Adelaide-born Joseph Siebert always showed a keen interest in theatre, creating cardboard sets and costumes at an early age. This interest was finally realised when he started ballet training in the 1930s at around the age of 21. He studied with Vera Van Rij, a former dancer with Anna Pavlova’s company, and Dorothy Slane, who danced with Colonial De Basil’s company during its Australian tours.
After completing his study, Siebert went on to form Les Ballet Contemporains, Adelaide’s first amateur dance group, in 1938. Initially set up within the University Theatre Guild, in 1940 it became an independent company with its own Studio Theatre in Tynte Place, North Adelaide.
Siebert’s intentions for the group were clear from the outset. In a letter proposing that the University Theatre Guild include ballet in its program, he detailed how his company would foster the creation of new works with the collaboration of choreographers, musicians, writers and designers drawn from student talent from ballet, art and music schools. That his ambitions were in part fulfilled is evident by the list of those involved in the 20 works produced by the company before its disbandment in 1950. The ‘Barn’, as Studio Theatre was known to those who became involved, attracted the attention of both established and student artists, including Nan Hambidge, Jacqueline Hick, Lorna Schlank, Dora Cant, Francis Flanagan, Robert Pulleine and Ernest Milston.
Dorrit Black was another of these artists who, like many, not only designed costumes and sets but also appeared in the production. At the time that she joined the group, she was already a respected artist whose linocut print, Black Swans, had been purchased by the National Gallery in 1937. She studied art in South Australia and then overseas and her works are now held by all the major Australian art galleries. Black’s involvement with Les Ballet Contemporains included designing sets and costumes for Iberia (1944), designing an equestrian sculpture for White Fire (1944) and costumes for Espana in (1946). She also appeared as the Chaperone in Iberia.
One of these costumes was the unassuming dyed calico dress used at the premiere of Iberia in June, 1944, at the Tivoli (now Her Majesty’s) Theatre. It was donated to the Performing Arts Collection of South Australia by Josie Stoffers, a dancer with the company. The costumes, according to a newspaper report at that time, were two years in the making and are made of materials that pre-dated war rationing.
In all, Black designed 40 costumes and spent four months painting the scenery for this production. The original program also reveals that it was customary for the artist’s artwork to be hung in the theatre foyer for sale. The Iberia costume designs were not shown; however they were later exhibited as part of a theatre art exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1951.
It is not known how Black or the other artists became involved with Les Ballet Contemporains, however it might be assumed that Siebert sought the involvement of those mixing in the visual arts schools and societies. Many of the well-known artists who designed for Siebert were connected in the art world and, perhaps because of the times, like Siebert were keen to be allied with a broader sense of social responsibility and to show their work and be a part of a larger arts community. As written in the foreword of a Les Ballet Contemporains program published in 1945 by an “EMP”: “In a world of war, Les Ballet Contemporains is concerned to keep alive locally the art of ballet, to keep firm one plank of the humanities from which tour brave new world must necessarily be built.”
The result was the exciting presentation of locally choreographed and designed ballet that not only kept ballet alive, but also brought together and fostered the talents of the Adelaide arts community during the 1940s.
INGRID OFFLER
Assistant Collections Co-ordinator, Performing Arts Collection,
Adelaide Festival Centre.