Hélène Kirsova

Hélène Kirsova (18 June 1910 – 22 February 1962) was a Danish prima ballerina, choreographer and ballet teacher and is noted as the founder of the first professional ballet company in Australia. She trained in Paris with former Sergei Diaghilev ballet dancers and choreographers. She then performed in companies run by Léo Staats and Ida Rubinstein before in 1931 becoming a soloist with Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, dancing for several years in Europe and North America. In 1936, as a principal dancer, she joined René Blum's Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in which she scored a singular success in London. Later that year she joined Colonel Wassily de Basil's Monte Carlo Russian Ballet as prima ballerina on an extensive tour of Australia and New Zealand where she was fêted by critics and audiences. She remained in Australia, started a ballet school in Sydney, and in 1941 formed the Kirsova Ballet. Despite wartime restrictions she directed the company for several years before retiring in 1948. She has been described as the "Godmother" of Australian ballet.

Early life Ellen Elisabeth Kirsten Wittrup Hansèn, later professionally known as Hélène Kirsova, was born in the Danish capital of Copenhagen (København ) on 18 June 1910, the youngest of four children. Her father, Christian Sophüs Ferdinand Hansèn, who was born in Rørvig, Denmark in 1874, was a restaurateur and garage owner. Her mother was Ingeborg Marie Katrine Vittrup or Wittrup born in 1872 in Ålborg, Denmark.

Adopting her mother's maiden name (Wittrup) as her surname, Kirsova began ballet classes in Copenhagen with Emilie Walbom. Walbom, a Danish ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Danish Ballet, set up her ballet school – Fru Walbom's Balletskole – in 1910. It became popular with the daughters of the Copenhagen bourgeoisie though Walbom was particularly interested in those girls, like Kirsova, who wanted to become professional dancers. She ended each season with a performance by her students, which enabled Kirsova to give her first appearances in public. Kirsova also attended classes given by Jenny Møller who started teaching in Copenhagen in 1919 when Kirsova was nine. She also trained briefly with Michel Fokine during his stay in Denmark in 1918–19.

Kirsova became a very popular student ballet dancer as a teenager in Copenhagen, and before she was 18 she was presented with a crown-shaped gold brooch scattered with diamonds by King Christian X of Denmark who was delighted with her dancing. She wore the brooch throughout her life.

Training in Paris When Walbom closed her school in 1928, the 18-year-old Kirsova begged her parents to be allowed to move to Paris to further her ballet training. Kirsova kept her year of birth secret throughout her career and as a result she was generally considered to be one or two years younger than her real age, which may have engendered the idea that she left for Paris when she was 16. Staats was French and had been a premier danseur at the Opéra de Paris and had then become the Opéra's premier maître de ballet. He opened his school in Rue Saulnier, just behind the Folies Bergère, in 1926. Yegorova, another Russian, also trained in Saint Petersburg before dancing as a prima ballerina for the Imperial Russian Ballet and Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In 1923 she began to teach in Paris as head of the Ballets Russes school at 15 Rue de la Rochefoucauld. Kirsova won immediate recognition dancing in favourite classic ballets by choreographers Michel Fokine and Marius Petipa. Staats commented on her performances: "She is one of the best young dancers of today and will be a star of tomorrow." She was one of the few female ballet directors of her era.

Nijinska, as Rubinstein's principal choreographer, brought to the company youngsters like Kirsova "who would prove themselves in the years to come". Many of them were to work in the post-Diaghilev Ballets Russes and then move on to prominent status in the ballet world. Rubinstein had inherited great wealth and was able to support large, lavish and significant ballets in which Kirsova made her first appearances on the Parisian stage and in houses around Europe.

The engagement with Rubinstein afforded Kirsova the opportunity to make her first appearances at the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris and, though not yet a leading dancer, to be noticed. As well as further seasons in Paris, Kirsova toured with the company on various engagements around Europe, including in Monte-Carlo, Milan, Rome, and Vienna. In July 1931 the company also travelled to London for a Royal Opera House season which the writer on ballet Arnold Haskell described as a "magnificent failure". London saw Kirsova's final appearances with the Rubinstein company. Before returning to Paris, she took the opportunity to study with the former Russian dancer Nikolai Legat, who had been a premier dancer with the Russian Imperial Ballet, and with the English-born Margaret Craske, who had studied under Enrico Cecchetti. The compulsion was to continue the work and legacy of Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes, who had died in 1929, by filling the void after his troupe's collapse. The new company contracted two choreographers, George Balanchine and Léonide Massine, who set about hiring dancers.

The nucleus of the new company was formed with established members of the old Diaghilev Ballets Russes, but the two choreographers wanted to "infuse it with new blood on the ballerina level".

