coached upper division classes until 2005.
Jocelyn Vollmar. Born San Francisco 25 November 1925; died San Francisco 13 July 2018.
Michelle Potter, 8 August 2018
Featured image: Jocelyn Vollmar in the Borovansky production of Symphonie fantastique, 1955. Photo: Walter Stringer
My recent tribute to Tamara Tchinarova Finch brought to light a letter Tchinarova wrote to Xenia Borovansky in 1980 in which she discussed, amongst other things, her thoughts on Xenia Borovansky’s contribution to the growth of ballet in Australia. With permission from the various stakeholders, I am publishing the letter in this post.
Xenia Borovansky and Tamara Tchinarova on stage before a performance of Coppélia by the Borovansky Ballet, ca. 1946. National Library of Australia, Papers of Tamara Tchinarova Finch, MS 9733. Photo: Jean Stewart
It is an interesting letter from many points of view and was written just before the tribute to Borovansky, which I am assuming means the program that Marilyn Jones devised during her brief term as artistic director of the Australian Ballet in 1980. It was a triple bill and consisted of Pineapple Poll, Schéhérazade and Graduation Ball, with Les Sylphides being substituted in place of Graduation Ball in Adelaide and Perth.*
Gary Norman and Sheree da Costa in Schéhérazade. The Australian Ballet, 1980. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia
It also mentions the lecture tour by Tchinarova and Irina Baronova, which apparently had been discussed (but initially dismissed) long before it actually occurred in 1994.
*Details of the program are on AusStage at this link.
In its Treasures Gallery, the National Library of Australia currently has one display case devoted to a production by the Borovanksy Ballet, Les Amants eternels (The Eternal Lovers). When I looked a few days ago the display contained the notated score (Laban) for the ballet, the work of Meg Abbie Denton; a Borovansky Ballet program giving details of performers and creative personnel; a double page spread from The Australian Women’s Weekly published in the issue of 12 March 1952; and on the wall above the display case a costume design by William Constable for the character of Romeo in the ballet, and a drawing in pastel and charcoal on velvet paper by Enid Dickson of Paul Grinwis as Romeo. The Constable design is to be removed shortly (for preservation reasons) and will be replaced by photographs. The rest of the material will remain for a few more months.
Eternal Lovers display case. National Library of Australia, 2015
The Eternal Lovers was created by Grinwis, a dancer with the Borovansky Ballet in the 1950s. It received its world premiere in Melbourne in December 1951 and remained in the Borovansky Ballet repertoire until 1960. As Alan Brissenden has recorded in his and Keith Glennon’s Australia Dances:
Paul Grinwis conceived this ballet as a continuation of the story of two lovers, called for the sake of convenience Romeo and Juliet, when they awake in after-life. Its focal point is a struggle between the spirits of Love and Death, Love being finally victorious.*
At the premiere, Grinwis danced the role of Romeo, Kathleen Gorham that of Juliet, with Bruce Morrow taking the part of the Spirit of Death and Helene Ffrance the Spirit of Love. The ballet was danced to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture.
Sadly, the National Library no longer has a dance curator. It has an extensive and wide-ranging dance collection, built up as a result, firstly, of the Esso Performing Arts and Oral History Archive Project (1988–1991); then Keep Dancing! a collaborative venture with the Australia Council, Ausdance and the National Film and Sound Archive (1997–2001); and between 2002 and early 2013 as a result of having an in-house dance curator. So it is good to see that at least a small gesture is being made to give a very tiny part of the material some visibility. The current display reveals, again in a very small way, the kinds of areas in which the dance material is held—art works, ephemera, notated scores, popular magazines are present, and photographic material is coming. The captions refer to interviews, although there is no sound capture from the interviews.
The dance collection at the National Library is incredibly rich, crosses eras and dance styles, and is supported by extensive material from other art forms and by organisational records, all held by the Library across its many formats. I can but hope that more material will be displayed, and even that eventually someone will take the trouble to add to out-dated records—at the very least a few dates of death need to be added to Trove records.
As an aside, in 2005 I had the pleasure of visiting Grinwis and his beauitful, ever-vibrant wife, Christiane Hubert, also a dancer with the Borovansky Ballet for a few years from 1954. I had hoped to record an oral history interview with Grinwis, but at the time he was not amenable to the idea. Another occasion never arose and Grinwis died about a year later in 2006. Hubert, I believe, moved back to Paris but I am not sure if she is still alive.
