Joy Dalgliesh. A Tribute

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)

Jocelyn Vollmar in the Borovansky production of 'Symphonie fantastique', 1955. Photo: Walter Stringer

Jocelyn Vollmar (1925–2018)

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

Scene from Rachel Arianne Ogle's 'Of Dust'. Sydney Dance Company's New Breed season, 2016. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Dance diary. March 2017

Australia Council dance news

During March the Australia Council announced the results of grant awards for international residences. I was especially interested to note that West Australian choreographer, Rachel Arianne Ogle, is the recipient of a residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. I admired her work Of Dust at Sydney Dance Company’s 2016 New Breed season. In Paris she will work on creating a series of short solo works that will be the foundation for a new full-length work. I look forward to seeing the outcome of this residency.

Other dance awardees include Anna Seymour, born profoundly deaf, who will spend time in New York at the Omni International Arts Centre; Matt Shilcock from Adelaide who will work with Helsinki dance companies; and Melbourne-based Natalie Abbott who will also work in Helsinki.

The search for identity. Australian dance in the 1950s

At the recent BOLD Festival in Canberra I delivered a paper entitled The search for identity. Australian dance in the 1950s. Among the several works I looked at was Terra Australis, made for the Borovansky Ballet in 1946, which I considered as a forerunner to the many works on Australian themes that were choreographed in the 1950s. Looking at Terra Australis now, it stands as quite a remarkable production for its time. I was able to play, as part of my presentation, an excerpt from a radio interview with librettist Tom Rothfield, and some footage from both the 1946 production and the restaging in 1947 when the work had new designs.

Martin Rubinstein, Peggy Sager and Vassilie Trunoff in 'Terra Australis'. Borovansky Ballet, 1946. — Martin Rubinstein, Peggy Sager and Vassilie Trunoff in *Terra Australis*. Borovansky Ballet, 1946.

What especially stood out in the Rothfield interview was the fact that he made it very clear that he and Borovansky had focused on the the fate of the Indigenous population at the time of white settlement. In fact, he spoke strongly of the fact that he and Edouard Borovansky, who was choreographer of the work, hoped to provoke the audience into understanding what he referred to as the ‘true story’ of the arrival of Europeans. Very provocative for the 1940s.

In my research for that paper I also uncovered some interesting material relating to Camille Gheysens, a Belgian-born composer who made his home in Australia and who composed several pieces of music for Gertrud Bodenwieser, including her 1954 work Aboriginal Spear Dance. Gheysens’ patronage of Bodenwieser was significant, although perhaps not without its problems. Bodenwieser dancer, Anita Ardell, in her 2001 oral history interview for the National Library, remarked:

‘I don’t think that Madame really loved his music. Werner Baer certainly didn’t, and he was the musical director of the ABC at the time. But Madame was a very practical person. If this man were going to provide costumes and venues for her choreography, then so be it.’

The research period was certainly a thought-provoking time and I hope eventually to be able to post the paper on this site.

Trisha Brown (1936–2017)

I was saddened to receive the news of the death of American choreographer Trisha Brown, a most remarkable pioneer of postmodern dance. Alastair Macaulay’s obituary for The New York Times is at this link.

My opinion of Brown’s works comes from seeing her company not in New York or anywhere in America, but from performances I have seen in London and Paris. In particular I still remember with huge pleasure a set of dances the company performed at London’s Tate Modern several years ago—my review is at this link. I also had the pleasure of seeing Glacial Decoy danced by Paris Opera Ballet and, just recently, I was reminded of this particular work when some brief footage from it, along with Rauschenberg’s photographs that slid across the back screen throughout the work, were shown in the Tate’s recent Robert Rauschenberg retrospective. Vale Trisha Brown. The small amount of her work that I saw gave me much pleasure.

Trisha Brown. Photo: © Marc Ginot. Media Gallery, Trisha Brown Dance Company.

Michelle Potter, 31 March 2017

Featured image: Scene from Rachel Arianne Ogle’s Of Dust. Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed season, 2016. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Laurel Martyn as Remorse in Fantasy on Grieg's Piano Concerto, in A Minor, Borovansky Ballet, 1945

Laurel Martyn (1916–2013)*

Laurel Martyn, one of Australia’s most eminent dancers, choreographers and dance educators, has died in Melbourne on 16 October, three years short of her 100th birthday. Born in Toowoomba, Queensland, as Laurel Gill, Martyn received her early dance training with Kathleen Hamilton in Toowoomba and Marjorie Hollinshed in Brisbane and in 1933 left Australia for further training. In England she studied with Phyllis Bedells and in 1934 won a choreographic scholarship from the Association of Operatic Dancing (later the Royal Academy of Dancing) with her first composition Exile. She passed all her Royal Academy exams to Solo Seal and in 1935 won the Adeline Genée gold medal, the second Australian to do so in the then short life of the competition, which began in 1931. In 1935 Martyn also arranged the dances for a production of The Waltz King and in the same year received second prize in a choreographic competition, the Pavlova Casket, for her ballet Sigrid.

