Dancers Booked To Leave on Sunday

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30946, 30 December 1965, Page 10

Dancers Booked To Leave on Sunday

The 20 South African dancers, who have been resting m Christchurch since December 18, when their theatre performances halted, are booked to leave Christchurch for Sydney y Qantas on Sunday.

The producermanager of the company, Mr A. J. Herbert, said last evening: “We are booked to leave on Sunday. If we do not go because the fares have not been paid, then I shall have to go to your Immigration Department,” Mr Herbert said. He said that he and the dancers had toured Australia and New Zealand under contract to the Entertainment Corporation of Australia. He showed a reporter the contract signed by himself and Mr Harry Wren, one of the directors of the corporation. Under the contract the corporation was to pay Mr Herbert and the company £AU36 a week. The corporation made a guarantee to pay the return fares of the dancers before the company left South Africa. Under the contract, the corporation was entitled to lay the company off for one week in six, without pay, and had to provide the return fares within 10 days of the termination of the company’s last performance. “We are booked to go and Mr Wren, under the contract must pay the booking agents the fares. That is an argument between the booking agents and Mr Wren, not us,” said Mr Herbert.

“I would like to take this opportunity to deny rumours that the artists and myself are stranded in Christchurch and in financial difficulties,” Mr Herbert said. “Mr Wren paid us regularly for 17 weeks, according to contract. We had five days off between Perth and Christchurch. The show was well advertised in the newspapers until we began in Christ church.

Dunedin and Invercargill, Mr Herbert said. Mr Herbert said that, under the contract, the 10 days from the last performance was up yesterday. If the corporation and Mr Wren did not provide air fares back to Johannesburg, via Sydney and Perth, as agreed, then the contract was broken.

Staying With Friends The artists were living away from the hotel they had been booked into in Christchurch. They were staying with friends because it was cheaper and they had not been paid for 13 days. “It is not true that they are broke. Seventeen of them have money in the bank, and all 20 of them have security money, taken from their weekly wages and kept by me by mutual agreement,” Mr Herbert said. He said that some of the artists were performing in a Christchurch night club last evening. He had opposed this because they were doing it for only what the management could raise from the audience, the money to be divided among the performers.

“I am informed that money is owing by Mr Wren and his corporation. We could not get newspaper advertising in Christchurch because of this.” The show was to have continued in Christchurch until December 24, and there were to have been performances in

“They are good artists and should be paid under contract That is why I opposed it. I will not leave the artists until every one of them, except the girl who married here, is back safely in South Africa,” Mr Herbert said. He said that Cynthia Rabebe, aged 23, from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, who married an Auckland wages clerk, Mr Dennis O’Neill, on December 6, had broken the contract with the Entertainment Corporation of Australia.

Immigration officials in Wellington said that Mrs O’Neill had not yet made any official application for a permit to reside in New Zealand.

“Any such application would receive priority because she is married to a New Zealand citizen,” one immigration official said. "Provided she met normal immigration requirements, there should be no difficulty in extending her permit to stay in New Zealand.”