Lightfoot Dancing: An Australian-Indian Affair

Marian Quartly, Emerita Professor of History, Monash University for mentoring and editing

Music Archives, Monash University staff, for access to Louise Lightfoot’s archival material and use of many photos.

Melbourne University archives and Department of Architecture, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Library of Australia, Manuscripts department and curators of Dance; Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW staff; Powerhouse Museum, curator Anne Watson

NSW Writers Centre and course leaders for many writing courses and workshops, Australian Society of Authors for awarding the author a mentorship.

Dictionary of Sydney and staff, Walter Burley Griffin Society Inc, Dance Australia Magazine, Cunnane Agency.

Lightfoot family members especially Maisie, Lal, Gerald and Sheila

Those who gave me a home/place to write in the early days of this project - Basil, David Foley, Chrissi and Gai, Kathryn, Mary and Terry.

For invaluable assistance and encouragement

Ananda Shivaram and his brother P K Devan, Dr Reis Flora, Moya (Beaver) Arkins, Ruth Bergner, Albert Burlakov, Ibetombi Devi and daughter Neharika, Marie Graham, Christine Kaine, Jack Manuel, Kaaren Whyte (Cappy's daughter), Phyllis (Wardrop) Molton, Rose Chaffey, Tara Rajkumar and Natya Sudha dancers, Elizabeth Russell and Richard Sebel.

John McIntyre for cover design. Cover photo - Louise Lightfoot in Nautch costume, circa 1938, photographer unknown.

Section 1 India Calling

INTRODUCTION

Louise Lightfoot had a great name for a dancer and it was her real name. She was a dancer and many other things as well. Let me declare my interest from the start, Louise is my aunt, but that isn’t the only reason to write her life-story.

As a child growing up in rural Victoria, our Aunt Louise was a shadowy figure who we didn’t know a lot about and rarely saw. She had ‘gone off to India’, we were told, years before I was born and she only occasionally returned to Australia. When she did, she would be accompanied by at least one, or sometimes several, exotic and beautiful dark-skinned dancers and musicians from India. During such a visit Dad would take me to Melbourne to visit and perhaps see them dance. Louise was Dad’s sister, a few years his senior.

When in Melbourne, Louise and the dancers would stay with her elder sister Maisie in a suburban house behind a tall dense hedge. I knew that house well  Maisie had lived there all my life. But when Louise and the dancers stayed it became a different place. The smells would greet you at the door – perfumes of sandalwood incense and coconut oil that the visitors used on their hair, as well as enticing odours of aromatic Indian cooking spices. There were colourful gold-trimmed costumes and headdresses hung around from door frames and curtain rods, and strange-looking long barrelled drums laced with cords. I’d see Aunt Louise, tall, slim and pale, gliding around and speaking quietly or laughing with the dark dancers. There would be sounds of drums or other instruments and foreign tongues that seemed to roll around in their mouths. Louise was more a part of that world than of ours. When I was taken to a performance in some large public hall, Louise would be on stage dressed in a sari and she would introduce, explain and interpret the dances and music to the interested all-white audiences.

But these brief visits only happened a few times in my youth. The rest of the time Louise was barely referred to. I suppose she was considered too eccentric and unusual to be acceptable then. My mother certainly didn’t approve of her strange life. Yet for me Louise’s story and the glimpses of other worlds in those visits were like episodes of the 1001 Arabian (or Indian) nights, and I knew from an early age that one day I would go to India.

Louise lived much of her life away from Australia, touring and living in many countries. After she retired to Australia late in the 1960s, I took off travelling overseas as she had. Between journeys, sometimes my sister and I would ride out to visit Louise and Maisie. As we sat talking or looking at old family photos, above us on a high shelf sat a row of twelve small carved and painted wooden figures. Louise had brought them back from Manipur and as long as I could remember they were a symbol of her other world. Those same figures now look down on the computer where I write.

When Louise died I was the one living in India. Aunt Maisie, the keeper of all things connected with Louise gave me an ancient-looking notebook, bound in a red and blue cover, which enclosed Louise’s typed manuscript. I have to admit that though interested, I read some of it but hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the book at the time.

