Approaches to ballet-making: the legacy of Ballets Russes in Australia between 1940 and 1960

Abstract

Three major Australian ballet companies founded between 1941 and 1953 gave local dancers the chance to measure themselves with ballet repertoires originally staged in Russia and Europe and with an original choreographic repertoire created in Australia. In early-1941, Hélène Kirsova (1910-1962) founded her company, Kirsova Ballet, and staged her inaugural season at the Conservatorium of Sydney in July of the same year. In 1943, Edouard Borovansky (1902-1959) founded the Borovansky Australian Ballet, or Borovansky Ballet.1 The members of the company had been dancing since 1939, when Borovansky’s Petite Mozartiana premiered in Melbourne at the National Theatre Movement.2 In 1953, Kira Bousloff (1914-2001) founded the West Australian Ballet in Perth, presenting her first season in July of the same year.3 When these three European choreographers adopted Australia as their home country, they created new works and restaged repertoire that had been presented to Australian audiences between 1936-1940, during the three Australian Ballets Russes tours led by the Russian ballet impresario Colonel Wassily de Basil. These tours represented a sort of cultural revolution, as defined by Australian and International scholars, that had a strong impact on Australian artists: painters, composers and, of course, dancers and choreographers.4 While the success of these tours has been widely discussed, the influence that ballet technique and styles inherited from the artists of Ballets Russes companies had on the original and restaged choreographic works by Kirsova, Borovansky and Bousloff received less attention. This thesis examines the approaches to ballet-making in the restaging of Ballet Russes repertoires as well as in the creation of an original choreographic repertoire created in Australia between 1940 and 1960. Concentrating on the work of Kirsova, Borovansky and Bousloff – former de Basil’s Ballets Russes leading and character dancers who performed in Australia in the late-1930s – this thesis aims to investigate the artists’ modus operandi as they shared their ballet knowledge with Australian dancers. In order to understand their processes to ballet-making and their influences on local performers, in this thesis I examine and contextualise the legacy of the pedagogical and choreographic approaches of Ballets Russes artists in Australia between 1940 and 1960.