Kirsova had the advantage that her reputation with the Rubinstein troupe was well established (and it had been Massine, along with Nijinska, who had brought her into that company) and she had already attracted favourable notice. Though she was by now 21, and somewhat older than the so-called Baby Ballerinas, she was thought to be only about 19, and so was encouraged by Balanchine and Massine to try for the new Monte-Carlo troupe. She auditioned before Blum, de Basil, Balanchine and Serge Lifar in a small classroom at the Théâtre Mogador studio in Paris. Lifar, who had taught her her first adagio lesson at Egorova's studio, did some adagio work with her and she was immediately engaged for the company as a soloist.

However, in a troupe that would be perceived by the public to be mostly Russian, de Basil insisted that the name with which Kirsova had been working, Ellen Wittrup, should be Russified. A move from "Ellen" to "Lena" was quickly achieved, but the name "Wittrup" resisted any simple form of conversion to a Russian-sounding name. Accordingly, "Kirsova" was chosen for her, and she initially used the name "Lena Kirsova" professionally before changing the first name again to the more French "Hélène". (Until her marriage in 1938 she continued to travel under her real name of Ellen Wittrup-Hansen.)

By late October 1931 the company of about 30 dancers, A number of ballets were seen in the early months of 1932 as part of the Monte-Carlo opera season which began on 21 January. The ballet season, featuring what was now known as Les Ballet Russes de Monte-Carlo, opened on 12 April 1932. As the season progressed new ballets were introduced. At this time Kirsova was still billed as "Lena Kirsova".

European tour The first season in Monte-Carlo was regarded as a major success, and offers came in for a European tour, beginning in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 9 June 1932. The Ballets Russes historian, Vicente García-Márquez, has written that "The audience was ecstatic and reviews rapturous. The new Ballets Russes had conquered Paris ..." Kirsova attracted praise in Les Sylphides, one critic claiming that, with three of her colleagues, she could not be "surpassed by any other dancers of the moment".

The company left Paris for a three-week season in London. It was to be a significant engagement for Kirsova because for her it was a notable success and brought her lasting esteem.

London's ballet audiences took Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo to their hearts and the three-week season was an "unexpected" triumph. The programmes went out late at night from a tiny studio in Portland Place, London. At 11.10pm on 3 November, in a performing area 1.8 metres wide by 1.2 metres deep, nine artists of the Ballets Russes staged 30 minutes of ballet scenes. The music was provided by a quartet from the Alhambra orchestra, with the musical director sitting on the piano because of lack of space. It is not known how many viewers saw Kirsova in this programme, but the number of television receivers on which it could be watched at that time numbered only 5000 at the most.

The United States On 12 December 1933, the company set sail from Plymouth for New York City in the United States on the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique SS Lafayette. It was Kirsova's first trip outside the continent of Europe (and her first voyage on rough seas; she was violently sea-sick for a couple of days).

At the end of the tour of North America the company sailed for France on the CGT French Line SS Paris. and Le Beau Danube and also drew the admiring attention of the critics to her humorous performance in La Boutique fantasque.

The London gossip columns also sought out Kirsova off-stage. One admired her "poise" and "intelligent eyes" and remarked that "quite a lot of pure Cockney" learnt from the porters in the fruit and flower market in which the Opera House stood "is finding its way into her vocabulary".

On stage, Kirsova was equally admired: "Praise for the young Hélène Kirsova ... is unalloyed", wrote one observer, adding that "Kirsova should be capable before long of shining like Karsavina, Lopokova and Danilova shone in the nineteen-twenties".

Return to North America Another American tour followed. September found the company at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. The troupe struggled for breath control at an altitude of 2,240 metres with every performance there marred by fainting dancers until they could become acclimatised, before finishing up for five performances, "tired and little ragged around the edges of their dance patterns" at the small Majestic Theatre on Broadway in New York, no more suitable theatre being available, in March 1935. As well as some of the classics there were two new ballets by Fokine: Don Juan and L'Épreuve d'amour, the latter featuring Kirsova in a "memorable" creation of Papillon in a shimmering butterfly costume designed by the French artist André Derain. The Monte-Carlo season was "one of the most successful on record".

London With this achievement, the company moved on to London where they opened with 48 artists at the Alhambra Theatre on 15 May 1936 for a two-month season.

