Ballet dancer seeks help

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34045, 8 January 1976, Page 4

Ballet dancer seeks help

GV.Z. Press Association.) WELLINGTON. January 6. A young ballet dancer has been caught in midair by purse strings and too many committees. Alfred Williams, aged 13. of Auckland, began his ballet career three months ago when he left New Zealand for the Hammond School of Ballet in Chester. England. His teacher, Miss Creina Gee, of the Auckland Ballet Academe, had told him that she could not teach him anything more. With enthusiastic references from Dame Margot Fonteyn, Mr Gordon Aitken,

the director of the Scottish Ballet Company, and Royal Academy of Dancing examiners, he was accepted at the Chester School. He left behind him the National School of Ballet — which he was too young to join — and an application with the Maori Education Foundation to pay about SNZI2OO needed for school fees. However, the foundation declined his application ;and now his dancing future (is in doubt. COUNCIL CONSULTED "We are not authorities in the arts,” the secretary of the foundation (Mr E. B. Taylor) said. "We believe the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council has prime responsibility for financing the arts.” Mr Taylor said recognition of Alfred Williams’s ballet abilities by the Arts Council would assure the foundation that a grant would be well spent. However, the foundation’s decision was made in October, two months after applications for overseas grants from the Arts Council had closed. The foundation cannot reconsider its decision and decide ability for itself until it meets again late next month — and it is keeping a close eye on grants after overspending $160,000 this year. MOTHER WORKING In the meantime, Alfred’s mother, Mrs Patricia (Williams, is helping to support her son. .She left New Zealand with Alfred, but found that she could not save $4OO to pay school fees each term and live on $lO a week. Last month, the Auckland Ballet Academv held a con cert for Alfred’Williams, and raised $lOO to meet school fees until next month.