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Right now at the Arts Centre in Melbourne is an exhibition featuring photos and ephemera of ballet visionary Dame Peggy van Praagh. The exhibition covers the full breadth of Peggy’s career, including early charity performances at age six; performing and teaching with the Ballet Rambert, London Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Ballet; her artistic directorship of the Borovansky Ballet; and most notably her artistic directorship of The Australian Ballet.  Thanks to the Arts Centre’s Performing Arts Collection, we’ve posted a few photos from the exhibition.

The Arts Centre’s Peggy van Praagh exhibition runs until 24 September 2010

Peggy! The Australian Ballet’s season dedicated to its founding artistic director plays until Monday 5 July

Main image:Peggy van Praagh as Juno in Pas des Desses, London Ballet, Arts Theatre, London, 1939
Photograph by Anthony Gordon
Peggy van Praagh Collection Gift of The Australian Ballet, 1998
Performing Arts Collection, the Arts Centre

After dancing together for the first time, Rudolf Nureyev dropped to his knees and kissed Margot Fonteyn on the hand during the curtain call. The audience roared. From this moment, Nureyev and Fonteyn became a celebrity dance partnership. In a documentary about the couple, Nureyev said they danced with “one body, one soul”.

As part of her five point plan for The Australian Ballet, founding Artistic Director Peggy van Praagh was determined to present the world’s best dancers to Australian audiences. In 1964 she invited Nureyev and Fonteyn to dance the title roles in Giselle. Fonteyn had performed in Australia in 1957 with the Borovansky Ballet but, for Nureyev, dancing on the Australian stage was a new experience.

In an article tracing the history of international ballet dancers visiting Australia, published in The Age in 1964, Geoffrey Hutton described Nureyev and Fonteyn as: “… probably the most highly priced dancers in the world; Fonteyn the pride of the British ballet who has queened it for a generation; Nureyev the sensational young male dancer from the Leningrad Kirov who has brought a new sense of excitement into the Western ballet.”

These now ballet legends appealed to the Australian style of ballet. They were an electric couple, exuding character and precision. Fonteyn was adored for her classically English poise, grace and perfection (the kind of dancing Dame Peggy van Praagh encouraged in her Australian dancers) and Nureyev for his bawdy Russian enthusiasm and vigorous style (characteristics Australian dancers inherited from the Borovansky Ballet). Hutton writes, “At first critics noticed some differences in style … the partnership seemed oddly matched. Perhaps both dancers have benefited from it; we shall be able to form our own opinions.”

Fonteyn and Nureyev performed Giselle in Melbourne and Sydney alongside guest artists Lupe Serrano and Royes Fernandez, and members of The Australian Ballet including Kathleen Gorham, Garth Welch, Marilyn Jones and Colin Peasley. Fonteyn and Nureyev’s 1964 Australian tour went down in dance history as a milestone event. Fonteyn (age 69) and Nureyev (age 50) danced their last performance in 1988 in Baroque Pas de Trois.

Peggy!, a programme dedicated to Dame Peggy van Praagh, opens in Melbourne Friday 25 June

Image: Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn with artists of 
The Australian Ballet in Giselle, 1964. Photography – David Mist

Peggy! Finally my own ballet programme!

Well, kind of …

I’ve been looking forward to this programme all year. It has just come in from the store and Marsia, Jessie and I unpacked it today. Personally I love a man in a ballet jacket and pair of tights, and this programme is all of that. For me, ballet is all about bling and the men in bling. I pulled out pink velvet jackets with silver bows, green waistcoats with peplums, and cream puff-sleeved shirts to go with them, and got very excited. Most of these costumes are from another era, a time when ballet looked like ballet and, well, people were generally much smaller back then. These days my boys are men and they’re built like men. Think ‘couture for hard yakka’. So when I pulled out beautiful silver brocade (dyed purple) jackets covered with silver trim my eyes lit up and I thought: we’ll get to remake that!

I also get to see these jackets on bodies in a different setting; sometimes over rehearsal clothes, sometimes with jeans.  It can get a little Adam Ant; a little bit glam-punk; a little Gaultier.