The company attracted outstandingly good reviews, with many favouring Kirsova. She "danced with authority", "dances delightfully as the teasing Butterfly of Fokine's Chinese ballet", "grace and charm of this clever ballerina", "The Butterfly, most piquantly danced by Hélène Kirsova", "Kirsova lighter than ever", "Mme Kirsova ... really flawless", "Mdlle Helen Kirsova was an outstandingly good Papillon", "Helene Kirsova .. at the top of [her] form", and "Kirsova (whom watch)". But despite her impressive personal reviews, Kirsova had been "all too little used", Further dancers came from the main de Basil company and from Blum's Ballet de Monte-Carlo, whose acclaimed run at the Alhambra had just ended, together with a number of new discoveries from Paris and elsewhere. Kirsova, described by Arnold Haskell at the time as a "fine dancer", was invited to join the new company, for the first time in the rank of prima ballerina, to be the company's leading female dancer, a position she held jointly with Valentina Blinova. The two women and Woizikovsky were the stars of the new troupe.

The writer Michael Salter has observed in his biography of Edouard Borovansky that this second Ballets Russes company "was in no sense a collection of second raters. Woizikovsky was one of the great names of Russian ballet, a former Diaghilev principal who had no superiors in his field, and Hélène Kirsova ... was a ballerina of considerable stature". He goes on to observe that Igor Yousskevitch and Roland Guerard, also in the company, were among the finest classical male dancers of the period, and Tamara Tchinarova was a soloist "of individuality, strength, and extraordinary beauty". Kirsova, as a prima ballerina, was to find herself publicised in a way she had not experienced before, including being recruited by advertisers to promote products. One advertisement read: "Mlle Kirsova uses and recommends Mercolized Wax, the world-famous face cream".

Arnold Haskell in "Dancing Around the World" reports that this first performance in Adelaide was a "triumphant success" and that in a city of only 250,000 inhabitants the theatre was nearly full for eighteen days "and the season could have continued another eighteen days so great was the enthusiasm".

Orchestral problems A serious problem was apparent regarding the orchestra in Adelaide, and indeed at other venues throughout the tour. Australia and New Zealand had a shortage of experienced, high-quality orchestral players available for theatres, a problem exacerbated by the recent expansion of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). The impresarios responsible for the tour, theatrical management company and theatre owners J.C.Williamson, employed local musicians for the Ballets Russes tour, but few of them had any ensemble experience.

Jascha Horenstein, who had much European concert experience but little experience of ballet, was employed by de Basil as conductor for the tour, but he was unable to persuade his inexperienced pit orchestras to reach an acceptable standard. Wireless Weekly put it bluntly: "The orchestra rarely rose above the level of fair rehearsal. In some cases the music was obviously too difficult for the players. Jascha Horenstein ... made the only possible decision – he determined at all costs to keep the band playing until the last bar".

Melbourne The company left Adelaide by special train at midnight on 28 October The orchestral problem persisted throughout the tour, even to the end. A critic commenting on the music when the troupe returned to Melbourne was a damning: "Orchestra Inadequate".

Despite difficulties with the bands, Kirsova was steadily working her way into the hearts of the critics and the Australian audiences. It was the start of "a tremendous public following". Towards the end of the season in Melbourne, Kirsova's pas de deux with Guerard in Scuola di Ballo was acclaimed as "a delicious fragment, bubbling with high spirits and humour". Haskell wrote of her portrayal of the "shy, brilliant bird" in The Firebird as "one of the most perfect things seen in this or any other season". The Australian dance writer and archivist, Michelle Potter, has suggested that "perhaps the roles for which she was most praised in the Australian press were those of the Ballerina in Petrushka and, especially when partnered by Igor Youskevitch, Columbine in Le Carnaval. Her performances in Les Sylphides were also especially admired, as was her portrayal of the widow in L'Amour sorcier".

The dancers were not acclimatised to the excessive heat and humidity in Melbourne and the resulting fatigue on one night affected Kirsova: at the beginning of the Blue Bird pas de deux she collapsed on stage and had to be carried off by Guerard. Sorley Walker has recorded that "Kirsova was emerging as the ballet-goers' choice of a company star. She was working hard, stimulated by appreciation, and her performances as the Street Dancer, as the Widow in L'Amour sorcier and L'Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird) pas de deux made her a firm favourite". Other tributes to Kirsova flowed. One critic wrote: "Kirsova never looks lovelier". Haskell declared that in this Australasian tour, which he followed as de Basil's liaison officer in the impresario's absence, "Kirsova, ever an exquisite craftsman, made a success of every role she undertook, and worked with exceptional intelligence and an eye for detail that I have rarely seen equalled". The company left the next day on the Huddart Parker line Wanganella for a turbulent crossing of the Tasman Sea to New Zealand and an opening at His Majesty's Theatre in Auckland. The journey was scheduled to take three and a half days, but rough seas delayed the arrival in Auckland until the day of the opening there, 3 March. As a result, the packed house at the theatre endured a much-delayed start to the evening, but "Dressed and gowned for the occasion as it had not been for many years", enthused the Auckland Star, "it was, indeed, a brilliant house, which bubbled into early enthusiasm that intensified with the successive performances".

