By Deborah Searle
To celebrate the 2009 centenary of Robert Helpmann’s birth, University of Queensland Press has published Robert Helpmann: A Servant of Art, by Anna Bemrose. A magnificently illustrated account of one of our greatest performers, Robert Helpmann, a Servant of Art is a wonderful read for anyone interested in Australian ballet and theatre history. It tells the story of how a small boy from Mt Gambier, who had a desire to dance became so influential in the Australian and international dance and theatre scene that he was indeed knighted by Her Majesty the Queen!
Sir Robert Helpmann was a phenomenon in the arts. He was an exquisite ballet dancer, mime artist, make-up artist, musical theatre performer, choreographer, actor, director of ballets, plays and operas, co-artistic director of the Australian Ballet and director of the 1970 Adelaide Festival of Arts.
My grandmother still recalls seeing Helpmann dance one of his very first professional performances in The Spider and The Fly piece from Sinbad the Sailor, at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide, 1932. Helpmann climbed over a huge rope spiderweb the size of the stage, with strength and agility, amazing the audience. Little did my grandmother realise the influence that the young Bobby Helpmann would come to have on Australian theatre and ballet. As a dancer from a younger generation, I was never given the chance to see Helpmann dance live, let alone see him perform in the early years of his career. However, reading Robert Helpmann, a Servant of Art has allowed me too to enjoy Helpmann’s magnificent talents and to really appreciate the great role he has played in Australian art, shaping Australian dance today.
The book is so detailed, containing much valuable information on every page, with beautiful pictures of Helpmann throughout the years. Many personal and professional images have been gathered together for the first time in this, a ballet lover’s dream, including photographs of dancers Margot Fonteyn, Anna Pavolva, Maina Gielgud, Marilyn Rowe and Rudolf Nureyev.
In the forward by Maina Gielgud AO, former artistic director of the Australian Ballet, Gielgud expresses that the Australian Ballet and the Royal Ballet are indebted to Helpmann, with numerous well-known choreographers, such as Graeme Murphy, also influenced by Helpmann’s stagecraft and sense of the theatre. ‘We shall never see another “ Bobby Helpmann” … a legend!’ says Gielgud.
Despite the extraordinary breadth of his career and the acclaim his work in Australia received at the time, very little has been written about Helpmann’s career locally until now.
Dr Anna Bemrose was motivated to write Helpmann’s
biography because of his remarkable multi-faceted international career, delving into a number of private and public collections both in Australia and the UK to build her research. |
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