Rachel Cameron
Rachel Cameron was an Australian ballet dancer and teacher. She was one of the leading dancers in early Australian ballet in the 1940s, performing with the Borovansky and Kirsova ballet companies, and was one of the first ballet dancers in Australia to reach the rank of principal. After emigrating to Great Britain she was an inspirational educator of ballet teachers at the Royal Academy of Dance in London for over forty years. In 2010, she received the Royal Academy of Dance's prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award in recognition of her outstanding services to ballet.
Early life
Rachel Cameron was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, on [27 March 1924. She spent her very early years in the coastal city of Townsville in north-eastern Queensland. She was severely ill as a child and was bored with the enforced regimen of rest imposed on her, but her parents noticed her love of movement and sent her to eurhythmics classes. She later reported that a passerby saw her dancing among some flowers and suggested that she take dance classes. She was enthusiastic about the idea and insisted in taking part when her school offered her dance lessons.At this time Cameron, while only just five years old, saw the Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, formerly of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, dance in Townsville on her final Australian tour in 1929.
Following her father's transfer to another bank branch, the family moved from Townsville to Sydney in about 1930, settling in the suburb of Roseville, and it was in Sydney at the age of 10 that Cameron saw the legendary ballerina of the Paris Opera in the 1920s, Olga Spessivtseva, dance during her truncated tour of Australia with the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet.
Enchanted with the world of dance, in Sydney Cameron was able to pursue further dance lessons with Muriel Sievers. Sievers had studied in London with prima ballerina Phyllis Bedells in the technique of the Association of Operatic Dancing. This English system was the foundation of Cameron's formal ballet training.
As her talent was recognised, the pupil-teacher relationship with Sievers quickly developed. She was invited by her to help teach the youngest classes on Saturday mornings, and as a result Cameron found early on that she had an aptitude for teaching which was to serve her well for the rest of her life. Sievers also insisted that Cameron take piano lessons, and allowed her to borrow from her collection of books on dance. Interestingly for Cameron's future teaching career, among the books she borrowed was the Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina's Theatre Street. Cameron recalled of Sievers: "She was wise and intelligent, and she fostered talent. She was well before her time."
Training
In the course of her childhood studies, Cameron developed a strong desire to learn to dance professionally. As a girl in Sydney she was able to see the Ballets Russes perform in Australia on a number of tours, the first in 1936 when Cameron was 12. The influence of this Sergei Diaghilev-inspired company was profound on ballet in Australia and after their tours a number of dancers stayed behind. Among them were the Czech ballet dancer, choreographer and director, Edouard Borovansky, and his wife, Russian-born Xenia Nikolaeva Krüger, née Smirnova.In May 1939, the Borovanskys set up a new ballet school in Melbourne, the Academy of Russian Ballet. The studio filled the enormous first floor of Roma House in Elizabeth Street, above a shop selling devotional artefacts. Xenia Borovansky, a ballerina of the Moscow school, was the principal teacher. In starting their school the couple "embarked on an enterprise that permeated the subsequent history of ballet in Australia".
Soon after her fifteenth birthday, and funded by her family, Cameron joined the Borovansky academy. She was one of their first pupils in the special professional morning class held for those who were already dancers of some experience and who intended making dancing their career. The fees were not cheap; a single class was five shillings, though a commitment to taking more than one class in a week occasioned a reduction. Cameron was among a number of those attending the school in its early months whose balletic achievements in later years were profound.
Career
In June 1939, Cameron performed publicly for the first time, being, with Edna Busse, the first of Borovansky's pupils to dance outside the studio: a Melbourne newspaper reported that they danced to the music of Frédéric Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at a charity supper recital. In a short period of time, Borovansky's students were ready for their first joint public performance, though they were not viewed as necessarily that impressive. It has been reported that at this time Borovansky "had about a dozen girls who could dance reasonably well and about half a dozen boys, most of whom couldn't dance at all". With other dance schools they—including Cameron, at the time Borovansky's "showiest technician"—appeared in A First Season of Ballet arranged by the National Theatre Movement and presented at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne on 25 and 26 July 1939. Two weeks later the whole programme was repeated at a Saturday matinée.At the close of 1939, Colonel Wassily de Basil, a Russian ballet impresario, brought his Ballets Russes to the Theatre Royal in Sydney at the start of an Australian tour, and, stung by bad publicity around his comment that Australians lacked the art and finesse to make ballet dancers, sought students from the Borovansky academy to perform as extras. Cameron and other senior pupils travelled to Sydney with the Borovanskys and continued with their classes while making appearances with the Russian Ballet. The 10–weeks season was an opportunity for Cameron, while still only 15, to study closely the work of the distinguished dancers of de Basil's company, such as Vera Nemtchinova, Lubov Tchernicheva and Tamara Toumanova, and to attend as many as she could of choreographer Michel Fokine's rehearsals of Le Coq d'Or with the company, conducted in Russian. "I didn't work with him because I was too young," recalled Cameron. "I was still lacking in technique."
