Australia Dancing - Lightfoot, Louise (1902

Lightfoot, Louise (1902 - 1978)

Portraits of (left to right) Louise Lightfoot, Marion Mahony Griffin, Walter Burley Griffin, and George Walter Griffin, 1935?

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Louise Lightfoot was born in Victoria, Australia, and received her tertiary education at the University of Melbourne. She graduated as an architect, the first woman to do so from the University of Melbourne. She went on to study and work under Walter Burley Griffin in his Melbourne practice, and while still in her early twenties moved to Castlecrag in Sydney to work with the Griffins on their Sydney projects. She is reputed to have been inspired to study dance when she saw performances by Anna Pavlova during her 1926 tour to Australia and she is said to have studied in Sydney with Alexis Dolinoff, a Pavlova company member, and with Daphne Deane at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In her own writings, however, she wrote that one day she 'peeped into Minnie Hooper's Ballet School in the city [Sydney]' and realised she was too old to study ballet. Instead, she writes, she joined 'a class in so-called Greek barefoot dancing at a physical-culture institute'. Eventually Lightfoot reliquished her architectural work and with Mischa Burlakov, whom she met through the Griffins and their friends, established a ballet school in Sydney and a company, the First Australian Ballet.

While on an overseas trip Lightfoot became attracted to Indian dance and on her return to Australia choreographed The Blue God in 1938. It was performed by the First Australian Ballet in Sydney and Canberra. Shortly afterwards Lightfoot left Australia for India where she studied and performed in the Kathakali style and taught ballet at the Army School in Bangalore. She also studied Manipuri and Bharatanatyam dance styles and led several tours of dancers throughout India and Ceylon. In the mid 1940s Lightfoot returned to Australia and in 1947 she brought the Indian dancer Shivaram to Australia for a series of performances. Lightfoot acted as narrator for and commentator on these performances.

Lightfoot later moved to the United States where she continued to teach and study Indian dance and to act as impresario for tours by Shivaram in the United States and Canada. By the 1970s she was back in Australia and continued to teach and study Indian dance in Melbourne during the last years of her life.

Bibliography: Louise Lightfoot, 'In Search of India's most ancient dance: an Australian dancer's experience.' The Dancing Times, (March 1939), pp. 742-745; Louise Lightfoot, Dance-rituals of Manipur, India: an introduction to "Meitei Jagoi" (New Delhi: Ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs, [1958?]).

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