Australia Dancing - Dean, Beth (1918

Dean, Beth (1918 - )

Photographer unknown: Portrait of Beth Dean, 1943

Born in Denver, Colorado, Beth Dean studied ballet in her home city from an early age. In 1928 she moved to Paris where she continued her dance training with Leo Staats of the Paris Opera Ballet. She returned to Denver in 1932 and, after graduating from high school, returned to Europe where she worked with Nicholas Legat and performed briefly with Rene Blum’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. On her return to America she performed in series of musicals and in the operetta The Waltz King, where she met her future husband Victor Carell, an Australian singer, whom she married in 1944. Dean and Carell came to Australia in 1947 when they both appeared in the musical Annie Get your Gun.

In 1953 Dean and Carell undertook an eight-month study trip to a number of Australian Aboriginal communities where they observed Indigenous dance and ceremonial activities. Later they drew on material from this trip in a performance and lecture series on the dances of ‘the Pacific, the Aborigines, and the Maori’, which toured throughout the USA, Australia and New Zealand. The study trip also provided source material for Dean’s choreography for Corroboree, a dance work to the score by John Antill, which had its premiere in Sydney in 1954 and in which Dean danced the leading role of the Initiate. Dean's version of Corroboree, which followed on from an earlier version choreographed by Rex Reid in 1950, was restaged for the Captain Cook Bicentenary in Sydney in 1970 when Ronne Arnold danced the leading role. In the 1950s Dean also choreographed a number of works based on Aboriginal legends.

Dean created a number of works for the early days of television in Australia. They included G'Day Digger in c. 1956 to music by John Antill, which featured Dean, Valrene Tweedie and Colin Fitzgerald in the leading roles, and Dreaming Time Legends in 1965. This latter consisted of two works - 'The First Boomerang' and 'The Birth of the Waratah' - and was based on the legends of the Aboriginal people of the Burragorang Valley in New South Wales. It too was danced to a score by John Antill and featured Ronne Arnold and Dean in the leading roles.

Both Dean and Carell were involved in a number of major arts and dance festivals, including the South Pacific Festival of Arts (1971), the Pageant of Nationhood (1964), and the Mexico Cultural Olympics (1968). In 1968 Dean was invited to Mexico City as part of the 1968 Cultural Olympics. There she taught Indigenous dances, and had her ballet Kukaitcha performed by the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico as part of the production Ballet of the Five Continents. On their return from Mexico, Dean and Carell helped the government of the Cook Islands establish the Cook Islands National Arts Theatre, which they later brought to Australia in 1970, and 1973 for the opening of the Sydney Opera House.

In addition to dance research and to performance, both onstage and in television, Dean's career has also encompassed writing and criticism. She was dance critic for The Sydney Morning Herald for a number of years and was also the Australian correspondent for the American monthly publication Dance Magazine. Her publications have included works of biography as well as works on dance.

Research Materials

Other resources

Find more about Dean, Beth in:

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