The company filled the theatre every night and every matinée of the Auckland season, with the critics acclaiming Kirsova's "high favour" in the city.

Following the closing night in Auckland the company set off by special train on a week-long provincial tour of mostly one-night stands, performing at the Theatre Royal in Hamilton, the New Plymouth Opera House, the Opera House at Whanganui, the Palmerston North Opera House, the Municipal Theatre at Hastings and the Regent Theatre in Masterton. All the provincial dates sold out.

Kirsova had attracted the enthralled attention of the press and the public throughout the tour of New Zealand, though not at the expense of the company's other prima ballerina, Valentina Blinova, who was regarded by the press and advertisers – though not necessarily by the public – as the bigger star. Typical of the never less than favourable reviews received by Kirsova was that in the Otago Daily Times enthusing about her contribution in Dunedin: "Mlle Kirsova's Columbine was a delight. What exquisite coquetry is hers! She radiates charm and is fortunate enough to be able to add to it genuine artistry – a facility of movement, a grace of gesture, and a technique which provide all the hallmarks of the truly great artist."

New Zealand ballet lovers were ecstatic about the whole tour. "Audiences have to go back ten years to the witchery of Pavlova, and further back than that to the porcelain beauty of the adorable Genée to find a parallel to the present season", wrote one theatre columnist.

Kirsova left Dunedin by express boat on 3 May, bound for Sydney, leaving the rest of the company to follow on the Union Steam Ship Company SS Awatea. Arriving in Sydney, she was welcomed by reporters and caused some controversy by saying that New Zealanders were "comfortable, but so dull". She later claimed that she had been misquoted and clarified that she found parts of the New Zealand countryside "dull", rather than New Zealanders.

Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide

On 7 May, the Ballets Russes company, including Kirsova, left Sydney on their special train to Brisbane, Queensland and His Majesty's Theatre where they opened on 8 May. In contrast to other Australian cities and the New Zealand tour, the 22 performances in Brisbane were not so successful. Audience reaction was cool. Kirsova gave her Fire Bird again on 23 June.

With the company worn out from a 10-month Australasian tour which had been planned to last only four months, Adelaide was a farewell stop for the company, with 9 performances from 7–14 July 1937. During the tour, Australians and New Zealanders had fallen in love with ballet wholeheartedly and they had filled nearly every theatre for every performance. But the true dazzling success of the tour had been Hélène Kirsova. Adeline Genée, Anna Pavlova and Olga Spessivtseva had previously toured Australia but they were mature; Kirsova was the first young ballerina to make an impact. Audiences acclaimed every appearance she made on the stages of Australia and New Zealand in 1936 and 1937 above and beyond every other dancer in the company.

Marriage and a temporary retirement Madame Erik Fischer (Hélène Kirsova) The Home magazine August 1938. Photo: Noel Rubie The company left Australia on 15 July 1937 on the P&O liner RMS Strathnaver to return to Europe. Kirsova was with the rest of the company on the boat, but it was an "open secret" in the company that it was possible she would be returning to Australia to marry. When she reached Paris, both Blum and de Basil offered her new contracts. She declined both.

She visited London for a short time, having suits and dresses made,

She returned to Australia on the Strathnaver, arriving in Sydney on 19 January 1938. She told reporters that as she was about to get married she had definitely retired from dancing "for ever".

She married Fischer at the Anglican St Mark's Church, Darling Point, Sydney on 10 February 1938, The bride was given away by Thomas Herbert "Bertie" Kelly, who was chairman of Perpetual Trustees, a director of the brewers Tooth and Co. and of the Bank of New South Wales, and the reception was held at the Kelly's Darling Point home. Among the guests was the newspaper publisher Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax, who later became a sizeable investor in Kirsova's ballet company a few years later. The bride and groom spent their honeymoon at the Moombara home of Arthur Allen, head of the law firm Allen, Allen and Hemsley, on the Port Hacking Estuary. Kirsova was now moving in influential and moneyed circles.

The couple settled into a small, Spanish-type house at Clifton Gardens, a luxury suburb on the northern shores of Sydney Harbour. "It was a beautiful house and situation" wrote one of her later dance colleagues. "The land, which was natural bush, went down to the water of the harbour." was born to the couple in February 1939. He and Kirsova, as Danish citizens, were relieved by an Australian government announcement that Danes in Australia would be regarded as "nationals of a friendly country".