When Aunt Maisie died I was still in India. I asked for the Manipuri figures and they came to along with a box of Louise’s self-published volume called Dance Rituals of Manipur, India. Little did I realise what involvements this legacy would lead me to.

In the mid-1990s there was space in my life to think of writing about my Aunt and to consider her story more fully. In the beginning of this project I thought that I would write an article, or perhaps a forward and postscript to go with her manuscript and get it published. It would only take a few months and then I could get on with the rest of my life. Or so I thought.

Seeing and delving into the archival material, boxes and trunks of Louise’s papers, photos, costumes that she had donated to Monash University was a major step. As I got deeper into the story and discovered more about Louise’s life and career, I realised it should be a book. I had never written a book and had no idea what it entailed.

I would come to know my aunt intimately by becoming her biographer. It’s a shame that has happened only after she died. I would find that Louise Lightfoot-architect, dancer, choreographer, teacher and impresario, as well as writer and musician-lived a remarkable life that is part of the history of dance and the arts in Australia in the twentieth century and a part that is little documented.

My journey into the life and times of Louise Lightfoot has been long and fascinating. It’s a story whose time has come, as many signs along the way indicate.

CHAPTER 1 PASSAGE TO INDIA

This is how Louise began her own story, her unpublished manuscript.

Our ship was nearing Bombay. The Strathnaver was the last boat to leave Australia before the coronation of King George VI in 1937, and all on board were in a holiday mood. A glorious happy trip it was, in glorious weather.

My Partner and I, confirmed balletomanes and not the least interested in a coronation, were going to Paris and London to purchase orchestrated ballet-music and arrange about copyrights. We had a large ballet school in Sydney and larger ambitions. Never having travelled before, I had brought my Partner with me, doubling expenses thereby, but never mind. He was genial, good-natured and strong. He was Russian too, and that helped in the ballet world. While I, about a dozen years his junior was very 'nervy' from teaching and producing ballet, and self-conscious among strangers.

We had passed over the saxe-blue waters of the Indian Ocean with lots of fun and talk about Ballet, had danced items at the ship's concert and played pranks over the Equator. I always felt a 'thrill' (which I did not mention to the others) when I saw the Indian crew touch their foreheads to the deck at sunset, or watched the clear-cut profile of a Lascar (a seaman) against the fading light.

But one day I did a really foolish thing-I showed a photograph of an Indian ballet called Krishna and Radha that I had produced in Sydney, to a Lascar on deck and tried to talk to him. A P&O officer noticed me, and his face registered what is known in Indian Kathakali as Rasa Hasya-mixture of amusement and contempt. Years afterwards, when I was dancing with an Indian on the Bangalore Town Hall stage, The British Resident watched me with the same Rasa Hasya, and I at once recalled that P&O officer's face.

Now, as we neared port, a swarthy native had swung down across my cabin window on a passing fishing boat and I stood riveted. Not all the paintings, picture books and stories had prepared me for this, my first experience of the East.

A very strange thing happened to me as we neared the shore of India and were standing on deck watching the figures on the wharf grow more distinct. I had never had any special interest in India. My heart was set on Europe, and to this end I had saved money for years past. I had not even inquired whether our boat would call at an Indian port on the way. I was amazed then at this flood of feeling which now came over me-ecstasy, anticipation, reverence, yearning-a bursting sensation as though my whole body would dissolve into vibrations to throb in tune with a myriad others radiating towards me over this great unseen land of India. I turned and ran down to my cabin. Seizing my diary I wrote excitedly The climax of my life has arrived.

I remember how, as we walked the streets of Bombay that day, I always had the feeling of being home at last. Everything pleased me. I could have been utterly content just sitting on the kerbstone. I did not mention this to my Partner. It seemed almost sacred. The revelation of Pavlova, which ten years before had changed my life from the architect's office to the ballet school had been quite a normal event; but this new development in my life was so very strange.

