Cecchetti Ballet

Lucie Saronova Memorial Award

Shore Theatre, North Sydney
Friday July 10th

By Dolce Fisher

The Lucie Saronova Memorial Award provides a great opportunity for Cecchetti students. Dancers are able to gain valuable performance experience, whilst competing to win a gold medal and a $1000 cash prize.

Lucie Saronova was personally awarded a teaching certificate by the Maestro Enrico Cecchetti in London and brought her expertise to Melbourne, becoming the founder of the Cecchetti Society in Australia. In 1939 Lucie Saronova became the faculty head of the National Theatre Ballet School and was able to establish Cecchetti on Australian soil.

In recognition of Saronova’s contribution to Australian ballet education, Cecchetti Ballet Australia hold the Lucie Saronova awards as an annual event. This year the competition was held at the Shore Theatre in North Sydney. Students were selected from around Australia to compete for the prestigious award. There were ten lucky students competing for the Silver medal and nine for the Gold medal. Students were chosen from a series of preliminary rounds that took place in each state. The judges then selected two dancers to represent their state in the Sydney finals, bringing some of Australia’s top young dancers together on the one stage.

Lucie Saronova

Students took part in a class by Dianne Pokorny, a Cecchetti examiner based in NSW. The class was viewed by the judges; Marilyn Jones, former Australian Ballet principal dancer and Artistic Director, who has recently been seen performing in Graeme Murphy’s Nutracker, The Story of Clara, and Simon Dow. Having trained with Lucie Saronova as a young dancer, Dow is a former Artistic Director of the West Australian Ballet, Washington Ballet and Milwaukee Ballet.
The students then performed a series of solos for the audience. Compliments to their teachers, they all displayed a high level of technique, performance quality and maturity for such young dancers. They were a delight to watch. With such talent and dedication, they are sure to have great futures in dance.

The finalists were awarded a certificate and a prize pack supplied by dance wear specialists Energetiks, with the medal winners added to the perpetual trophy and awarded a cash prize. The silver medal and $500 cash prize was awarded to Evan Loudon. The judges selected Lucy Kate Gold, a beautiful young dancer, for the Gold medal and $1000 cash prize.

To end the evening the audience were treated to a performance by Sydney’s youth contemporary company, You Move. They showed a new work from their This Way Up season, titled Human Meter. The dancers performed strongly, and although the humour in the work was not always felt by the audience, I enjoyed the piece.

The awards were followed by a two day teacher conference, open to all ballet teachers, but attended predominantly by Cecchetti instructors. The conference covered a variety of subjects including syllabus presentations, pointe work, allegro, teaching with imagery, and nutrition. Highlights were a choreographic workshop with Graeme Murphy, tribute to Valrene Tweedie and a session on motivating boys, with guests Colin Peasley, Graeme Murphy, Simon Dow, Hilary Kaplan, and Athol Willoughby.

The awards and conference were a great event, celebrating Cecchetti Ballet’s strong history in Australia and exciting future ahead.