With Paul Grinwis and Christiane Hubert, Gent, January 2005
Michelle Potter, 10 January 2015
* Alan Brissenden and Keith Glennon, Australia Dances. Creating Australian Dance 1945–1965 (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2010), p. 20
While preparing for my recent Spotlight talk at the Arts Centre Melbourne I had occasion to listen to an oral history interview I recorded for the National Library in 2002 with Bill Akers. One of the many positions Akers held across the course of his very full life was director of productions with the Australian Ballet. He was also an inspired lighting designer, worked in various roles with the Borovansky Ballet and, prior to that, worked in theatre and film and on radio as an actor.
Ultimately, I used an audio clip from the interview in the talk and an audience member commented at the end on how nice it was to hear Bill’s voice again. Well that’s one of the benefits of recording oral history. But apart from anything else he had a beautiful voice. It was deep, generous and cultivated. In his interview he had something to say about that voice, which relates to his first radio appearances:
I became a club leader and gymnasium instructor in the YMCA and one Friday night, having lost the National Table Tennis Championship, I was standing rather dejectedly in the boys’ division and the telephone rang. A man called Bill Arthur, who subsequently became a parliamentarian and went on to join the House of Reprehensibles [sic]—he ran a show called ‘Over to you’, said ‘Look Bill, an actor hasn’t turned up for an interview, would you do it?’
Well, with characteristic reluctance I rushed out of the YMCA, ran down Pitt Street at the rate of knots, rushed round into Market Street and was up in Studio 149 before you could breathe. I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was doing. They shoved a script into my hand and said: ‘Say anything after the letter A’. So I did the interview and I was ‘A’. I didn’t know who ‘A’ was but they would go out and interview a boy who was perhaps an apprentice plumber or an apprentice clerk or something or other and they would get the details of his job and what the prospects were and things like that. And an actor would come in and play that boy on the radio.
Well the following Tuesday they rang me up and said would I do it for a year, so I got a contract. At the end of the year, of course I wanted to go into the theatre and I wrote to Keith Wood who was the director of that program and told him this. And he rang me up and very kindly said to me: ‘Look, Bill, you’re very talented but if you’re going to become an actor, the first thing you have to do is do something about that terrible voice’. Well I did have a voice that was very high at the time and very nasal. So high that only dogs could hear it. It was very nasal and Australian and so on. So he sent me to Bryson Taylor who was a voice production teacher who listened to me for five minutes and said: ‘Have a cup of tea’. And he talked to me for a while and at the end he said: ‘Look, I’m sure you’re very talented but I don’t think anybody could ever do anything with that voice’. I’ve never drunk tea since.
Not long after this Akers became a student at the Rathbone Academy of Dramatic Art in Sydney and went on to appear on radio in episodes of the Lux Radio Theatre and the Caltex Theatre. He also worked with the John Alden Company playing Shakespearian roles, and with the J. C. Williamson organisation in a variety of productions.
At the request of Harald Bowden of the J. C. Williamson organisation, Akers joined the Borovansky Ballet as assistant stage manager in the 1950s. His interview contains recollections of arriving at the theatre for the first time as ASM, his impressions of Borovansky and his thoughts on the Borovansky Ballet.
I walked through the stage door of Her Majesty’s Theatre at about 11:30 in the morning to be confronted by these fifty raging egos jumping up and down and whirling around in the air. They were rehearsing a ballet called Symphonie fantastique and Mr Borovansky was standing on a chair shouting imprecations at these people. He had a pair of baggy old corduroy slacks on … He had a Chesty Bond’s singlet, rather loosely flapping and ballet slippers and a beret on the back of his head, which fell off as he got down onto the stage.
To me, despite the fact that I think I’ve met lots and lots of very great people in my life—I’ve been very privileged for that—he is the greatest person I think I’ve ever known. I think he contributed more to Australian theatre, particularly to dance, than anybody else. He created a ballet audience. He made ballet in Australia … he was just a fantastic man [with] particular drive and charisma. When you worked with Mr Borovansky you were alive twenty-four hours a day. He was the most stimulating person imaginable.
The Borovansky Ballet was a great big, magnificent, glamorous rough diamond with wonderful ballerinas. Boro virtually created ballet in this country, which is supposed to be a sports minded country, a situation that led at one stage to us having the greatest per capita ballet audience in the world. And that went on for twenty years … In Boro’s day, of course, triple bills were tremendously popular but he knew how to plan them. He was a genius at planning triple bills. He would introduce a new work like Paul Grinwis’ ballet Eternal Lovers. He would sandwich it in between the second act of Swan Lake and Le Beau Danube, which he knew the public adored. His triple bills were wonderful.