On re-reading this manuscript when I began to research Louise’s life in detail, I felt amazed and astonished. Was this really our aunt doing such exotic things? I found it exciting too because by then I had spent many years of my life in India, though knowing little of Louise’s experiences there.

I have taken on the mantle of telling the story of my aunt’s life. It is also, in part, my story of finding her story. You might wonder how we knew so little about her doings. The family considered her eccentric and unusual, even strange. Was she too different for the middle class family in conservative Australia of the 1950s to talk of much? Or maybe they didn’t talk much about her because she had always been like that and was just another fact of family life.

We did know that she had studied architecture and worked with Walter Burley Griffin, architect and designer of Canberra. The Griffins too were considered eccentric and rather odd in their day. We also knew that Louise ran a dance school at Circular Quay in Sydney, with a Russian, but nothing of how and why she had switched from architecture to dance. How did she do that? Her mentions of teaching and ‘presenting Ballet’ in Sydney were also of great interest to me. I had loved ballet since I was a child.

Though I had always been fascinated by Louise’s story, and over the years after she died I had collected information and talked to people who knew her, my own busy life, much of it outside Australia, didn’t allow for an exploration of hers. But now that has happened, as far as possible I will let her tell her story in her own words, adding mine where necessary. She writes with passion and intelligence of a life she describes as a journey of discovery.

Her manuscript continued:

In Bombay I bought Indian dance costumes, [including that worn by her on the front cover] ornaments and gramophone records. That evening at dinner on board ship, people spoke of the dirt, beggars, heat, and disease.

I scarcely heard them. Next day we went ashore again, and after wandering about, we found ourselves sitting in a cafe up Malabar Hill. At the next table sat a man with a high fur cap. He looked like a visitor from a remote part of India, a little Tibetan, I thought. Obviously he would not understand English, and I remarked to my Partner aloud ‘That is the handsomest man I have ever seen.’ The object of my admiration sipped his pink drink quietly as my Partner protested a little.

We were rather late returning to the boat, and most people were already aboard. We pushed through the mass of colour and noise. We breathed the warm air perfumed by garlands of the departing passengers. One Indian man was almost smothered by garlands of jasmine and many people crowded around him or waved to him from below. I soon recognised him as the same man who had been sipping the pink drink in the Malabar Hill cafe. He was the Prince of Nepal, on his way to the coronation and taking with him, people said, a priceless jewel guarded day and night by Ghurkhas. Oh, what excitement! Sometimes the smell of jasmine suddenly brings back the thrill of that evening.

The engines throbbed again and the waves glided past; but on the ship the smell of jasmine lingered for days. I was in the grip of new emotions. Ballet had faded away and I lived now only to talk to Indians about India. Little did I dream of the commotion this would cause aboard the Strathnaver.

To make a long story short, I fell in love with an Indian on board. My first Indian companions were two Parsi ladies whose gentle manners seemed to make our Western ones almost uncouth by comparison. It was quite a few days before I dared to speak to an Indian man. Though I travelled tourist class, I was often lured by the long vista of side-deck, and thrill of the boat prow, to venture along first class space. Now I sometimes saw there the striking figure of the Prince of Nepal sitting aloof, smoking through a long hookah-a very picturesque sight. Once I dared to look back to see if he was looking back, but he wasn't.

After some days I summoned up enough courage to approach three nice young Indian men travelling tourist class. Their delighted flashing smiles, readiness to answer all my questions, and eagerness to outdo each other in entertaining me only added to my self-consciousness at first. One was an Oxford graduate in Law and a Hindu, who wielded the English language with great brilliance. The second, a quiet Mohammedan from the Punjab, had a position in India House, London. The third! Ah the third! It was almost impossible to ask him a question, for it was like looking at a flash of lightning in a dark sky. I am not exaggerating. High-caste Hindus are notoriously beautiful people. He was of the community of which the Aga Khan was leader, but said his people had been Hindus till some twenty years before. He was enjoying a world trip before his marriage. There was a Queensland ballet dancer on board and she was much attracted to him. Her heaven was deck tennis, but only when he was one of the four, which he often was.

