PUPILS' RECITAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 126, 24 November 1941, Page 4

PUPILS' RECITAL

SCHOOL OF RUSSIAN BALLET

As was to be expected, toe-dancing was featured in the recital given by Miss Diana Power-Palmer's pupils at the Town Hall Concert Chamber on Saturday night. Miss Power-Palmer was formerly a member of the Ballet Russe de Paris, and of the Espinosa English Ballet, and she has concentrated on teaching Russian ballet since her return to Wellington. Featured on the programme were a pas de deux from "Aurora's Wedding," a pas de quatre (taken from the lithograph in the British Museum of the four great nineteenth-century dancers, Taglioni, Grisi, Cerrito. and Grahn), the famous "Firebird" solo, and a waltz variation from "Les Sylphides."

Interspersed were character dances by her junior pupils, and a number of charming ballets. The programme opened with a "story" ballet with solo items, in which .the baby class took part, and included an entertaining mime, "Professor Barakoff's Academy," in which girls and several young men, all wearing traditional ballet costume, showed some clever point work. Elizabeth Eade and Lois Humphreys, in the pas de deux from "Aurora's Wedding," wore costumes reminiscent of those worn by the de Basil ballet which visited Wellington some years ago, the "bride" in a stiffly frilled white skirt with white panniers embroidered in scarlet, and her partner in a ruby jerkin, gold embroidered. In the pas de quatre the dancers wore full-length ballet frocks of white tulle, and pale pi»k toe-shoes, and in "The Firebird" the dancer wore the traditional flamecoloured costume studded with jewels.

Tap-dancing and cheerful red and white outfits introduced a modern note into the programme in the item "Lipsticks and Powder Puffs," and a feature of this second part of the recital was the impressionistic ballet, "Destruction," representing the anguish of Polish peasants attacked while at work by bombers. In this ballet the effect was greatly enhanced by clever lighting and sound effects. Part three of the programme included several outstanding numbers in which a ballet, "Song of India," and a ballet in two scenes, "The Enchanted Kiss," were predominant. In the first the dancers wore richly-hued saris actually from India, and in the second costumes varied from spectacular short ballet frocks of white satin stencilled in scarlet and blue, to effectively simple creations of tunics and drapes representing the spirits of storm and lightning, etc.

Presentations were made to all who took part and to their teacher.

A;.jcorrespondent wishes to know if any reader can tell her a way to remove an old -ice-plant stain from a white blazer

"SPRING COMES LAUGHING."