Word: helpmann
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Castles & Caves. U.S. ballet fans, awaiting the arrival of the English company, had been eager to see Sadler's Wells' modern English ballets-with choreography by De Valois, Helpmann and Frederick Ashton. Among the best of these were De Valois' animated chess game, Checkmate, her Rake's Progress (after Hogarth's famous drawing sequence) and Ashton's gay Wedding Bouquet and impish Façade (to music by William Walton). They were performed with a brittle wit and a steely stylishness...
...only the last part is familiar to most U.S. fans), audiences sat enthralled while Princess Aurora was christened, cursed by the wicked fairy, and put into the long sleep from which she is awakened by the prince's kiss. The third-act duet by Fonteyn, the princess, and Helpmann, the prince, never failed to stop the show. In Swan Lake, few fans had ever seen anything so magnificent as Margot (Queen of the Swans) and her flock (the corps de ballet) huddling and quivering in terror before the evil magician...
...snowflakes in The Nutcracker, more experienced Sadler's Wellsians laughed at the serious little girl who spent half an hour in the wings, warming up for a five-minute role. But Margot was a perfectionist, then as now: she still rehearses the entire third act duet with Partner Helpmann just before each performance of Sleeping Beauty...
Once in a Blue Moon. Among her closest friends are Helpmann, Ashton, Dancer Pamela May, the U.S. Ballet Theatre's Nora Kaye and Les Ballets de Paris' Roland Petit (TIME, Oct. 17). With such people Margot enjoys after-theater suppers or whipping up a home-cooked meal and bringing out some really good wine. One of her extravagances is expensive clothes, but, like most ballerinas, she darns the toes of her own ballet slippers (she brought 40 pairs...
...unpredictable. On one of her rare appearances without the company, she told Helpmann she would positively not make a speech at the supper given in her honor after a command performance in Copenhagen. After Helpmann had tactfully told the guests that "Miss Fonteyn is too moved to speak," she stood up and talked for six minutes. She loves to jitterbug. Helpmann says that after dancing with her in ballet for 14 years, he only really got to know her after jitterbugging with her until dawn one time last year...