It appeared it was 'done' to include an Indian in games, but I soon discovered it was 'not done' to engage him in conversation. One day when I was sitting chatting with my three Indian friends, I noticed some of my Partner's Australian pals looking my way and obviously discussing me. Next day one of them (such a nice, sincere fellow) took me aside and explained, I hope you won't mind me advising you, but it's not quite the thing you sitting with those fellows. Our women don't do that. You know, when a white man marries a coloured woman, he raises her to his standard; but when a white woman marries a coloured man, she goes down to his standard. I managed to control my mixed indignation and amusement and thanked him.

This Partner of Louise’s, I wondered, who was he and what were his roles? I would find that he was Misha Burlakov, her Russian dance and business partner. They had been dancing and working together for ten years, giving birth to the First Australian Ballet. Louise’s manuscript explained little.

The case of my Partner was different. A true artist, he instantly perceived the beauty in India and its people, but maybe some instinct warned him that such a marked change in my interests might lead to something that would eventually separate us. We had achieved fine things in our work together, but we each doubted our success alone. When I talked with Indians, instead of joining me, he would call me away on some pretext.

On the evening of the ship's fancy dress ball, I wore the nautch [dance] costume purchased in Bombay and was paired off with my beautiful Indian friend dressed in his national costume. My Partner was very put out. Next evening, as if by mutual wish, this Indian and I met and walked to the front of the boat. Oh, the great ocean lit by the moon, the swish of the waves and the beauty of that face! We had scarcely spoken a few sentences when I felt a tap on my shoulder. My Partner had not taken long to find me, and he was looking more dangerous than in his famous Danse Brutale. He pointed towards my cabin dramatically. The Indian's surprise gradually turned to a smile and he followed pleasantly to the rear of the boat. I was furious but gave up the idea of further moonlight talks at once.

And so we sailed on uneventfully to Marseilles, where I wept disconsolately on the landing pier as I followed my trunks away from that happy boat to catch the train to Paris. Our arrival at the Paris Railway Station was exactly at midnight, and we were the last passengers to leave it except for the Prince of Nepal. His faithful Ghurkhas were assembling in pairs with his luggage. As we passed them by, a look of mutual trouble and commiseration passed silently between the Prince and me. We were now exiles in the same country and from the same country.

So she has fallen in love with India. Many people have done so before and since, but hers is an exotic version. And a good story, even if perhaps embroidered by time and memory.

I particularly wondered at the sentence …in the same country and from the same country as the Prince of Nepal! I understood that Nepal was still a part of British India then, not a separate country as it later became. Was Louise already identifying so much with India to think of being from the same country? But then she wrote her manuscript years after it happened and by then she had become quite ‘Indian’.

Louise had ‘gone off to India’ to live in 1938, which was strange for the time. Europe was heading for war. Women didn’t travel much, especially on their own, and the ‘Dark Continent’ of India, though a part of the British Empire, was an unusual destination for a single white Australian woman. She would spend the rest of her life involved with India, and most of that outside Australia, returning only rarely for the next thirty years.

By the time I began to research Louise’s story, my father had died. None of the family knew her really well, except her sisters, and her only surviving sister lived in an enclosed contemplative monastery. I spoke to my Uncle Gerald by phone several times and he was happy to talk of his memories, but before we could meet in person, he died suddenly.

It promised to be a journey to find out all about Louise, but I was, like her, already a seasoned traveller. So began the travels in search of my aunt.

CHAPTER 2 BALLET INTERESTS IN EUROPE BUT INDIA CALLS

Louise wrote her manuscript in the late 1950s, looking back two decades. In real time, she wrote letters back to her students, copies of which I read in the 1990s. They give a more immediate picture of her experiences, and are here interspersed with the later manuscript version.

The first letter written early in the sea voyage was addressed to:

Dear Children [her students]

Thank you for the lovely farewell you gave us at the boat. It made me feel quite happy instead of sad. After we passed the heads of Sydney Harbour my cabin began to fill with baskets of flowers

The voyage so far has been very calm. To sit on the top deck at the very rear of the boat and watch the moonlight track across the water, and little gossamer-like clouds drift over the stars is just paradise. Nothing else left to wish for.

