Australia Dancing - Tweedie, Valrene (1925

Tweedie, Valrene (1925 - )

Lansac, Regis: Portrait of Valrene Tweedie in her Sydney studio, 1983

Born in Sydney, Valrene Tweedie received her early dance training with Mischa Burlakov, Louise Lightfoot and Leon Kellaway. Her early stage experiences were with the First Australian Ballet and the Polish Australian Ballet.

Tweedie was the only Australian dancer to audition successfully for the Ballets Russes companies that visited Australia between 1936 and 1940. At the age of 14 she auditioned for Colonel de Basil in Sydney and joined his Original Ballet Russe in 1940. As Irina Lavrova she danced with the company in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. She left Australia with the Original Ballet Russe in 1940 and over the succeeding years danced extensively in North and South America with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Ballet Theatre.

Tweedie returned to Australia in 1952 and in 1953 became third artistic director of the National Theatre Ballet. For the National she staged several ballets with which she was familiar from the de Basil repertoire, including Le Carnaval in which she danced the role of Columbine and on other occasions Chiarina, and Le Coq d'or in which she danced the role of the Queen of Shemakhan. Tweedie also choreographed her own works for the company including Caprice to Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. After the demise of the National Theatre Ballet as a professional company in 1955, Tweedie joined the cast of the Cole Porter musical Can-Can. Subsequently she went on to choreograph for Tivoli revues, to work in educational ballet programs for the National Theatre Movement, and to choreograph for the Elizabethan Opera Ballet Company for which she made her Australian-flavoured Wakooka to a commissioned score from John Antill.

Tweedie began full-time teaching in 1956 working within the Cecchetti system. During her teaching years she also founded Ballet Australia to encourage the creation of new Australian choreography. Her own choreographic works were diverse. In some of her Australian-inspired works Tweedie, influenced by Agnes de Mille and de Mille's efforts to find an American dance idiom, experimented with movement that might express the Australian experience.

Tweedie retired from full-time teaching in 1985 but returned to the stage in 1992 as Clara the Elder in the premiere season of Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker for the Australian Ballet. She also appeared in revivals of the work in 1994 and 2000 and was cast by Stephen Baynes in Requiem in 2001 also for the Australian Ballet. She was the recipient of an award for lifetime achievement at the 1998 Australian Dance Awards.

For more about the early years of Ballet Australia and Tweedie's involvement in it see 'Inspiring mentors: Valrene Tweedie and Laurel Martyn', National Library of Australia News, July 2002.

Research Materials

Other resources

Find more about Tweedie, Valrene in:

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