SKETCHED IN THEATRE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22955, 10 August 1936, Page 2

SKETCHED IN THEATRE

STUDIES OF LA MERI EFFORTS OF LOCAL ARTIST Working in almost total darkness at His Majesty’s Theatre on Saturday night, a Dunedin girl artist made a number of pencil sketches of Mme La Meri, the famous dancer who was performing on the stage. Seated with a number of other students, and with only a glimmer from one of the exit lights to work by, the young artist made rapid sketches of the dancer in nine or ten of the dances in which she appeared. Mme La Meri and Signor Guido Carreras, her husband, yesterday received some of the sketches and were astonished and delighted to see the way in which the artist had caught many of the characteristic attitudes in the dances. “In Melbourne recently,” Mr Carreras said, “Mme La Meri performed one particular step of a Spanish dance over 300 times for a group of students from the National Gallery who had come along especially to draw her. Not one of the 15 students succeeded in reproducing the attitude and movement, and it is most surprising to find this young artist here in Dunedin has made such a fine collection of sketches while working m the dark.”