Throughout the interview Akers tells many other anecdotes about people he met and people he admired. He has the following to say about Joyce Graeme when she toured in Australia with Ballet Rambert, 1947‒1949:
I’ve seen some magnificent Queens of the Wilis [in Giselle] but there will never be another Queen of the Wilis like Joyce Graeme. She was an icicle. It was just a magical performance. She wasn’t nearly as good a dancer technically as many of the others I’ve seen but the icy chill she brought to the stage … and of course she was very tall and very thin and she was an electric presence on stage.
And he recalls the arrival of John Cranko to stage Pineapple Poll for the Borovansky Ballet in 1954:
[Cranko] first came to Australia for Mr Borovansky to stage Pineapple Poll. Wonderful fellow he was. Great sense of humour. And he’d seen Symphonie fantastique the night before. We were all waiting on stage, breathless, for this great, new, young choreographer to arrive. And at five to ten I used to set off the alarm and class used to start promptly at ten … Well Mr Cranko wasn’t there and everybody was standing on stage thinking: ‘He would never dare to be late’. Then the two doors at the back of the theatre flew open and he came screaming across the stage doing grands jetés, which is what started the final movement of Symphonie fantastique. And he got to the centre of the stage and he said ‘Well there you are, I have proved to you that I can dance. Now let’s see if you can’.
And why was Akers called Angel? As he tells the story, during one of his engagements in a musical comedy show a well-known female actor (whom he declined to name) suggested he looked like the devil with his Van Dyke beard. As a result members of the company started calling him Lucifer, who according to the bible disguised himself as the Angel of Light. ‘Angel Akers’ was the long term result.
Bill Akers died in 2010. The extracts above are a minute part of an interview that documents many aspects of a long and varied career in the theatre. And like all oral history, it’s the voice that encapsulates the man—no longer ‘high and nasal’ but beautifully modulated and able to express in the most amusing way the most serious of endeavours.
Michelle Potter, 2 May 2012.
Here is the link to the National Library catalogue for the Akers interview. The National Library cataloguers have yet to add Akers’ year of death to the record. [This has been rectified—MP, 11 May 2012]
UPDATE August 2020: The interview is now available online at this link.
To all those who have visited this site over the past year, and especially to those who have contributed what I have referred to elsewhere as ‘refreshingly honest’ comments, I wish a very happy holiday season.
‘Snowflakes’ in the Borovansky Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, ca. 1957. Photo: Walter Stringer. Courtesy of the National Library of Australia
A Christmas production of Nutcracker was always a much anticipated part of my childhood and recollections of Elaine Haxton’s designs for the old Borovansky production (reused in the early Australian Ballet production) surfaced a few years ago during a December drive through, of all places, the Kit Carson National Forest in New Mexico. I hope you enjoy the juxtaposition of images, despite the obvious differences in lighting and location!
I also recently came across aninterview with Elaine Haxtonrecorded by fellow artist James Gleeson in 1978 and held by the National Gallery of Australia. Her discussion of the work of the designer in the 1950s is worth reading I think.
I look forward to your visits and comments in 2012.
Michelle Potter, 18 December 2011
Featured image: High Road to Taos, Kit Carson Forest, New Mexico, 2007
On 9 July 1955, a short news article appeard in the Melbourne newspaper The Age announcing the engagement of David Lichine to produce Francesca da Rimini and Girls’ Dormitory for the Borovansky Ballet. Towards the end of 1955 Lichine did stage a new production of Francesca. It had designs by William Constable and featured Jocelyn Vollmar, Arvids Fibigs and Royes Fernandez in the leading roles. During the same engagement Lichine also created his very popular Nutcracker for the Borovansky Ballet. It premiered in Sydney on 19 December 1955 and became the highlight of future Sydney Christmas seasons by the Borovansky Ballet.
Girls Dormitory was never staged by the Borovansky Ballet. The suggestion that it was to be staged is interesting, however, and one wonders, given that the Buenos Aires staging (see previous post) had such a short life span, whether the Benois designs held in Boston, and dated 1949 (post Buenos Aires), were created for a new version that Lichine was contemplating.
Note: The article in The Age erroneously gives the date and location of the world premiere of Graduation Ball as Melbourne 1939. It was in fact Sydney 1940.
