In 1955, Simonne Moffitt’s maternal grandmother, Marjorie Kunze, entered a competition to create a ballet to celebrate the centenary of the gold rush in Victoria. An avid lover of nature and the bush, Kunze dreamed up a charming narrative featuring native birds in a classic Australian setting. Simonne Moffitt with some of the dancers who will bring Gold to life.
Credit: James Brickwood She sent her synopsis, complete with watercolours of her costume designs, to the competition organiser, Edouard Borovansky, whose company, Borovansky Ballet, was the forerunner of the Australian Ballet. Then she waited. It was a time when the cultural cringe was practically a way of life and all artistic activity in the colony instinctively referred back to the “mother country”.
Marjorie Kunze had the idea for the ballet nearly 70 years ago. When Borovansky responded, he said he liked Kunze’s work but it would never do because it was “too Australian”. Audiences wanted to see European-style ballets that most definitely did not feature backdrops of wattle and gumtrees and a cast of cheeky native animals.
Fast-forward nearly 70 years and Kunze’s ballet will finally get its world premiere after Sydney-based Moffitt, herself a dancer and choreographer, committed to the Herculean task of bringing it to the stage. “It was around 2018 that my mum showed me the synopsis and we started looking at the 20 or more beautiful watercolours of the costume designs,” says Moffitt. “The first idea I had was: why don’t I ask a composer I knew and had worked with, and do a scene of say, six minutes with three dancers,” she says.
“And so I filmed it and I showed it to the Riverside Theatres [in] Parramatta, along with a presentation about it so they could see the vision and went, yes, we’d love to have it as a children’s ballet.” The music for the work has long since disappeared, but Moffitt felt it could work with a new, contemporary score. “I’ve been working with [composer] Mee-Lee Hay, who has a background in ballet so she has a great sensibility for what it needs,” she says.
Lexie Smiles during her dancing days. The 45-minute work is aimed at a young audience. It tells a tale of young love that, as ever, treads a rocky path before the main protagonists finally overcome their challenges to get together.
“There are lots of Australian characters and animals in there,” says Moffitt. “The cockatoo is the scout and the magpie is a mimic to sort of reflect their behaviour. Then the kangaroo represents power, which is in line with some of the Indigenous totems surrounding animals.
” One of the charming watercolours of the costumes. For Moffitt and her mother, Lexie Smiles, who is also a dancer, the process of realising Kunze’s 70-year-old vision has been the ultimate labour of love. The mother-and-daughter team had endless discussions about bringing the project to life and Smiles, also a visual artist, even painted some of the backdrop.
“Mum is delighted that people might actually be ready for her mother’s vision now and that it is coming to the stage and might have a life beyond that,” says Moffitt. Gold, August 15-17, Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees.
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