BALLET TOUR CANCELLATION

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28935, 1 July 1959, Page 17

BALLET TOUR CANCELLATION

Elizabethan Trust Disappointed (NJ!. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, June 30. The Elizabethan Theatre Trust will write to Moscow in an attempt to persuade the Russian Classical Ballet ensemble to come to Australia. The ballet was to have performed in Brisbane in August. The group cancelled its tour of Australia and New Zealand without giving notice or reason to organisers in Sydney.

Mr R. J. Kerridge, the manag-ing-director of Kerridge-Odeon, the New Zealand promoters of the tour, telephoned the Elizabethan Theatre Trust to inform it that the group had not left Moscow.

The group was to have begun its New Zealand season on Thursday. Miss Elsie Byers, assistant executive director of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, said: “Mr Kerridge telephoned us. That was the first we heard about it. It is a very bitter disappointment to us.”

Miss Byers said the trust would write to the ensemble to try to arrange an Australian tour.

The trust director (Mr Hugh Hunt) began negotiations for the tour while in Moscow in October, 1957.

Miss Byers said the Australian bookings had not opened, but there had been heavy application for bookings. “We feel very sorry for Mr Kerridge, who has to return £40.000,” she said.

“But 1 feel there must be some reason for their action. We want them to come out here—they are a very good ballet.”