Back in Melbourne in July 1940, Borovansky started to present his pupils to Melbourne audiences, usually in aid of the many war charity appeals. There were also monthly weekend programmes, often under the auspices of the Melbourne Ballet Club, which used a small stage set up in the Borovansky studio. Cameron soon discovered that despite performing publicly and being treated by Borovansky as if they were professionals, they were not paid. As a Borovansky historian has observed, there were limited opportunities for dancers to perform "so they tended to look on these unpaid events as a way of displaying their talents". But she further observes that as few journalists were employed by newspapers to write about ballet, and the charity events were "usually covered from a social angle, focussing on fashion and status, the artistic ability of the performers was rather inconsequential" and the dancers were rarely acknowledged for their unpaid appearances or their talent. As well as public performances, work also began on preparing a first full-scale ballet, Autumn Leaves, and other works like Vltava, Pas Classique and L'Amour Ridicule.
Borovansky Australian Ballet Company
With increasing public acclaim and the growing maturity of his leading students, Borovansky established the Australian Ballet Company, whose first staging was a successful two-night season at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne in December 1940. Cameron was picked out by The Age newspaper for her excellence in the Pavlova role of the Chrysanthemum alongside Serge Bousloff in Autumn Leaves.Cameron, fast developing her powers, was now one of Borovansky's leading dancers and considered to be highly promising. She was "highly sensitive, lyrical and musical", though it was also said her line was "a little short for a truly classical dancer". But despite her growing success she despaired at times of a professional career. Cameron's training "cost a lot of money and there was little likelihood at that early stage of getting any of it back in payment for performances". On 31 March 1941, in search of funds and without Borovansky's permission, she performed with a fellow student for a fee at the Melbourne University Bal Masque. They appeared as "Rachel Cameron and Laurie Rentoul: Danse Espagnol".
When he heard of it, Borovansky's rage was directed at Cameron with full force. He summoned everyone in the studio to the main classroom and called Cameron into the middle of the room. He railed at her that she had gone against his wishes, lowered his standards and performed in a very bad way. "I don't want to see you again, ever!" he concluded. "We couldn't possibly permit you to continue working with us." Cameron, angry and humiliated, left the building in tears. She was never to return.
Kirsova Ballet
"Brutally discarded" by Borovansky, and just 17, in April 1941 Cameron left Melbourne and went home to Sydney. There Hélène Kirsova immediately invited her to join her School of Russian Ballet Tradition. Kirsova was a Danish prima ballerina with a background in the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, and a close working relationship with the choreographer Michel Fokine. After touring Australia with the Ballets Russes in 1936 she remained in the country and married the Danish Consul. She set up her school at Macquarie Place near Circular Quay in Sydney in 1940.Cameron attended her "technically demanding" classes which had a great emphasis on turns, beats and jumps and on "speed, footwork and brain" The classes were mentally and physically demanding. Kirsova soon discovered that in Cameron she had a supreme technician whose lyrical talent she was able to extend. She also recognised that her new protégée had teaching skills and quickly encouraged her to develop them at the school.
Soon after Cameron arrived, Kirsova established her own ballet company, which was eventually known as the Kirsova Ballet and "remained true to the Diaghilev principles", according to Cameron. Young Australian dancers Strelsa Heckelman, Helene ffrance, Henry Legerton and Paul Hammond, and a New Zealander Peggy Sager, were all Kirsova's protégés and along with former Ballets Russes dancers Tamara Tchinarova, Raissa Koussnetsova, Valentin Zeglovsky and Edouard Sobichevsky they were destined by the end of the year to form the nucleus of the first professional ballet company in Australia. But, outstandingly, Kirsova's leading Australian dancer at the beginnings of the company and remaining with utmost loyalty to its end, was Rachel Cameron.
The Kirsova Ballet began, as had Borovansky's, with a series of performances in aid of charity, but in November 1941 Kirsova was able to present her first major season of six weeks at the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross, Sydney. The dancers, including Cameron, were paid trade union rates for the first time and Kirsova paid their dues to Actors Equity of Australia, which registered them as professional performers. "We worked all day," Cameron later recalled. "A class at 9am, then rehearsal, an hour's break for lunch, rehearsals again, and a performance at 8pm." Their rates of pay were low: Tamara Tchinarova, for instance was paid only £3 a week, and only while working.