Laurel Martyn in 'Exile', London 1935 — Laurel Martyn in *Exile*, London 1935. National Library of Australia

Martyn joined the Vic-Wells Ballet (later Sadler’s Wells Ballet) in 1936. She was the first Australian woman to be accepted into the company and by 1938 was a soloist. While in England she changed her name from Gill to Martyn, also a family name. She danced in many of Frederick Ashton’s early ballets including Horoscope, Nocturne and Le Baiser de la fée and also spent time in Paris studying with the Russian émigré ballerinas Lubov Egorova and Mathilde Kchessinska.

Martyn returned to Australia in 1938 following the death of her father and took up a position in Melbourne with well-known teacher Jennie Brenan. While teaching for Brenan she was offered the dancing lead in Hiawatha, a pageant produced by T. E. Fairbairn and choreographed by Brenan, which opened in Melbourne’s Exhibition Building on 21 October 1939. The ballet cast of 80 was led by Martyn, Serge Bousloff and Lawrence Rentoul. While performing in Hiawatha Martyn was noticed by Edouard Borovansky who persuaded her to join his fledgling Borovansky Ballet, which she did in 1940. Martyn was one of Borovansky’s principal artists in the early days of the Borovansky Ballet, along with Edna Busse and fellow Queenslander Dorothy Stevenson. Martyn danced and created leading roles with Borovansky until 1945, including the Spirit of the River in Borovansky’s meditation on his Czech homeland, Vltava. While with Borovansky she also restaged Sigrid and reworked what is probably her best known work, En Saga, which premiered for the Borovansky Ballet in 1941.

Martyn left the Borovansky Ballet after her marriage to Lloyd Lawton in 1945. But in 1946, at the request of the Melbourne Ballet Club, Martyn took on the directorship of Ballet Guild, as the Melbourne Ballet Club had renamed itself. She was its director for an extended period. Ballet Guild became Victorian Ballet Company in 1963 and Ballet Victoria in 1967. Martyn was at the helm until 1973. She also established a school associated with Ballet Guild and students from the school augmented professional dancers in Ballet Guild productions. Martyn created many original works for Ballet Guild and Ballet Victoria productions and collaborated with Australian composers, including Dorian Le Gallienne, Margaret Sutherland, John Tallis, Esther Rofe, and Verdon Williams, and Australian designers, including Alan McCulloch, Len Annois, and John Sumner. Some of her works also had specifically Australian themes, notably The Sentimental Bloke (1952) and Mathinna (1954). Other significant works that Martyn made in this period included L’Amour enchantée (1950), a full-length Sylvia (1962), Voyageur (1956) and Eve of St Agnes (1966).

Laurel Martyn in 'En Saga', 1947. Photo: Ronald Esler — (left) Laurel Martyn as the Aggrieved Woman in *En Saga*, Ballet Guild, 1947; (right) Laurel Martyn in *Swan Lake*, Act II, Borovansky Ballet, 1944. Photos: Ronald Esler. National Library of Australia

Laurel Martyn in 'Swan Lake', Borovansky Ballet, 1944. Photo: Ronald Esler — (left) Laurel Martyn as the Aggrieved Woman in *En Saga*, Ballet Guild, 1947; (right) Laurel Martyn in *Swan Lake*, Act II, Borovansky Ballet, 1944. Photos: Ronald Esler. National Library of Australia

Martyn developed a specific method for teaching dance to children, the principles of which she published in Let them Dance (1985). She also was instrumental in forming the Young Dancers’ Theatre, for which she choreographed several works in the 1980s, and the Classical Dance Teachers Australia Inc, which provided in-service training for dance teachers. She was on the steering committee for the Australian Institute of Classical Dance in the early years of its development. Martyn guested with the Australian Ballet as Mar in The Sentimental Bloke in 1985, as the mother of James in La Sylphide also in 1985, as Berthe, Giselle’s mother, in Giselle in 1986 and as Miss Maud in The Competition (Le Concours) in 1989. In 1991 she reproduced Michel Fokine’s Le Carnaval for the flagship company. In 1997 she was the recipient of the award for lifetime achievement at the inaugural Australian Dance Awards.

