Australia Dancing - Winter Night (1948

Winter Night (1948 - )

Stringer, Walter: Paula Hinton and Walter Gore in 'Winter Night', Ballet Rambert, 1948

Walter Gore dedicated Winter Night, his tenth ballet, to his co-principal in Ballet Rambert, Sally Gilmour. Set to Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto, it premiered in Melbourne on 19 November 1948 during Ballet Rambert's 1947-1949 Australasian tour. Gore, Gilmour and Gore's future wife, Paula Hinton, danced the three main roles. The corps de ballet, comprising several Australian dancers, was Margaret Hill, Barbara Grimes, Ann Somers (Kathleen Gorham), Pamela Vincent, Deirdre Duncan, Joan Halliday, Monica Halliday, June Florenz, John Gilpin, Charles Boyd, Cecil Bates and David Hunt.

Winter Night was designed by Kenneth Rowell. It was one of his earliest professional commissions for a dance company. In an oral history interview recorded in 1989 Rowell recalled that Gore saw one of his designs in a friend's house and as a result invited him to work on Winter Night. In that interview Rowell also reminisced about the work:

'It was a ballet that had a very curious kind of history really because it was largely autobiographical. It was about Walter himself. We all knew even at the time. He gave me a very free hand. And it was symphonic. He didn't think of it in that way, but it was in that sort of tradition.'

Research Materials

Oral history | Picture | All

Other resources

Find more about Winter Night in:

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