We are now crossing the Indian Ocean and what an ocean it is! The water is dark blue, not like our greenish sapphire blue. I thought I must be dreaming when I first looked over it. It is very calm and warm and the sun is glittering on the water like a myriad diamonds flashing in a setting of saxe-blue silk. In future when I get tired I will think of this beautiful ocean.

Misha is having a wonderful time. He’s organising some ‘art’ on the boat instead of sport. To tell you of his doings would take too long. Needless to say, rehearsals for his Volga Boatmen quartet are in full swing. I am having very happy times.

Misha was the ‘Partner’ of the manuscript - Misha Burlakov, the jolly Russian, her dance and business partner (not spouse or lover as in current usage). Louise and Misha had been dancing together for over a decade, and teaching dance. It was his first trip back to Europe since he came to Australia years before (with Pavlova’s company, it was said). His wife had not wanted him to travel and for a while refused to sign his application for a passport, as was required of a spouse at the time.

Louise missed their ballet school and students and the vibrant life of their studio at Circular Quay. Ballet had become her whole life and their dancers her Sydney family. Her own family lived in Melbourne. The dancers were young students and workers, mostly girls, who danced and rehearsed in the evenings and at weekends. Louise and Misha had been presenting Ballet in Sydney since 1931. They called their amateur company’s stage productions the FIRST AUSTRALIAN BALLET.

While they were away, classes at the studio continued. Nineteen-year old Moya Beaver, one of the principal dancers, courageously took over the running of the school at Louise’s request. The older students all promised to help too so that classes and rehearsals could continue smoothly. Moya, who I would come to know well, had preserved Louise’s letters and gave me copies of them.

Once Louise and Misha reached Paris, it was back to work again. They had goals to achieve. Louise was thrilled to be in Paris, the city she had longed to visit for years. Diaghilev (spelt Diaghileff at the time) had considered it the capital of the intellectual and artistic worlds. Diaghilev had gone, but Paris was still the centre of the world of Russian ballet.

Louise wrote freely to Moya and the students, expressing her opinions:

Paris is marvellous for good food and clothes. Money disappears like water. The business people are very smartly dressed - frightfully coquettish hats, plucked eyebrows, orange powders, and always rather theatrical make-up on eyelashes and lids, and a variety of dyed hair (scarcely no natural hair). They have pretty faces but ugly legs and feet. Very polite, but no depth, not like the Russians and oh! Not like the Indians. It’s all very gay but not much real beauty.

We began visiting the famous schools this week. I have learnt two Spanish routines from Nina Kirsanova, one routine from Nyota Inyoka (Hindoo) [sic] and am having ballet lessons from Egorova. Private lessons are fiercely expensive (30 shillings a lesson, though class lessons reasonable at 3 shillings or 12.50 francs). We saw Maurice Chevalier in the flesh at the Casino. He’s a darling! Misha also met Ivan Sergieff who we studied with during his visits to Australia with Pavlova's company.

She set off for Paris without knowing French said Louise’s older sister who had studied French with honours, Of course she had problems

Our task of purchasing orchestrated ballet music and negotiating copyrights in Paris was not an easy one. Inquiring the way, wandering around underground Metro stations, waiting for firms to find interpreters, carrying on lengthy conversations with these people, searching for 'a nice cup of tea' (unobtainable in Paris) - all these were tiring; but in addition to these I had taken on a great deal of other work.

Some mornings I studied ballet with the famous Russian ballerina, Lubov Egorova, whose gift for arranging 'enchainments'- linking of steps - I admired. Other mornings I went to the famous partner of Anna Pavlova to study his barre method. Often I would fit in an hour at the Wacker studios to study Spanish dancing, and several times I journeyed to an outer suburb to learn castanet playing and heel rhythms from the famous Juliana Enakieva. (She is a marvellous teacher and pushes me at top speed). Another long journey was to Port d'Autueille where a French 'oriental', Nyota Inyoka, professed to teach Indian dancing. I doubted her knowledge somehow, and did not go frequently.

