Enthusiastic Welcome For Bolshoi Dancers

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28981, 24 August 1959, Page 10

Enthusiastic Welcome For Bolshoi Dancers

(New Zealana Preu Association/

KUCKLMm, fMgasX 23. Eleven excited young Auckland ballet school students welcomed 13 dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet ensemble tonight at Whenuapai airport. To Jan McLeod fell the honour of welcoming the dark-haired vivacious prima ballerina, Susanna Zvyagina, on behalf of the girls who had waited from 9.30 pjn. to see the Russian stars. Through an interpreter. Miss Zvyagina thanked them and said it was the very best welcome they could have received from “you lovely young children ” It was a good sign for their New Zealand tour. Later, Mr Yuri Kusin, the director of the company from the Ministry of Culture, said the group had enjoyed their Australian tour tremendously. Asked about the standards of Australian hotels, Mr Kusin replied there had been enough said about that already. “Our Australian audiences were warm and enthusiastic. We found the Australians very hospitable,” he said. Mr L. Reid, president of the New Zealand Society for Closer Relations with Soviet Russia, invited the ensemble to attend a reception when they return to Auckland next week. Bearing flowers and several cameras, the Russian dancers arrived at their hotel in a fleet of large American cars. They went straight to their rooms. One member of the party went straight to bed and the others returned to the dining room for supper. Although obviously weary, they enjoyed the food. Some had several helpings, displaying a particular liking for savoury soup and dressed crayfish and destroying the vodka legend with calls for New Zealand beer. Stewart Matched. —The Welling* ton Boxing Association has secured the Australian middleweight boxing champion, Clive Stewart, tor a 12-round contest against the New Zealand champion. Tuna Scanlan, on September 7. It will be Stewart’s first appearance in New Zealand.— <PJt>

As they ate, Russian music played in the background, and the hotel staff held a solitary autograph hunter at bay.