Robert Helpmann

Sir Robert Helpmann (April 9 1909 - September 28 1986), Australian dancer, actor and choreographer, was born in Mt Gambier, South Australia. From childhood Helpmann had no desire but to be a dancer - a difficult ambition to fulfill in the rather philistine atmosphere of provincial Australia in the 1920s.

In a 1974 interview he recalled his introduction to dance:

"[Miss Stewart] said, ‘But I've never had a boy to dance before’. So I said, ‘That doesn’t matter. I want to come to your ballet classes.’ So she said, ‘Well, all right, you can’. But, of course, never having had a boy pupil, I had to learn all the dances for the little girls, and dance on my pointes, and of course when it came time for her annual display, I had to dance in them because I was better than any of them. And so I always appeared as a little girl, on my pointes. And at the end of the number I would take off my wig, and this was a great success with the audience."

In 1926 he joined the touring dance company of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. He later recalled:

"[My father] went on a business trip to Melbourne when I was 14 and when he came back he said, ‘You’re always wanting to be a dancer. There’s a girl dancing in Melbourne and she’s got a company and I’ve been to see her, and she’s going to take you into the company.’ Next week, I left for Melbourne with my mother, and the ‘girl’ was Anna Pavlova."

In 1927 Helpmann first appeared professionally, in Sydney, but opportunities to dance at any serious level in Australia were limited. In 1933 he went to London, then the centre of the Australian cultural universe, and joined the Vic-Wells Ballet, which later became Sadler's Wells and later the Royal Ballet. He was principal dancer from 1933 to 1950. While he was not among the ranks of the great male dancers, he was certainly highly accomplished. Here he formed his great professional partnership with Margot Fonteyn. Together they created many roles in ballets choreographed by Frederick Ashton.

The highpoint of Helpmann's career as a dancer was the Royal Ballet's tour of the United States in 1949, with Fonteyn and Helpmann dancing the leading roles in The Sleeping Beauty. The production caused a sensation which made the names of both the Royal Ballet and its two principals; public and press alike referrred to them affectionately as Bobby-and-Margot. Although Helpmann was past his best as a dancer, the tour opened doors for him in the United States as an actor and director.

In the 1940s, as he passed his peak as a dancer, Helpmann turned to production and to acting. He produced his own ballets - Comus (1942), Hamlet (1942), Miracle in the Gorbals (1946) and Adam Zero (1946). He performed roles from Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival and at the Old Vic theatre company in London, playing the title role in Hamlet two years after having danced the same part. He also appeared in many films including The Red Shoes (1948) (for which he also choreographed the opening ballet sequence) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). He co-directed with Rudolf Nureyev and played the title role in the ballet-film Don Quixote in 1973. Perhaps his most memorable screen role was the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

In 1965 Helpmann returned to Australia to become co-director of the Peggy van Praagh at the helm of the fledgling company, as her co-director until 1974 and sole director until 1976. He produced ballets including The Merry Widow, Sun Music and Elektra.

The avant-garde nature and sexual overtones of much of his work unsettled many Australians. His most controversial work was the production of the first fully Australian ballet, The Display (1964). The novelist Patrick White wrote the scenario, but when the White libretto arrived Helpmann disliked it intensely. It was rejected, causing a furious row between these two extremely opinionated artists. Both the subject matter and the presentation of the ballet were well in advance of Australian tastes at the time.

In 1965 he was named Australian of the Year and he was knighted in 1968. By the 1970s Australia had grown used to Helpmann's flamboyant persona. His appointment as Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival from 1970 to 1976 was well-received. He died in Sydney in 1986.

Further reading

• Elizabeth Salter, Helpmann : The Authorised Biography of Sir Robert Helpmann, 1978