Almost every night we attended Ballet at the Grand Opera or Opera Comique, where I took notes on ballets which I thought suitable for our own productions. Naturally we had to see famous churches, galleries and gardens, to say nothing of Follies Bergere, Cafe Hungaria, etc. Often I was extremely exhausted.

My mind was constantly going back to India, and I would have been run down many a time by the dense traffic had it not been that Misha looked after me. He had a very good sense of direction that fortunately very often led him to excellent Russian cafes. Borscht and cream, piroshki and cheesecakes gave me strength over this difficult period.

The one real thrill I had all this time was the appearance of the Prince of Nepal's photograph on the cover page of the smart Paris pictorial VOILA - he was picked out as The Most Attractive Man at the Coronation and I was able to say to my Partner There!"

Sometimes Louise sent instructions to the students, such as:

Practise kneeling down, bending head and arms back to floor and staying there.

Sometimes she requested an errand. One such request concerned an article that she wrote and sent to Moya to try for publication.

If any of Preob’s photos are published, all must be, as there is great rivalry between her pupils. Her secretary warned me about sending any cuttings that might leave out one pupil’s photo.

The article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in September 1937, along with several photos that hopefully complied with the request.

"Famous Teachers of Famous Dancers; A Peep at Russian Ballet Schools in Paris" was a picturesque account of the Russian emigre teachers. They were mostly talented and beautiful women such as Nina Kirsanova, [who had danced in Australia with Pavlova's Company in 1929] Lubov Egorova and Olga Preobrajenska, [from whose studio Balanchine had plucked the Baby Ballerinas a few years earlier].

Naturally she kept the Sydney students up to date on ballet interests. Dance companies from many parts of the world had assembled in Paris for the Exposition Internationale.

We’ve seen the visiting Danish Ballet Company, the English Ballet, Soviet soloists, the Kurt Joos Ballet and Blum’s Monte Carlo Ballet. In London we’ll see De Basil’s.

The Vic Wells Ballet are hopeless - very, very amateurish, couldn't even smile for the curtain calls. Had I selected girls from Australia and put on some of our ballets, we could have made 100% better showing. Saw Robert Helpmann at the cafe afterwards. He remembered us and apologised for the rotten show and explained he had a bad leg. But bad legs don't account for lack of expression. Everyone in the company seemed lifeless, and they have now been appearing for some years and touring. Because of climate and temperament, Australians make better dancers than the English who are more reserved and restrained.

Oh my! Criticising Helpmann, an Australian icon! I felt a little shocked and wondered how this would be taken and if she really knew what she was talking about. Once I had access to Louise’s archival material, and the wealth of documentation that it contained, I realised that she did.

Louise had given many boxes of personal material to Monash University - she must have realised that her life would be worth re-examining. In 1997 when I first saw that material, I went straight to the box which contained old books of press cuttings and programs of dance performances-her scrapbooks of the 1920s and 1930s were a delight to find and pore over. From the many press cuttings of the period - newspaper articles, press releases and reviews of performances, and programs of events, all chronologically documented by Louise, I could follow every performance.

Louise and Misha had produced the first Australian productions of several classic Russian ballets. Just prior to their journey, their First Australian Ballet had presented a triumphant season of ballets including Stravinsky’s Petrouschka. This was a few weeks before the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo’s first visit to Australia in 1938.

Louise was accustomed to promoting Australians dance talents and had written many articles in the Australian press. Other dance performances they saw she approved of just as strongly as she disapproved of the English company.

Kurt Joos was excellent in his modern work. His ‘Green Table’ is the most arresting creation I have ever seen, a flash of genius. He believes as I do in a combination of ballet and Wigman technique. He used the Wigman style mainly in slow movements, but his men do strong ballet movements almost all the time. He asked us to try and get him a contract in Australia, but we told him he needed a bigger repertoire and this he admitted himself.

I am going to put on a new ballet when I return. Unfortunately the parts have been lost since 1914 when Nijinsky last danced it, but Hahn the composer is doing his best to put it together for me.

