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.Michael Salter, Borovansky: The Man Who Made Australian Ballet, Wildcat Press, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1980.
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.Household 1187250, Danish Census, 1916, Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), København, Danmark. Her father, Christian Sophüs Ferdinand Hansèn, who was born in Rørvig, Denmark in 1874,Danmark Kirkebøger (Denmark Church Records), 1484–1941. was a restaurateurDanish Census, 1901 and 1921, Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), København, Danmark. and garage owner.Danish Census, 1925 and 1930, Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), København, Danmark. Her mother was Ingeborg Marie Katrine Vittrup or WittrupBefore the later years of the twentieth century, the letter 'V' was a variant of the letter 'W', History, Danish orthography. born in 1872 in Ålborg, Denmark.
As a small child, Kirsova watched one of her elder sisters dance using Dalcroze eurhythmics, and secretly in her own room at night danced by herself. When she was 8 or 9 she was taken to the Royal Danish Theatre where, to the choreography of Michel Fokine, three Russian ballets were given: Les Sylphides, Petrushka and the ballet from Prince Igor. After that performance she resolved to be a dancer and perform those same ballets.SH Richards, "Hélène Kirsova", The Home: an Australian quarterly, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Vol.21 No.9, 2 September 1940.
Adopting her mother's maiden name (Wittrup) as her surname, Kirsova began ballet classes in Copenhagen with Emilie Walbom.Martha Rutledge and Sally O'Neil, '"Kirsova, Hélène (1910–1962)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.15, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2000. 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.Karen Vedel, "Emilie Walbom (1858–1932): Walbom, Johanne Emilie Margrethe", Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksicon, Rosinante & Co, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2001. Kirsova also attended classes given by Jenny Møller who started teaching in Copenhagen in 1919 when Kirsova was nine.Anne Lykke Poulsen and Karen Vedel, "Kvindegymnastik, scenisk dans og kvinders medborgerskab i 1920erne og 1930erne", Forum for Idræt, 2006. 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.Rachel Cameron, in interview with Michael Meylac, "We Australians... London, 2005", Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes: Stories from a Silver Age, I.B.Taurus, London, England, 2018.John Hood, "The Story Behind the Park", The Glebe Society Bulletin, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, October/November 2004.
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. At the time, bourgeois families thought ballet to be a morally suspect occupation, only suitable for working-class girls trying to escape their backgrounds, and so they were reluctant to let their daughter go, but finally consented. There have been suggestions that Kirsova "ran away to Paris" when she was 16 and that when in Paris she had to cut off her hair and sell it in order to survive.Michelle Potter, "A Dancers' Dream: Hélène Kirsova and the Development of Australian Dance", National Library of Australia News, Canberra, ACT, Australia, August 2000Roland Robinson, The Drift of Things: An Autobiography 1914–52, Macmillan, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1973. 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. No evidence has been found to support the story about selling her hair.
In Paris in 1928 Kirsova was tutored by some of the most prominent ballet teachers of the time, Olga Preobrajenska, Léo Staats, and, predominantly, Lyubov Yegorova. Preobrajenska was Russian and had trained at the Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and went on to dance as a prima ballerina with the Russian Imperial Ballet. In 1923, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, she opened her studio in Paris, taking the largest of the rooms at the Salle Wacker at 69 Rue de Douai.Tamara Tchinarova (Finch), in interview with Michael Meylac, "I was roped into opera and ballet translations... London 1991; Malaga, 2006", Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes: Stories from a Silver Age, I.B.Taurus, London, England, 2018. 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.
Le Ballet Franco Russe Kirsova flourished in the Russian ballet tradition under her various tutors in Paris and it was Léo Staats who was instrumental in launching her international professional career. In 1929 she had been training with him for only a week when, recognising her talent, he invited her to become a member of his Le Ballet Franco Russe, the first new ballet company to be formed after the recent death of Serge Diaghilev. Within a short time Kirsova, then still known as Ellen Wittrup, was touring South America with the company.Programme notes, His Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 February 1942. 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."
Returning to Paris when the company was disbanded after three months touring, Kirsova continued strenuous study for another eight months with Staats and Yegorova.
Les Ballets Ida Rubinstein Following an audition late in 1929 with the choreographers Léonide Massine and Bronislava Nijinska, Kirsova joined the Paris-based troupe of Ida Rubinstein named Les Ballets Ida Rubinstein, which had been founded a year before. Rubinstein had trained in Moscow and St Petersburg and Serge Diaghilev brought her to his Ballets Russes in Paris. A dancer of somewhat limited abilities due to a late start in training, she made up for up it with tremendous stage presence and "gestural expressiveness and sexual daring". She was one of the few female ballet directors of her era.Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell, "Rubinstein, Ida", The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2010).
Nijinska, as Rubinstein's principal choreographer, brought to the company youngsters like Kirsova "who would prove themselves in the years to come".Lynn Garafola, "Soviet Bodies, Emigré Bodies: Bronislava Nijinska's Career in the 1920s and 1930s", Russian Movement Culture of the 1920s and 1930s, Symposium, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, 2015. 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".Arnold L Haskell, Balletomania: The Story of an Obsession, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, England, 1934. 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.
Kirsova's time with Rubinstein brought her under the influence of Nijinska, who Kirsova later claimed taught her the secrets of timing and elevation. Additionally, some of the style and brio which Rubinstein brought to the commissioning of work for her company – using leading composers, librettists, designers and artists and producing new and original modern work rather than always relying on the classics – influenced Kirsova's artistic decisions and commissioning choices when ten years later she was leading her own ballet company in Australia.
Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo Back in Paris in the summer of 1931, Kirsova continued to train and take classes with Lyubov Yegorova, who, aware of the penury in which most professional dancers were living in Paris at that time (they were paid only when actually working), encouraged Kirsova to take her classes without charge.
That summer, René Blum, a French theatrical impresario and artistic director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Monaco, and Wassily de Basil, a Russian ballet impresario, began the creation of a new ballet company, known at that time as Ballets de Monte-Carlo.Vicente García-Márquez, The Ballets Russes: Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo 1932–1952, Alfred A Knopf, New York, NY, USA, 1990. 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.Kathrine Sorley Walker, De Basil's Ballets Russes, Hutchinson, London, England, 1982.