The Hélène Kirsova School of Russian Ballet Tradition

Kirsova emerged from her two and a half years retirement on 29 July 1940 when she opened the Hélène Kirsova School of Russian Ballet in the Diaghileff Tradition. "I feel I have been resting from the ballet long enough", she told a journalist, "and in establishing my school for ballet I hope to be able to build up a permanent company to give performances in the best ballet tradition." This was the first inkling that there would be a Kirsova ballet company. Other commentators picked up on her comments. One, interviewing Kirsova a few days after the opening of the school, reported that "Kirsova is convinced that in the not too distant future Australia will have its own ballet dancers, choreographers, decor designers, in fact an Australian ballet company." He continued: "For this she will work ...There is none other better prepared ... to be the founder of an Australian ballet tradition of our own."

Kirsova's name and reputation in Australia was such that she attracted many pupils, including some who had been training elsewhere to a professional standard and were eager to take advantage of her teaching. With her experience in the world of ballet she brought to younger generations of Australian dancers the traditions of Russian ballet and the great European teachers: Staats, Egorova, Legat, Preobrajenska, Fokine, Massine, Balanchine and Nijinska. One writer has reported that she would give her dancers a long, complex enchainment: "When they were nearing the end, she would say 'Reverse it'. They would have to turn around and do it in reverse. Not only was this physically demanding, it was mentally so. This training gave the dancers the skills to quickly learn new choreography."

One writer has observed that she was "not the most communicative or approachable of people" and that "she was frequently rude, cutting and invariably unfriendly to her lesser talents, many of whom disliked her intensely ... But to her favourites ... and Kirsova was a woman who played favourites openly ... she was always warm and loving".

The problems to be faced in setting up a professional company in the early years of the Second World War were many. One of Kirsova's associates (and later her second husband), Peter Bellew, the editor of the magazine, Art in Australia, and Secretary of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia in New South Wales, wrote about the obstacles that were faced. "The half-dozen legitimate theatres existing in the Commonwealth [of Australia] are placed in capital cities from 600 to 700 miles apart. Electricians, stage hands and other essential technicians are almost unprocurable. In 1940 properly trained and experienced dancers were even rarer – a strange condition in a country which boasted numerous dancing 'academies' in every city and large town." Male dancers of any experience were difficult to come by because most had been called up for the services and there was a constant threat of those already in the company being enlisted. Also, movement around the country was strictly controlled and trains had no space to transport stage scenery when military personnel and supplies took precedence.

Kirsova also had to face the scathing views of the major theatre owner J. C. Williamson, run by the Tait family. "The creation of a full sized Russian Ballet Company upon a proper professional and commercial basis," Bellew wrote, "was considered impossible by theatrical entrepreneurs who gave three main reasons – lack of public, lack of properly trained dancers and lack of theatres."

Dancers The troupe Kirsova formed, initially with 25 members, was dominated at first by former de Basil Ballets Russes dancers who had stayed on in Australia after the Ballets Russes tour of 1938–39, wary of returning to Europe with war imminent, among them Tamara Tchinarova, Raissa Koussnetsova, Valeri Shaievsky, and Edouard Sobichevsky. Former de Basil dancers Serge Bousloff and Valentin Zeglovsky joined subsequently.

Kirsova also promoted a number of Australian soloists from her school. Prominent among them were Rachel Cameron, "a dancer of rare musical sensitivity and intelligence" who had been expelled from Edouard Borovansky's school in Melbourne; Strelsa Heckelman, the "baby" of the company who came to Kirsova on the advice of de Basil when she was only 14; Helene ffrance, who arrived at the studio in 1942 as "an awkward novice" but blossomed rapidly into a soloist "with unusual grace and purity of line"; June Newstead, an arresting stage personality; Nicholas Ivangine, who joined in 1943 but was already ailing and died very young of Hodgkin's disease; Henry Legerton, who had trained for a year in England and whose appearances with Kirsova were limited by his duties with the Australian Army; and, later, Paul Hammond (then working under the name Clementin) a dancer of exceptional elevation and a master of "some quite startling technical tricks". as did Thadée Slavinsky in 1942, Mischa Burlakof and Valentin Zeglovsky.

She had two particular patrons who gave the Kirsova Ballet much needed financial backing: the impresario Edward Tait, who with his family controlled the J C Williamson theatres, and her major benefactor Warwick Fairfax, who controlled many newspapers and publications, including the Sydney Morning Herald,

As well as enthusing over modern art Kirsova also loved contemporary music The company danced three ballets: a restaging of Léonide Massine's Les Matelots about sailors and their girlfriends, and two new works choreographed by Kirsova, A Dream – and a Fairy Tale, her first choreographic work, with music by Frédéric Chopin, and based on a Danish fairytale about dolls who come to life, and Vieux Paris, set in the 1890s with music by Jacques Offenbach and Richard Strauss.

