Borovansky Ballet

Australian Tour 1951 Her Majesty's Theatre Melbourne

The Australian Ballet is the largest classical ballet company in Australia. It was founded by J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd. and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1962, with the English-born dancer, teacher, repetiteur and director Dame Peggy van Praagh as founding artistic director. Today, it is recognised as one of the world's major international ballet companies.

The roots of the Australian Ballet can be found in the Borovansky Ballet, a company founded in 1940 by the Czech dancer Edouard Borovansky. Borovansky had been a dancer in the touring ballet company of the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova and, after visiting Australia on tour with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, he decided to remain in Australia, establishing a ballet school in Melbourne in 1939, out of which he developed a performance group which became the Borovansky Ballet. The company was supported and funded by J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd from 1944. Following Borovansky's death in 1959, the English dancer and administrator Dame Peggy van Praagh was invited to become artistic director of the company. J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd decided to disband the Borovansky Ballet in 1961.

This Souvenir Program is from the 1951 Australian Production Sleeping Beauty Choreography by Miro Zloch after Marius Petipa

Dancers: Feodor Shevlugin, Sandra Vane, John Auld, Desmond Meyers, Graham Smith, Dorothy Stevenson, Phyllis Kennedy, Pamela Wyatt, Jack Manuel, Joan Osborne, Ron Paul, Eve King, Kenn Gillespie, Helene Ffrance, Tom Merrifeild, June Wood