Ballerina Married A Man Of The Theatre

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 2

Ballerina Married A Man Of The Theatre

Leonie Leahy, first ballerina of the New Zealand Ballet and wife of the company’s ballet master and solo dancer (Kenneth Tillson), comes near to having the best of two worlds. “I was lucky in marrying a man of the theatre,” she said in Christchurch yesterday. “If I’d married a businessman, for instance, it would have been virtually impossible to carry on my career.”

No man outside the creative arts could be expected to put up with a wife who was away on frequent tours and spent long hours practising and rehearsing. “And only another dancer understands how tired you get,” she said, with an oblique glance at her husband, w T ho works 12 hours a day in the theatre when on tour.

“This is probably why so i many ballerinas give up dancing when they marry,”

she added. “Ballet is a tremendously demanding life and, in any case, most of the girls reach a kind of saturation point. For a girl a dancer’s life is a short one and if she does not marry, well. . . .”

Leonie Leahy can already look back on a very full life

as a dancer from the age of 14, when she began profes-

sional touring in South Australia. Perhaps the brightest spot

in her career was an appearance at the White House in 1961.

“1 was with the American Ballet Theatre in a command performance for the late President and Mrs Kennedy. They gave a tremendous boost to

the arts,” she said. While training in London,

Miss Leahy joined the “My Fair Lady” company, with

Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison heading the cast, and was the youngest dancer in it.

In 1960 she went to the Canadian National Ballet in Toronto and one year later the American Ballet Thetare, touring Canada and the United States with both companies. Back To Australia After five years overseas, Miss Leahy returned home to Australia and joined the Australian Ballet, then being formed by Peggy van Praagh, as a senior soloist and sharing ballerina roles with Sonia Arova. She came to New Zealand in 1963 with the Australian Ballet, when it toured the North Island only.

While in the Australian Ballet she met the London dancer, Kenneth Tillson. They were married in December last.

So far in New Zealand they have only appeared together in "Giselle,” when they danced the leading roles at an open-air performance at Brooklands Bowl, New Plymouth.

“When you are personally involved with someone it is harder to work with him, but more rewarding in the end because of the extra time you can spend discussing your roles,” Miss Leahy said. “You speak to each other from the depths, as it were,” Mr Tillson put in. Both dancers feel they have settled in the New Zealand Ballet. “This is one of the most successful and most finely directed companies I have been with and I am pleased to be part of what I consider is the dawn of a ‘golden age’ of ballet in New Zealand,” Kenneth Tillson said. “We are looking abroad. We want ballet to be an ambassador for the country as it is in England and Russia.” In Christchurch, Leonie Leahy will dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the New Zealand Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker Prince. The Christchurch member of the company, Miss Gillian Francis, will dance the Sugar Plum Fairy at the matinee performance on Saturday afternoon.