Another charity season for the Red Cross was held shortly afterwards with performances of A Dream – and a Fairy Tale, Les Matelots, and Vieux Paris. This was followed by a third charity event from the 4–6 October 1941: three days in an elegant home in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney, where the troupe gave Les Sylphides and Vieux Paris. The newspapers reported that "tumultuous applause" arose at the final curtain of the first gala performance. The ballet critic of the Sydney Morning Herald welcomed the performances: "The dancing was so clean and smooth that it was difficult to believe that the young Australians dancing were not artists with years of experience behind them". This criticism was somewhat biased because it was written by Kirsova's major investor, Warwick Fairfax, writing in his own newspaper. Critics were also enthusiastic about the presentation, settings, costumes, and choreography. One declared they were "comparable with programmes we have seen presented by visiting European companies". It ran for 25 consecutive performances, establishing a world record for an individual ballet. Other ballets seen in the season included A Dream – and a Fairy Tale, Les Matelots, and Vieux Paris. The season was a big success, with full houses throughout. Kirsova hoped that the Minerva would become the "home" of her company for many seasons to come, but she fell out with the company managing the theatre.

At the close of the Minerva season on 2 January 1942, Kirsova returned to her idea that she would like to form a permanent Australian ballet company. "Our season at the Minerva has proved that the Sydney public is willing to support a permanent ballet," she said. "If the encouragement in the other States proves as great as here we will be able to look forward to regular seasons in all capital cities and other important centres". She was even more optimistic in an interview with Melbourne's The Argus newspaper in January 1942, stating: "With foreign companies unable to encroach on this field, it is Australia's moment to prove that a regular ballet can be maintained here. We are trying to do it at the most difficult time, and under difficult conditions, but I am confident that we can succeed, and if we can succeed now, then I am sure that after the war a great future lies before us, and I want to see an all-Australian company travelling abroad to compete with companies of other nationalities."

She was to return to this ambition on numerous occasions over the following years, developing the idea further even after the Kirsova Ballet had fallen out of contention, but she was never to see its realisation. She died a few months before the official 1962 formation of The Australian Ballet.

Melbourne Rachel Cameron and Henry Legerton dance in the Kirsova Les Sylphides. (Photographer Max Dupain)

The first trial to see if the company would be accepted in other States came quickly with a season booked to open at His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne on 31 January 1942. The young dancers arrived by train from Sydney on 29 January, excited to be on tour for the first time and to be dancing on a larger stage than any previously at their disposal. Kirsova refused to use the J. C. Williamson orchestra, which she considered, as always, to be second-rate. It was the same one that had caused problems for the Ballets Russes dancers at His Majesty's Theatre in October 1936. The band had to be paid because of Kirsova's rental arrangements with J. C. Williamson, so she paid them but once again used her own pianists.

The Melbourne season's programme included four Kirsova-created ballets: A Dream – and a Fairy Tale, Faust, Vieux Paris, and Les Matelots. Les Sylphides also made an appearance, together with L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird) and Manuel de Falla's Ritual Fire Dance. When the season opened there were packed audiences with people queuing from 6am every day to buy tickets. The season broke war-time audience records.

At this point, at the same time as losing three of her principal former Ballets Russes dancers, most of Kirsova's remaining male dancers were conscripted into the services or war industries. In particular, her promising male dancer Henry Legerton, for whom Kirsova had predicted a spectacular career, was called up and within weeks was serving in New Guinea. Edouard Sobishevsky was also conscripted but was later able to secure exemption.

Kirsova spent the next 12 months finding and training new dancers. It was at this point that the 19-year-old Paul Clementin joined the company as a principal and soloist. His real surname was Hammond, but Kirsova persuaded him to adapt his middle name of Clement for his stage surname. but all of the seasons played to packed houses.

From 15 to 20 March the company was back with Revolution of the Umbrellas again, and the premiere of another Kirsova ballet, Hansel and Gretel with music by Engelbert Humperdinck. Again, the Red Cross and the War Orphans Appeal were the beneficiaries.

The company's return to the Conservatorium was from 20 to 24 July, now with 45 dancers. Francis Poulenc's Jeunesse was a world premiere, as was Capriccio to the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Kirsova once again choreographing. Faust made another appearance. The usual charities benefitted.

Kirsova dances again A somewhat longer season from 18 to 28 September brought back Jeunesse, Capriccio, Hansel and Gretel and the classic Lac des Cygnes, and, to the delight of Sydney audiences, Hélène Kirsova herself was now dancing again, every night, for the first time since 1937. She told the newspapers that it had not been her intention to dance again because she wished to teach and develop young Australian ballerinas to enable them to dance all the roles. "The programme for the new season, however, is so exacting and will make such demands on the company", wrote one reporter, that Kirsova had decided "to ease the strain on the others by dancing a spectacular role, which has an important solo, in 'Capriccio'."

