Rachel Cameron (27 March 1924—6 March 2011) was an Australian ballet dancer and teacher. She was one of the leading dancers in early Australian ballet in the 1940s, performing with the Borovansky and Kirsova ballet companies, and was one of the first ballet dancers in Australia to reach the rank of principal. After emigrating to Great Britain she was an inspirational educator of ballet teachers at the Royal Academy of Dance in London for over forty years. In 2010, she received the Royal Academy of Dance's prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award in recognition of her outstanding services to ballet.
Early life
Rachel Cameron was born in Brisbane, Queensland, [Australia, on 27 March 1924.Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Queensland Government, Australia She spent her very early years in the coastal city of Townsville in north-eastern Queensland. She was severely ill as a child and was bored with the enforced regimen of rest imposed on her, but her parents noticed her love of movement and sent her to eurhythmics classes.Michael Meylac, editor, "Rachel Cameron: We Australians… London 2005", Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes: Stories from a Silver Age, IB Taurus, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, 2018 She later reported that a passerby saw her dancing among some flowers and suggested that she take dance classes. She was enthusiastic about the idea and insisted in taking part when her school offered her dance lessons.David Jays, "Rachel Cameron obituary", The Guardian, London, 7 April 2011
At this time Cameron, while only just five years old, saw the Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, formerly of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, dance in Townsville on her final Australian tour in 1929.
Following her father's transfer to another bank branch, the family moved from Townsville to Sydney in about 1930, settling in the suburb of Roseville,Cameron Family Archive, retrieved March 2021 and it was in Sydney at the age of 10 that Cameron saw the legendary ballerina of the Paris Opera in the 1920s, Olga Spessivtseva, dance during her truncated tour of Australia with the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet.Michelle Potter, "The Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet, 1934-1935: Australia and Beyond", Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, vol. 29, no. 1, 2011, Edinburgh University Press
Enchanted with the world of dance, in Sydney Cameron was able to pursue further dance lessons with Muriel Sievers. Sievers had studied in London with prima ballerina Phyllis Bedells in the technique of the Association of Operatic Dancing (the forerunner of the Royal Academy of Dance).Frank Salter, Borovansky: The man who made Australian ballet, Wildcat Press, Sydney, 1980 This English system was the foundation of Cameron's formal ballet training.
As her talent was recognised, the pupil-teacher relationship with Sievers quickly developed. She was invited by her to help teach the youngest classes on Saturday mornings, and as a result Cameron found early on that she had an aptitude for teaching which was to serve her (and the international ballet community) well for the rest of her life. Sievers also insisted that Cameron take piano lessons, and allowed her to borrow from her collection of books on dance. Interestingly for Cameron's future teaching career, among the books she borrowed was the Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina's Theatre Street. Cameron recalled of Sievers: "She was wise and intelligent, and she fostered talent. She was well before her time."
Training
In the course of her childhood studies, Cameron developed a strong desire to learn to dance professionally. As a girl in Sydney she was able to see the Ballets Russes perform in Australia on a number of tours, the first in 1936 when Cameron was 12. The influence of this Sergei Diaghilev-inspired company was profound on ballet in Australia and after their tours a number of dancers stayed behind. Among them were the Czech ballet dancer, choreographer and director, Edouard Borovansky, and his wife, Russian-born Xenia Nikolaeva Krüger, née Smirnova.
In May 1939, the Borovanskys set up a new ballet school in Melbourne, the Academy of Russian Ballet (later known as the Borovansky Ballet Academy)., The studio filled the enormous first floor of Roma House in Elizabeth Street, above a shop selling devotional artefacts. Xenia Borovansky, a ballerina of the Moscow school, was the principal teacher.Robin Grove, "Borovansky Edouard (1902-1959)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 13, Melbourne University Press, 1993 In starting their school the couple "embarked on an enterprise that permeated the subsequent history of ballet in Australia".
Soon after her fifteenth birthday, and funded by her family, Cameron joined the Borovansky academy. She was one of their first pupils in the special professional morning class held for those who were already dancers of some experience and who intended making dancing their career.Norman MacGeorge, Borovansky Ballet in Australia and New Zealand, FW Cheshire, Melbourne, 1946 The fees were not cheap; a single class was five shillings, though a commitment to taking more than one class in a week occasioned a reduction. Cameron was among a number of those attending the school in its early months whose balletic achievements in later years were profound.
