Documenting Australian Dance Walter Stringer's Dance Photography

In the second of a series of articles looking at recent additions to the National Library's dance holdings as part of the Keep Dancing! project, Michelle Potter delves into the W.E Stringer Collection and discovers a man with a passion for dance

alter Stringer, pioneer Australian dance W photographer, still remembers the first professional dance performance he ever saw. It was a triple bill by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company. He saw it in London at the Coliseum Theatre and on the program was Michel Fokine's exotic and glamorous Scheherazade. The year was about 1919 and he was just a young boy, but the memory of that performancehaunts him to this day. He still thinks of it as the most memorable production he has everseen. Stringer, born in 1907 in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, did not take his first dance photographs until he migrated to Australia with his family when he was 16. His parents set up was allowed backstage during Walter Stringer (b. 1907) house in Melbourne and Stringer's performances and often also shot Graeme Murphy in Daphnis and Chloe first photographs were taken secretly from the auditorium during dress cibachrome photograph; 25.3 x 20.1 cm (P554/SD/22) from the stalls in a Melbourne theatre rehearsals. W.F. Stringer Collection in 1940 during performances Stringer's output as a photographer, From the Pictorial Collection by Colonel de Basil's Ballets now housed in the National Library Russes company. They marked the as the W.F. Stringer Collection, is beginning of Stringer's long one of the Library's largest documentation of dance. photographic collections. It consists Only those early shots had to be of several thousand images in the taken surreptitiously, however. After form of photographic prints and including the Borovansky Ballet, that, the quality of his work, and his transparencies, and represents a Ballet Guild, Ballet Victoria, Sydney generous and undemanding nature, 50-year panorama of contemporary, Dance Company, National Theatre meant that he was made welcome by classical and folk dance in Australia. Ballet Company, Australian Dance most dance companies, Stringer, who While very few of those early, secretly Theatre, West Australian Ballet, and a was a bank clerk for his entire taken photographs survive, his images host of others. working life, frequented Melbourne nevertheless reveal the development His collection also highlights the dance studios ~nd theatres, often of Australian dance from the 1940s touring dance companies that brought dashing out of the bank in his lunch onwards. Stringer photographed all a vast array of dance styles to Australia hour to take his photographs. He major Australian companies, from the late 1950s onwards. Stringer took, for example, some inspulllg its African American heritage, a Stringer's Australian Ballet images of productions by New York colourful Ballet Folklorico from photographs also record many of the City Ballet. That company visited in Mexico, a host of companies from larger-than-life personalities who have 1958 and brought to Australia works the Asian region, including India, Sri been associated with the company that looked astonishingly different Lanka, China and the Philippines, over its almost 40 years of from the Russian and English and many contemporary dance existence. There are the repertoire on which audiences had companies from across America and star Australian dancers, the visiting been brought up during the 1940s and Europe bombarded audiences with guest artists, the teachers, the 1950s. There was the work of George new experiences. choreographers and the directors- Balanchine, from the American glitz Perhaps the largest component artists who range from the flamboyant of his Stars and Stripes to the in the W.F. Stringer Collection is Robert Helpmann, whose associations neoclassicism of his Concerto Barocco. material relating to the Australian with the company were as director, There were works by Jerome Robbins, Ballet. Those photographs and choreographer and performer, to the including his sensuously beautiful transparencies date from the delicate Russian ballerina Galina Afternoon of a Faun. Australians had company's first Melbourne season in Ulanova. In the 1980s, Ulanova came seen nothing like it. Stringer also early 1963 and cover every major to coach the Australian Ballet dancers documented the several visits in the production of the flagship company in Giselle,to pass on her knowledge of 1960s and 1970s by Luisillo and his until the 1990s. They include shots a ballet that was for many her greatest Spanish dance company. Luisillo and of major new pieces commissioned triumph during her own long and his dancers and musicians produced from Australian choreographers- distinguished performing career with some of the most passionate dance Helpmann's Display, Yugen and Sun Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet. and music-flamenco style-that Music, for example-as well as the Although he photographed all Australianshad seen. classics mounted by the company dance styles, Stringer seemed Stringer's