Brinson, Peter (1920 - 1995)

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Born in Llandudno, Wales, Peter Brinson’s lifelong interest in dance began in 1950 when he first saw performances by the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. With the intention of learning ‘what it felt like to be a dancer’, Brinson approached Peggy van Praagh, then ballet mistress at the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet. Following this meeting Brinson took classes and regularly attended productions of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. It was at this time that his lifelong personal friendship and professional association with Peggy van Praagh began, which included their collaboration on the 1963 publication The choreographic art; an outline of its principles and craft.

In 1964 Brinson became the founding director of Ballet for All, a dance education unit attached to the Royal Ballet, a position he held till 1970. Between 1971 and 1992 Brinson was the director of the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In this role he assisted in the establishment of the Australia-New Zealand international dance course for choreographers and composers in 1982.

Brinson’s first trip to Australia was in January 1976 when he conducted seminars on dance history, sociology and politics in association with a choreographic workshop held at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales. Similar workshops, now known as the Armidale summer schools, had been held in 1969 and 1974. The 1974 workshop had received funding from the Gulbenkian Foundation while Brinson was director. His involvement in the 1976 summer school had a lasting impact on many of those who participated in his course. It was during the 1976 workshop that Brinson furthered his association with Shirley McKecknie who had been a significant figure in the planning of both the 1974 and 1976 workshops.

In August 1977 Brinson returned to Australia as a keynote speaker for the dance education conference held in Melbourne. Brinson’s ideas, outlined in his opening and closing speeches, proved highly influential in the formation of the aims of the Australian Association of Dance Education (AADE), later renamed Ausdance, Australia’s peak representative body for dance. The AADE was came into being in the following year.

In sunsequent years Brinson made a number of trips to Australia, delivering the opening address, Towards a sociology of dance with music at the fourth national symposium of the musicological association of Australia and maintaining his ongoing close relationship with van Praagh. Brinson made his last trip to Australia in 1993 when he delivered the second Dame Peggy van Praagh memorial address in Melbourne.

Bibliography:

A memorial issue for Peter Brinson was published by Dance research (London), Vol. 15 (No. 1, Summer 1997). This issue also contains a partial bibliography of Brinson’s extensive writings on dance. See pp. 49-57.

See also: McKechnie, Shirley ; van Praagh, Peggy

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Find more about Brinson, Peter in:

• Internet - Google
• Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
• Pictures - Picture Australia