National Theatre Ballet School

Education Directory introduces National Theatre Ballet School in St Kilda, for all your education and learning needs.

In 1935 Miss Gertrude Johnson founded the National Theatre Movement as a future base of the performing arts in Australia; during 1939 the National Theatre Ballet School was opened under the direction of Jean Alexander with a faculty headed by Enrico Cecchetti’s pupil Madame Lucie Saranova. The Ballet School was unique in Australia in that it was the first such school attached to a performing theatre, thus enabling its students to have direct contact and involvement with the sister arts of Opera and Drama.

Under the guidance of Madame Saranova the Australian branch of the Cecchetti Society was founded with the National Theatre Ballet School as its headquarters; the teaching of the Cecchetti Syllabus provided a direct link with the glorious heritage of the Italian-Russian schools of dance. From its inception until 1948 the School presented two seasons of ballet each year at the Movement’s own theatre in Eastern Hill.

With the formation of the professional National Theatre Ballet in 1949, many pupils of the School were to dance within its ranks at the Princess Theatre. The faculty of the school has included many notable names in Australian and International Ballet, among whom should be mentioned Corrie Lodders, Jill Gregory, Serge and Kyra Bousloff, Marie Cumisky, Margaret Earl, Marita Lowden, Valrene Tweedie and Pat Martin.