Reynaldo Hahn, born in Venezuela, had studied at the Paris Conservatoire and was for some time Marcel Proust’s lover. I wondered if Louise might have met Proust too. If she did, she gave no intimation of what she thought of these famous Parisians. She was more interested in things Russian.

It happens to be the year of the Exposition Internationale. At the opening of the Russian Exhibition everyone seemed just as excited as if they'd been let into Russia itself. I cannot describe the oil paintings of Revolution scenes, Cossacks, ultra modern designs, stage settings, machinery etc. It simply bowled me over and I felt like lying down and waving my arms helplessly after surveying a few things. It was impossible to drag Misha away, and I got quite hysterical with tiredness coming home in the Metro. I had to miss one evening with my beloved Uday Shankar's troupe.

What was this, I wondered, sounding Indian rather than Russian or of ballet? The manuscript explained, and perhaps her Sydney students were already noticing some change of attitude in her letters.

One fine day a poster, printed in violet ink, appeared on Paris hoardings advertising UDAY SHANKAR ET SA COMPAGNIE DE DANSEUSES, DANSEURS ET MUSICIANS HINDOUS. Imagine my excitement! Ballet lessons were promptly 'cut', and I immediately went to the particular theatre to find out more about this forthcoming event-Shankar was to give a season from the fourteenth to the twentieth of June at the Comedie des Theatre Champs Elysees. Now the greatest excitement of all - a ballet from India! The days passed all too slowly till the fourteenth of June, but at last the day, the evening, the hour, the moment came. A deep gong struck and the curtain rose on the art of India!

I will not attempt to describe my first impression of Indian art. They are no doubt similar to those of other people who enjoyed it. I remember writing to my sister I understand now why St Paul could not describe his vision of Heaven. Some things must be seen. Night after night I went to see the Shankar performances. The season was extended one week. I soon realised the outstanding marvels were Shankar's own beauty and personality, and Madhavan's authentic style.

Madhavan was a dark, wiry 'native' whose movements were so highly stylised and intensely expressive that they seemed inimitable. They gave me the impression of an art more highly evolved and profound than Russian Ballet, and of a far-off age and civilization more attractive than ours. A program note explained briefly that they were of South Indian Kathakali style. I was determined to get to the bottom of this Kathakali and with this intention I went backstage to meet the great Shankar.

Near the dressing rooms I met a Russian dance student I knew, also waiting to see the artists. She had not seen the show so I began an enthusiastic explanation. They do a step like this...and a neck movement like this... And I told her I was going to India to learn some dances there. A face now appeared round the dressing-room door and regarded me with curiosity and, I thought, some alarm. Then it disappeared. It was Shankar himself.

Uday Shankar, elder brother of musician Ravi Shankar, was on a tour of many cities of the world at that time with his large troupe of dancers and musicians. His introduction of Indian dance to many countries was well received, influencing dancers such as Anna Pavlova.

Later, at my interview with this handsome Indian, I requested some lessons in Kathakali. He made a statement that I doubted at the time, but since learnt was true.

I really know very little about Indian dancing, he said. I must myself go back to India and study. Then how can I teach you?

But I was not to be put off so easily.

Finally he said Sometimes you can come and see me and I may have time to show you a few gestures. I came next day and had a chat with the Manager, but I could not see Shankar.

Then I did a naughty thing-I went to Madhavan personally and requested lessons. To my dismay he said Yes, but let me take Shankar's permission first. Next day he told me it was impossible but he wrote me the name of the school where he was trained. I blinked at the long name Keralakalamandalam.

Would it be too hot for me there? I asked him.

Some months are not hot. You can go there. Why not?

His black eyes danced.

Excuse me! and he was gone. I kept the address carefully.

As soon as the season was finished and Shankar’s company crossed to London, I suddenly found that my work was also finished in Paris, and we too departed. I was sorry to leave Paris and have to start all over again in London. Soon we were viewing another world from the top of red double-decker buses in the roar of London traffic.

Only London, I thought, and then India!