collection, in fact, across the decades. Some of the most questions the notion that Australia exquisite of Stringer's images record was culturally isolated during the Anne Woolliams's production of middle decades of the twentieth Swan Lake, originally made for the centuty. His images attest to the fact Australian Ballet in the 1970s. With that Australian dance audiences at his Swan Lake photographs, Stringer least were not isolated from captured both the classicism of that Walter Stringer (b. 1907) developments elsewhere. The production, with its emphasis on Anne Woolliams and Corps de Ballet in Swan Lake,Australian Ballet 1977 Georgian State Dance Company with highly-structured choreography for 35mmslide their fiery Cossack dances, Alvin the corps de ballet, and the dramatic, W.F. Stringer Collection Ailey American Dance Theater with Gothic nature of its narrative. From the Pictorial Collection (above) Walter Stringer (b. 1907) 1940s to the 1990s. Stringer rarely Dame Margot Fonteyn with Kelvin Coe took posed shots. 'Dance is and John Meehan in the Australian Ballet's movement through space' was a Production of The Merry Widow 1977 motto for him and he aimed to cibachrome photograph; 20 x 25.3 cm (P554/ABI26) capture the moment of performance. W.F. Stringer Collection As a result, not all of his photographs From the Pictorial Collection show the dancers in their most elegant or flattering moments. (left) Walter Stringer (b. 1907) Stringer was aware of this and would Spanish Dancer, Luisillo frequently show his photographs to 35mm slide W.F. Stringer Collection his subjects and ask them to From the Pictorial Collection autograph those they especially liked. Luisillo's passionate flamenco-sryle Some of his personal favourites are dancing dazzled Australian audiences in photographs he took of Dame the 1960s and 1970s Margot Fonteyn when she visited Australia in 1977 to perform in the Australian Ballet's production of The Merry Widow. With exacting standards, Fonteyn rarely allowed performed the leading roles in the photographers to work during her especially fond of ballet as a genre of second act of Giselle. Stringer performances. Stringer is immensely dance. Some of his most alluring captured it all, from Makarova's proud that not only did she allow him shots are of the acclaimed ballet delicate and ethereal qualities to in the wings while she was dancing, dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Baryshnikov's sensuality and but she thought highly enough of his Natalia Makarova, who were enticed complete absorption in his role. work to autograph some of his prints. to Australia in 1975 at the height of There are, however, many features Stringerwas also fond of collatinghis their performinKcareers to dance with of the W.F. Stringer Collection that shots into mini collections. He Ballet Victoria. Makarova danced The make it more than a documentary occasionally assembled albums of Dying Swan and she and Baryshnikov record of dance in Australia from the photographs relatingto a particular tour personnel as well. Another of his miniseries is called On and Off Stage, and another Balletomania. And Stringer always added his personal touches to these collections by making a title for each series, always designed with the theme of the particular collection in mind. He did the same with a closing slide, which alwaysread The End'. The W.F. Stringer Collection was made by a man who simply loved dance as an art form. He loved all the backstage drama and all the onstage gli tter. He was fascinated by the tiniest details-the pots in the paint frame, the different kinds of shoes worn by dancers, a tangle of feet at rest, faces filled with concentration. Stringer's material is invaluable as a record of Australia's dancing heritage. It is also a record of one man's devotion to and fascination with dance in its many and varied facets. The W.F. Stringer Collection is currently being processed as part of the Keep Dancing! project, an Australia Council funded partnership between the Library, ScreenSound Australia and the Australian Dance Council (Ausdance). As sorting and identification is completed, the collection will gradually become available for research and reference through the Library's Pictorial Collection. Stringer was interviewed for the (above) Walter Stringer (b. 1907) Library's Oral History Collection in Portrait of Sir Robert Helpmann 1994 and the interview (TRC 3010) is 35mm slide part of the Esso Performing Arts and W.F. Stringer Collection Oral History Archive Project. From the Pictorial Collection

(left) Walter Stringer Self-Portrait photograph; 25.3 x 20.3 cm MICHELLE POTTER manages the W.F. Stringer Collection Keep Dancing! project, an Australia From the Pictorial Collection Council funded partnership between ScreenSound Australia, the National Library of Australia and the Australian Dance Council (Ausdance). She is the author of the National Library of Australia his home on weekends for his special publication A Passion for Dance or company. The tour by Ballet slide evenings. He took, for example, a Rambert to Australia in the 1940s has collection of close-up shots of dancers been accorded an album, as h