During the season at the Minerva, Cameron appeared in Les Matelots, played the part of Mephistophela in Faust, and danced "charmingly", partnered by Henry Legerton, in Les Sylphides. Les Sylphides and Faust, with Cameron featured again, appeared once more when the Kirsova Ballet moved to Melbourne for a season at His Majesty's Theatre on 31 January 1942. Cameron's "sensitivity and musicality" in Faust "staggered critics and proved false immediately the popular theory that the Australian temperament is not capable of dramatic depths".
Cameron was now one of Kirsova's leading dancers, making her debut as a principal ballerina in February 1943, and she was to stay with the company until October 1945, performing seasons in Sydney and tours to Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. The company's ever–widening repertoire over the years included several original Kirsova works, such as Revolution of the Umbrellas, Harlequin, and Jeunesse together with a choice of the classics, like Swan Lake, Les Sylphides and Aurora's Wedding. In all, there were 14 ballets in the Kirsova Ballet repertoire.
The role of Little Anna was created in Revolution of the Umbrellas specifically to suit Cameron's musical understanding and dramatic intensity. The Sydney Morning Herald declared that her performance "would command attention anywhere in the world". Another Kirsova creation, Harlequin, based on Maurice Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole, showed Cameron as "a dancer possessing intense musicality and poetic understanding - an artist as well as a dancer", while another chance for Cameron to show her musical sensitivity occurred in Kirsova's Jeunesse, based on a piece by Francis Poulenc.
Kirsova herself, and the critics, agreed that Rachel Cameron was "world class". Kirsova was so pleased with all of her enthusiastic performers that she would have taken the company overseas if there had been no wartime restrictions. She remarked to Cameron that "if she could take us to Europe we would cause a sensation".
Kirsova's associate, Peter Bellew, declared:
Rachel Cameron is a dancer of rare musical sensitivity and intelligence. These qualities, in spite of her rather strong build, give her an exceptionally wide range from classical and romantic roles to the flamboyant characterisation of Rosita in Capriccio and enable her to give a truly spiritual interpretation of the pas de deux in Les Sylphides.. She is so convincing and gives such strength of characterisation to any role she creates that she makes it difficult to imagine them in other hands.
Dance journalist David Jays has written that Cameron
advanced quickly through the ranks; she was a quick study, invaluable if someone was injured. On stage, she married diamond technique to vibrant lyricism, aided by huge, expressive eyes. Her jump was exceptional, her placement unfailingly neat … she was extraordinarily dramatic... she wasn't very tall, but she had this very, very expressive face.
Australian dance writer and archivist, Michelle Potter, has written that Cameron's "happiest days as a dancer were with Kirsova". She reports that Cameron recalled of Kirsova: "She was a woman who tried to mould her company in the Diaghilev tradition where music, the scenery, the dancers became part of one whole, and there it was I think that the true beginnings of Australian ballet lie."
The Kirsova Ballet's final performance was in Brisbane in May 1944. Though the almost monopolistic Australian theatre–owning company JC Williamson offered Kirsova a long–term contract, she was unable to compromise her individualism and creativity in the way JC Williamson required, and declined. Discovering that she was then unable to book their theatres for any more tours, and unable to offer her dancers regular work, she gave permission for them to take work with Edouard Borovansky, whose professional company was now in the ascendant.
Cameron, who would have no more dealings with Borovansky following his treatment of her, remained with Kirsova. A number of Kirsova's other principal dancers also stayed. There were plans made for a season in Sydney in September 1944, but it was postponed indefinitely, ostensibly because Kirsova was unable to buy costume materials because of wartime rationing, but it was more likely the loss of many of her dancers to Borovansky, combined with the lack of theatres available to her, caused the abandonment of the season. Despite rehearsing a new set of ballets for a two–week season at Brisbane City Hall in October 1945, the booking there was cancelled by the city authorities in favour of entertainment for servicemen. At this point, Kirsova closed her company but she continued to operate her ballet school. This gave Cameron the opportunity to further pursue and develop her expertise in teaching, but the school closed in 1946.
To make ends meet, Cameron had to work as a shop assistant in a Sydney book store, the Craftsman Bookshop, but she continued to take classes. She attended evening sessions run by Valya Kouznetsova, a dancer of the Moscow school, who had also stayed in Australia after one of the Ballets Russes tours. Cameron later recalled: "She was no less strict than Kirsova. As I was more advanced than most of her pupils, she told me from the beginning that she wouldn't waste time on correcting me, but would thump me with a ruler, which she did, so that I was covered in bruises."