Though I am fond of London now, at the time of my first visit I disliked it very much. I found it less beautiful than Paris and I missed the Sydney sunshine more than ever. I stayed at Kentish Town with a friend, and Misha stayed with relatives at Golder's Green. Our meeting place was Trafalgar Square, and maybe because I was so often kept waiting, I thought it a very drab place. More recent memories of it however, with its Norwegian Christmas tree twinkling in the frosty air, have helped to remove those drab impressions.

Ballet again came to the fore in London, to advance their Sydney students’ tuition, but thoughts of India and Indian dance weren’t far from Louise’s mind.

One of my aims in London was to study the Cecchetti examination syllabus, and to be sure of the details of advanced examinations to which my Sydney students aspired, having already passed elementary ones. I began lessons at the Margaret Craske School.

One sultry day, a couple of weeks after our arrival, as I was in a lesson and discussing with my teacher, there gradually crept over me what I call a fading away sensation. The teacher, the room and students around me seemed to fade, to become remote and dreamlike. I was alone, and over there in India the people walking in the streets were quite clear, and I seemed to swing towards them.

At the end of the lesson I left the studio for the offices of the P & O Company. I found myself almost running along the street with great happiness. I was cutting short our London stay and accepting berths on the Strathaird which left in a few days time.

The clerk shook his head at the idea of breaking the journey at Bombay, not because berths were not available (they were), but because we would arrive in the middle of the monsoon, and he said I would regret my decision after a couple of hours ashore. He kindly offered to arrange that I could make the decision at Bombay itself. As for Misha, he was genuinely disappointed at my decision to sail because he was enjoying London and glad to be away from the cares of teaching as long as possible, but he fell in good-naturedly with my plans for immediate departure.

So we were in London for only three weeks. My last two evenings were spent at the Shankar Ballet. I arrived rather late on the second night, and when the lights went up at the intermission, I found myself sitting next to the Prince of Nepal! I exclaimed with delight, and he broke into a stream of very beautiful English. Never was there a theatre interval so short.

Then the lights dimmed and I was to see Madhavan's Hunter Dance for the final time. The previous evening the audience, carried away by the virility and vividness of this magnificent item, had insisted on seven curtain calls. But this evening the curtain was not raised even once, and being a producer, I felt I knew the reason.

After the performance, the Prince, surrounded by friends, bowed himself away, hoping we would meet in India. I went backstage to bid farewell to Madhavan. I peeped at Shankar on the stage surrounded by beautiful women admirers. I opened the door of Madhavan's room and said

I will see you one day at Kerala Kalamandalam.

Yes, yes replied Madhavan, and his eyes danced.

Some young ladies were waiting for him. He seized a bottle and poured perfumed oil onto the palm of his hand, clapped it to his head and tugged his wild hair into place.

Next time, in Kerala and he was gone in a flash, like a hunter following the deer. I stood alone in the passageway, wondering if I could ever face this strange Kerala.

Naturally, in the course of time, she did.

CHAPTER 3 INVITATION FROM A GODDESS

It would be some time before Louise found Kerala. But she was on the way to exploring more of India than her first shipboard stop had allowed.

As I voyaged back to India I was trying to learn an Indian song. Its haunting melody was hard to catch. The student who was teaching me played it on the ship's piano and wrote me a translation of the words. I had many Indian friends on board the Strathaird and within a week some gossip had started that I had been stopped from walking or dancing with Indians on the boat by my 'guardian', and that I was getting down at Bombay and leaving him.

There was an Indian doctor who reminded me of the character Narada in Indian mythology who makes harmless mischief. While pretending to be the best of friends with Misha, he would talk vaguely to him of the great dangers of women being alone in India. He would then return to me and describe Misha's concern, while laughing heartily and slapping his knees and clicking his fingers in delight.

Before reaching Bombay, Misha was threatening suicide and hunger strike if I disembarked. I was really worried about him for a while until I found his meals were being brought to his cabin. On arrival at Bombay I made the necessary arrangements for my break of journey, and Misha, knowing it was useless to interfere, became very helpful. We took leave of each other and shook hands affectionately outside the gates of the YWCA where I was to stay.