By the end of this season the Red Cross and the War Orphans had benefitted by £3,755 and funds were also being dedicated to a new charity, Kirsova's own, which was intent on establishing fully-equipped children's playgrounds in the deprived and congested area of Erskineville in Sydney. By September 1943 a proportion of profits went towards buying a block of land for the site of the first playground. and another ballet, not yet named, set to the César Franck Variations symphoniques.

There was, however, another premiere, Harlequin danced to the music of Maurice Ravel, and the appearance of other favourites: Les Sylphides, Hansel and Gretel, Capriccio, Lac des Cygnes and Vieux Paris. Kirsova danced in the premiere of Harlequin, in Capriccio and in the "spectacular waltz" in Vieux Paris. "This is the Kirsova of the palmy days of the Russian ballet", wrote the critic of the Sydney Morning Herald on Christmas Day, "accomplished, expressive, technically brilliant". Kirsova was not alone in the critic's praise: "conspicuously good performances from Thadée Slavinsky, Rachel Cameron, Strelsa Heckelman, and Trafford Whitelock ... there was increasing evidence of the improving technique of the Australian male dancer, Paul Clementin, who is showing greater confidence and proficiency with every performance ... Helen Ffrance, one of the most attractive 'natural' dancers Sydney has seen for a long time". Also coming in for praise were "the delicious Sainthill decor, the florid costumes and sumptuous ensembles".

Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane The impresarios of the J. C. Williamson theatre group, who controlled most of the large theatres in Australia and were wanting to house a permanent ballet company on their circuit, had been watching Kirsova closely. Liking the packed houses and the early morning queues for tickets, and the widespread appreciation of the critics, J. C. Williamson offered Kirsova a tour of Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, starting in January and ending in May 1944.

A problem arose at this point. In wartime Australia, the movement of people around the country, particularly between states, was strictly controlled. Permits for interstate travel were issued only for defence personnel and others involved in the war effort. Those employed in essential manufacturing were monitored closely. A complaint was lodged with the manpower authorities in New South Wales concerning the appearance of the Kirsova Ballet in Melbourne suggesting that if Kirsova and her dancers were doing essential war work permission should not be given for them to travel to Melbourne. It is thought the complaint may have come from Edouard Borovansky, who ran a ballet school in Melbourne, staged performances in the city and considered Melbourne to be "his" territory.

A few days after closing at the Conservatorium the company left for Melbourne to open at His Majesty's Theatre on 15 January 1944 for a three-week season. Special matinée performance were also staged at the smaller Comedy Theatre. The first season included Lac des Cygnes, Jeunesse, Harlequin, and Vieux Paris in which Melbourne audiences were able to see Kirsova dancing in their city for the first time in nearly seven years. The Argus newspaper reported that she received "a tremendous ovation". The second week added Hansel and Gretel, Harlequin, Les Sylphides, and Kirsova dancing once again in Revolution of the Umbrellas. In the third week Capriccio was added.

Three days after closing in Melbourne, the company opened in Adelaide at the Theatre Royal, presenting a three-week season of Les Sylphides, Hansel and Gretel, Harlequin, Vieux Paris, Revolution of the Umbrellas, Lac des Cygnes, Capriccio, and Jeunesse. As Adelaide had been the scene of Kirsova's greatest triumph in Australia in 1936 she made sure to add to the advertisements for the season the promise that "Madame Kirsova is dancing at all performances". The houses were packed and fans queued for two days to buy tickets.

A response the following day by the Rationing Commission, however, argued that the Kirsova Ballet had in fact been issued with material far in excess of that issued to any similar company or group in Australia.

It was possible that Kirsova's refusal to compromise was going to lead to the demise of her ballet company. She could not organise tours, and even single seasons would be difficult. As a result, she could not offer regular work to her dancers and so she gave them permission to join the Borovansky ballet, which was looking for dancers. Now those who survived were being demobilised and Kirsova was anxious that the men who wanted to return to dancing should be able to do so. One important attender of her classes was Henry Legerton, back from army service and working enthusiastically to make up for lost time.

Kirsova continued to hope that one day she would be able to set up her ballet company again, and in pursuit of establishing a suitable theatre in Sydney not controlled by the J. C. Williamson organisation, in July 1946 she became involved in discussions about the future of Sydney's 2,000-seat Capitol Theatre, which was to be sold by the City Council. Kirsova had long maintained that it should be preserved and set up as a national theatre for drama, ballet and opera. She was opposed by both the city's politicians and executives of the Australian Broadcasting Commission and her attempts failed (though, many decades later, the theatre is now host to major musicals, ballet and opera).

The school continued to operate until it closed in January 1948, though Kirsova herself was not involved in its final stages as at the end of 1946 she returned to Denmark. She took a house just outside Copenhagen and lived there with her son Ole. On 16 October 1947 she obtained a divorce from Fischer.