Martyn was interviewed for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program in 1989 and the interview is available online at this link. See also ‘Inspiring Mentors: Valrene Tweedie and Laurel Martyn’ published in July 2002 in National Library of Australia News. In addition, a special issue of Brolga: an Australian journal about dance—Issue 4 (June 1996)—was published in honour of Martyn’s 80th birthday. It contains the following articles:

Laurel Martyn OBE: a voyager ahead of her time by Janet Karin
In her own words: excerpts from an oral history interview with Laurel Martyn
The choreography of Laurel Martyn, 1935–1991
The smile of Terpsichore: notes on Laurel Martyn as choreographer by Robin Grove
Dancing the Bloke by Geoffrey Ingram
Laurel Martyn and her composers, 1946–1956 by Joel Crotty

Also published in Brolga, in its first issue of December 1994, and under the title ‘Silent stories’, is Robin Grove’s incisive discussion of Martyn’s Sylvia.

Laurel Martin Lawton: born Toowoomba, 23 July 1916; died Melbourne, 16 October 2013.

Michelle Potter, 19 October 2013

*This brief biography draws on original research I carried out, first for the National Film and Sound Archive’s Keep Dancing! project between 1997 and 2001 and then as part of the early stages of the National Library of Australia’s Australia Dancing project beginning in 2002.

Featured image: Laurel Martyn as Remorse in Fantasy on Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Borovansky Ballet, 1945. National Library of Australia

Nina Verchinina. A new article

Those who have been following posts on this site relating to Nina Verchinina may be interested in an article published in the most recent edition of Brolga: an Australia journal about dance (issue 34, June 2011). This elegantly written article, rather lengthily entitled ‘Designing for Nina Verchinina’s choreographic vivacity: a new light on Loudon Sainthill’s art’, is by Andrew Montana. It sheds important light on Verchinina’s choreographic exploits in Australia and suggests that gender may have played a role in the fact that, in Montana’s opinion, Verchinina’s ballets were never really given adequate showings in Australia.

The gender issue is an interesting speculation and perhaps will never ultimately be more than that. But the idea does have a certain plausibility and is echoed by the difficulties faced by Hélène Kirsova as she tried to develop her own company, the Kirsova Ballet, in the early 1940s in the face of competition from Edouard Borovansky. See for example my recent post on Kirsova, my article ‘A strong personality and a gift for leadership: Hélène Kirsova in Australia’ (Dance Research, 13:2, Winter 1995, pp. 62-76) and a shorter article in National Library of Australia News published in August 2000.

Montana is perhaps at his most eloquent when describing the drawings and paintings of Verchinina executed by Sainthill. But his article also develops further than has been done so far the story of de Basil’s design competition of 1940 won by Donald Friend, along with a number of other matters relating to the Original Ballet Russe in Australia.

As something of a side issue, Montana also mentions the Sidney Nolan designed Icare and notes that there is nothing to indicate that Sainthill was approached to design this work. This appears to contradict Brian Adams’ contention in his biography of Nolan, Such is life, that Sainthill had ‘already been commissioned by Colonel de Basil’ (p. 46) to design this work. Adams gives no source reference for his statement but I believe it does warrant more investigation. Adams goes on to say that Sainthill had been ‘edged out by [Serge] Lifar and [Peter] Bellew’ (p. 46) so there is potentially source material elsewhere other than in Sainthill’s archival collection, which Montana has investigated.

One error in the text needs correction. Montana notes that the cast of Verchinina’s Etude included ‘Lydia Couprina (Valrene Tweedie)’ (p. 22). In fact Lydia Couprina was the stage name of Phyllida Cooper, an Australian from Melbourne who had joined de Basil in Paris where she had been studying with Olga Preobrajenska. Tweedie danced under the name Irina Lavrova. As a side issue, however, there is a connection beyond nationality between Cooper and Tweedie. When Tweedie returned to Australia from the United States in 1950s she eventually bought the school in Sydney jointly run by Cooper and her then husband, James Upshaw. Upshaw later became Tweedie’s second husband.

Unfortunately this most welcome article from Montana is not available online, but it is worth following up in hard copy in libraries where Brolga is held.

Michelle Potter, 28 June 2011