The Costume department has just had its first really big clean up in six months. With the two big ballets (The Silver Rose and Coppélia) both up and finally out of the workroom, there has been a short space of time for all the storage shelves to be repacked. There are decades of collected trim (some of the original Coppélia trims and fabrics were still there from 30 years ago, faithfully waiting to be used again) along with the stock of trims we use regularly. The fabric stock room has been reorganised and refiled. That original silver brocade (yet to be dyed purple) has been found and is waiting its turn in the spotlight.

All that’s needed now to recreate these bibs and bobs is a bit of love. Soon the posters for Peggy! go up and … ta-da … my name up in lights!

Peggy! plays in Melbourne 25 June to 5 July

Swanilda, the leading lady in the fairytale favourite Coppélia, is traditionally a breakthrough role for a dancer on the rise. She’s fierce, funny, and does ‘the robot’ pretty convincingly. When Swanilda’s fiancé Franz falls in love with a mysterious dancing doll, she doesn’t let him off lightly. Behind closed doors, Swanilda stealthily changes places with the doll and, with stiff, jerky movements, fools everyone. Coppélia was Dame Peggy van Praagh’s all-time favourite ballet and in The Australian Ballet’s 1990 souvenir programme, she explained where her love of performing Swanilda began.

“Ever since the early forties, Coppélia seems to have been a part of my life. I did not expect to dance Swanilda when I first joined the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet in 1941. I was not even the understudy for this role. In June 1942, London was subjected to severe air raids. One of the company’s ballerinas, Mary Honer, was at the Café de Paris when it received a direct hit. She was lucky to escape serious injury but suffered severe shock and was unable to dance for several weeks.

“Dame Ninette de Valois, the company’s artistic director, telephoned to inform me that I was to dance Swanilda in Oxford in four days’ time and that I should come immediately to rehearse the role. Robert Helpmann, who was to partner me as Franz, could attend but one rehearsal of the pas de deux. The rest of the company was on tour and I was unable to rehearse with them. So on an evening in June 1942 it was a very nervous Swanilda that took the stage. Later I grew to enjoy the role which I danced many times before I left the company in 1946 to become Ballet Mistress of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.”

The Australian Ballet will perform Coppélia in Melbourne and Sydney. Subscription packages are still available in both cities

Image: Peggy van Praagh as Swanilda in Coppelia

In the twilight years of the Borovansky Ballet, Artistic Director Peggy van Praagh was keen to add a touch of Australiana to the repertoire. Something lighthearted and humorous was what she had in mind, a la Ballets Russes crowdpleasers Le Beau Danube and Gaite Parisienne, so loved by Australian audiences. Australia, Dame Peggy decided, needed a Gaite Parisienne of its own.

The proposed ballet was Melbourne Cup – a comic account of the very first running of the famous horse race, won by ‘Archer’ in 1861, to celebrate its centenary. But Melbourne Cup was not to be a Borovansky ballet; the company dissolved and plans for the bold new project went with it. Van Praagh got her wish soon enough, however, when The Australian Ballet was born in 1962, with Dame Peggy at the helm.

Choreographed by Rex Reid, Melbourne Cup was the fledgling company’s very first commission and took pride of place in its debut season. The colourful one-act ballet premiered not, funnily enough, in Melbourne, but in Sydney on 16 November, 1962. According to Geoffrey Hutton, theatre critic for The Age at the time, the performance “brought the house down”. Melbourne Cup, his review went on, “has style and humor (sic); the decor is lively and so is the music … with a little attention it can be made into a natural finishing ballet.”

As high-spirited and comical as the finished product might have been, efforts to evoke 1860s Melbourne were taken seriously by the ballet’s collaborators. The designer responsible for enlivening the decor was Ann Church. Her designs, in the words of Rex Reid, captured “the rawness and romance of the event” – in three scenes: the bar (naturally) of the Theatre Royal on Cup Eve, the ballroom of a well-to-do Melbourne home (of the period, of course), and last but not least, Flemington Racecourse.