Career In June 1939, Cameron performed publicly for the first time, being, with Edna Busse, the first of Borovansky's pupils to dance outside the studio: a Melbourne newspaper reported that they danced to the music of Frédéric Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at a charity supper recital."The Life of Melbourne: Supper Recital", The Argus, Melbourne, 27 June 1939 In a short period of time, Borovansky's students were ready for their first joint public performance, though they were not viewed as necessarily that impressive. It has been reported that at this time Borovansky "had about a dozen girls who could dance reasonably well and about half a dozen boys, most of whom couldn't dance at all". With other dance schools they—including Cameron, at the time Borovansky's "showiest technician"—appeared in A First Season of Ballet arranged by the National Theatre Movement and presented at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne on 25 and 26 July 1939. Two weeks later the whole programme was repeated at a Saturday matinée.
At the close of 1939, Colonel Wassily de Basil, a Russian ballet impresario, brought his Ballets Russes to the Theatre Royal in Sydney at the start of an Australian tour, and, stung by bad publicity around his comment that Australians lacked the art and finesse to make ballet dancers, sought students from the Borovansky academy to perform as extras.Michelle Potter, "De Basil in Australia: Publicity and Patronage", Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, vol. 11, no. 2, 1993, Edinburgh University Press Cameron and other senior pupils travelled to Sydney with the Borovanskys and continued with their classes while making appearances with the Russian Ballet. The 10–weeks season was an opportunity for Cameron, while still only 15, to study closely the work of the distinguished dancers of de Basil's company, such as Vera Nemtchinova, Lubov Tchernicheva and Tamara Toumanova, and to attend as many as she could of choreographer Michel Fokine's rehearsals of Le Coq d'Or with the company, conducted in Russian. "I didn't work with him because I was too young," recalled Cameron. "I was still lacking in technique."
Back in Melbourne in July 1940, Borovansky started to present his pupils to Melbourne audiences, usually in aid of the many war charity appeals. There were also monthly weekend programmes, often under the auspices of the Melbourne Ballet Club, which used a small stage set up in the Borovansky studio. Cameron soon discovered that despite performing publicly and being treated by Borovansky as if they were professionals, they were not paid. As a Borovansky historian has observed, there were limited opportunities for dancers to perform "so they tended to look on these unpaid events as a way of displaying their talents". But she further observes that as few journalists were employed by newspapers to write about ballet, and the charity events were "usually covered from a social angle, focussing on fashion and status, the artistic ability of the performers was rather inconsequential" and the dancers were rarely acknowledged for their unpaid appearances or their talent.Marie Ada Couper, Remembering Edouard Borovansky and His Company 1939-1959, D Phil thesis, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne, 2018 As well as public performances, work also began on preparing a first full-scale ballet, Autumn Leaves, and other works like Vltava, Pas Classique and L'Amour Ridicule.
Borovansky Australian Ballet Company With increasing public acclaim and the growing maturity of his leading students, Borovansky established the Australian Ballet Company, whose first staging was a successful two-night season at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne in December 1940. Cameron was picked out by The Age newspaper for her excellence in the Pavlova role of the Chrysanthemum alongside Serge Bousloff in Autumn Leaves."Programme of Dancing: War Funds Aided", The Age, Melbourne, 27 November 1940 and 07 December 1940
Cameron, fast developing her powers, was now one of Borovansky's leading dancers and considered to be highly promising. She was "highly sensitive, lyrical and musical", though it was also said her line was "a little short for a truly classical dancer". But despite her growing success she despaired at times of a professional career. Cameron's training "cost a lot of money and there was little likelihood at that early stage of getting any of it back in payment for performances". On 31 March 1941,The Melbourne University Handbook 1941, Melbourne University Press for the Melbourne University Union, 1941 in search of funds and without Borovansky's permission, she performed with a fellow student for a fee at the Melbourne University Bal Masque. They appeared as "Rachel Cameron and Laurie Rentoul: Danse Espagnol".
When he heard of it, Borovansky's rage was directed at Cameron with full force. He summoned everyone in the studio to the main classroom and called Cameron into the middle of the room. He railed at her that she had gone against his wishes, lowered his standards and performed in a very bad way. "I don't want to see you again, ever!" he concluded. "We couldn't possibly permit you to continue working with us." Cameron, angry and humiliated, left the building in tears. She was never to return.
Kirsova Ballet "Brutally discarded" by Borovansky, and just 17, in April 1941 Cameron left Melbourne and went home to Sydney. There Hélène Kirsova immediately invited her to join her School of Russian Ballet Tradition. Kirsova was a Danish prima ballerina with a background in the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, and a close working relationship with the choreographer Michel Fokine. After touring Australia with the Ballets Russes in 1936 she remained in the country and married the Danish Consul. She set up her school at Macquarie Place near Circular Quay in Sydney in 1940.Michelle Potter, "A Strong Personality and a Gift for Leadership: Hélène Kirsova in Australia", Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Vol 13, No 2, 1995, Edinburgh University Press