Kirsova had known Bellew for some time through their shared passion for modern art and he had edited Pioneering Ballet in Australia, a history of the Kirsova Ballet, published in 1945. Bellew had recently joined the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a visual art expert in charge of the Arts and Letters Division They later moved to a sixth-floor Paris apartment in Rue Galilée near the Arc de Triomphe, a short walk from the UNESCO headquarters in Avenue Kléber. Since the Russian Revolution of 1917 the West knew little of what had been happening in Russian ballet. She analysed and appraised the Russian dancers' technique, after attending rehearsals and performances and talking with all the leading dancers, choreographers and administrators. "One of the greatest experiences of my life," she said of her visit. She also contributed to A Dictionary of Modern Ballet in 1959.

Kirsova died early and suddenly. On a regular trip to London in 1962 with her husband, she was taken seriously ill. An emergency operation was performed at Guy's Hospital, but she died there of cancer on 22 February 1962, at the age of 51. She was cremated.

Legacy Hélène Kirsova's outstanding legacy was her short-lived but highly regarded Kirsova Ballet, the first professional indigenous ballet company in Australia, which amid the deprivations of the Second World War was one of the foundation stones of Australian Ballet.

She was one of the crucial links between the Diaghilev dancers of the early twentieth century and those who dance today. Michelle Potter has written that the fact that hers was the first professional company in Australia "should be enough to ensure Kirsova a permanent place in dance history". Kirsova discovered and encouraged into successful and long-standing careers in international ballet a number of Australasian dancers. Among them were Rachel Cameron, Strelsa Heckelman, Paul Hammond, Peggy Sager, and Henry Legerton.

Potter has also observed that Kirsova made another "enduring and significant contribution to ballet in Australia: being a pioneering patron of theatre design by Australian artists."

Kirsova left eight new ballets which she choreographed for the Kirsova Ballet company. In July 1941 A Dream – and a Fairy Tale and Vieux Paris were both premiered at the New South Wales Conservatorium in Sydney. November 1941 saw the premiere of Faust at the Minerva Theatre, Sydney. Five new ballets appeared in 1943, all premiered at the Conservatorium: Revolution of the Umbrellas in February, Hansel and Gretel in March, Jeunesse and Capriccio in July, and Harlequin in December.

In 1944 and 1945 two books were published in celebration of the Kirsova Ballet. The first, in 1944, was Kirsova Australian Ballet, a collection of drawings and sketches by Trevor Clara made backstage and in the wings during rehearsals and performances. It included a lengthy introduction by Kirsova in which she repeated her belief that ballet is a combination of many arts rather than just dancing, and that such artistic availability existed to be encouraged in Australia. She insisted that trying to keep ballet alive in war-time was "heart-breaking" but that she had done her best to do so, feeling that cultural entertainment during war "is more than ever necessary". She also made another plea for financial support for Australian Ballet. Copies of the book are hard to come by at a reasonable price, though the State Library of Victoria has made it freely available to read digitally.

In 1945, Peter Bellew published Pioneering Ballet in Australia, a well-illustrated history of the Kirsova Ballet with stories of the ballets in the company's repertoire, and many of the facts around their production. Due to the war, paper for book production was rationed, but Kirsova's wealthy patron, the newspaper owner Warwick Fairfax, used his influence with the government to allow the book to be published.

A vast amount of material relating to Kirsova and the Kirsova Ballet is listed freely in Trove, the National Library of Australia's exhaustive collection of links to collections in Australian libraries, universities, museums, galleries and archives, consisting of newspapers, magazines, images, research, books, diaries, letters, people, organisations and websites.

Film exists of some of Kirsova's performances when in Australia with de Basil's Ballets Russes in 1936 and 1937. There is also film of Kirsova's wedding to Erick Fischer in 1938. This surviving footage can be freely viewed on the website of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

Some of the productions of the Ballets Russes in Australia and of the Kirsova Ballet were filmed by a Melbourne balletomane and ciné enthusiast, Dr J Ringland Anderson. The films were first made public in a one-hour documentary, called Another Beginning, produced for Australian television in 1975. They have been transferred to nine hours of videotape and are available to researchers and dance historians in the Australian Archives of the Dance, held in the Performing Arts Collection of the Arts Centre Melbourne, Victoria where further photographs of Kirsova and the Kirsova Ballet are also held.

As well as those held by the National Gallery of Australia and the Melbourne Arts Centre, a significant number of photographs of Kirsova both off-stage and performing can be viewed in the website catalogue of the National Library of Australia.

Oral histories have been recorded by a number of dancers of the Kirsova Ballet, including Paul Hammond, Peggy Sager and Tamara Tchinarova. These can be listened to on the website of the National Library of Australia.