A collage of 19th century tunes popular with Australian audiences, by the likes of Strauss and Auber, helped set the scene, while Church draped the dancers in colours fashionable in 1861 – including the horses. Tory Boy, Twilight, Price, The Moore and Archer – the winning horse – were all played by female dancers. “All wear the authentic colours carried in that first Cup,” Church told The Age in ’62. “The exception is Archer, who carried brown. We wanted something more glamorous, so have taken the liberty of changing this to a lovely gold.” Only fitting, one might say, for the likes of leading lady Kathleen Gorham, who danced the role – according to Hutton – with a ”blend of warmth, precision and sheer sparkle” on opening night.

While the romance between a jackeroo and a debutante provides the ballet’s narrative thread, the high-stepping horses of the final scene steal the show. Church’s exquisitely delicate creations did likewise in the Melbourne Arts Centre’s 2008 exhibition of dance costumes, Seamless. And not a furry animal suit to be seen – she opted for the essence over the obvious. As the curator Margot Anderson wrote: “Church created short, perky tutus, using tulle to great effect in both the skirt and mane-like headdress to create the silhouette of a horse in profile.” Melbourne Cup would prove to be an amusing appertiser to The Display, in which Robert Helpmann plumbed the darker depths of Australian society two years later.

Jessica Thomson is a performing arts writer and has written for many publications including Dance Australia.

Kathleen Geldard backstage in Melbourne Cup costume, The Australian Ballet 1962. Photo Darryl Smythe.

With cane in hand, and a fiercely stubborn air, Dame Peggy van Praagh perfectly fit the dance teacher cliché. Peggy was The Australian Ballet’s founding Artistic Director, not only bringing success to the company, but invigorating Australian ballet, bringing the country’s dance up to an international standard. If you were a young dancer who caught Peggy’s eye there were great things in store for you. David McAllister, current Artistic Director, and Colin Peasley, the longest-serving employee at The Australian Ballet, were two boys – dancing decades apart – whom Peggy gave a real chance.

Peggy van Praagh was retired by the time David McAllister joined the company, but she returned to coach classes for the 1982 staging of Giselle for the regional touring arm, The Dancers Company. With little hesitation Peggy selected the wide-eyed David to play the peasant pas de deux. He was only in his second year. Two years later, David had reached grand new heights and was performing Franz in her interpretation of Coppélia. Peggy once pulled David aside and asked, “Do you know the dancer Graeme Murphy?” David replied that he had. “You remind me of him.” David was thrilled to be compared to the performer. Popping David’s quickly inflating ego Peggy declared: “You poke your neck forward like he does”. David continued to rise, and rise, throughout the company and now looks back on his experiences with Peggy fondly. He knows it was her doggedness and attention to detail that set the high standards of The Australian Ballet in the early days.  “She was controversial in some ways but she really spoke her mind. She told you exactly what she thought,” David remembers. “She tended to call a spade a spade.”

Colin Peasley’s encounters with the headstrong Peggy came years earlier. They met in 1959 when she came out to Australia to be the director of the Borovansky Ballet. Having seen Colin in rehearsals she asked him and another boy why they hadn’t auditioned for the Borovansky Ballet. Colin told her that they thought they shouldn’t be seen by an examiner before the exam. Peggy replied, “Oh, hogwash! Come back in my lunch hour and I’ll audition you myself!” At the end of the audition Peggy told the two boys she had one contract for a soloist and, given both were young students, neither of them were up to soloist standard. However, Peggy offered them free dance classes and the opportunity to audition for The Australian Ballet as soon as the company formed. Eighteen months later, in 1962, Colin auditioned for The Australian Ballet and was offered a contract. Under Peggy’s reign, Colin performed all over the world with the brand-new Australian company – including Berlin where he, and others from the company, supported Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev to a thunderous audience who demanded 60 curtain calls. A Guiness World Record. “Yes, we were there.”

Peggy van Praagh not only founded and developed the company, but set a precedent for artistic directors to come. “None of the artistic directors after her have really departed from her ideals,” David said “They really stuck after her.”

“Dame Peggy was a supremely capable woman” says Colin, “who, with focus and determination, was able to make her vision for the company a reality”.

The Australian Ballet celebrates Peggy van Praagh with the Peggy! season in Melbourne in 2010.
Subscription packages for The Australian Ballet’s 2010 season are on sale now