BRENAN, JENNIE FRANCES (1877-1964), dancing teacher, was born on 24 April 1877 at Carlton, Victoria, fifth daughter of James Joseph Brenan, Irish-born estate agent, and his wife Annie Bryce Cooper, née Livingston, of Edinburgh. She was educated at the Catholic Ladies' College, East Melbourne. Despite family disapproval, Jennie always wanted to dance and J. C. Williamson, a frequent visitor to the Brenan home, encouraged her to take lessons from Mary Weir. Her early training in 'fancy dancing', from the gavotte to the Irish jig, gave her an artistic eclecticism she never lost. In the 1890s she studied ballet in Melbourne under Rosalie Phillipini and in 1901-02 under Alexandre Genée in London.
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Born in Carlton, Victoria, Jennie Brenan took dancing classes in Melbourne from Mary Weir and Rosalie Phillipini. She went to London in the first years of the twentieth century to continue her studies with Alexander Genee, uncle of Adeline Genee. Brenan made her stage debut as Mimi in the J. C. Williamson show, Trilby, which opened in Bendigo in 1896, and over the next few years appeared in other Williamson shows including the pantomime The Forty Thieves (1898-1899).
Brenan's own stage career was, however, short-lived as she quickly turned her talents to teaching. She opened her first dance studio in Melbourne in 1904 and she and her two sisters taught ballet, ballroom and fancy dancing over the next several decades. The studio supplied dancers to J. C. Williamson musicals for many years. Brenan's pupils included musical comedy stars Dorothy Brunton and Ivy Schilling, and principal artist with the Borovansky Ballet during the 1940s, Martin Rubinstein. One of Brenan's pupils described her in the 1910s as 'a tall, graceful creature with a cloud of dark hair, lovely eyes, long legs like a race horse and elegant ankles'. Over an extended period Jennie Brenan also arranged dances and ballets for Williamson musicals, pantomimes and operettas.
Brenan was deeply involved with the Association for Operatic Dancing (later the Royal Academy of Dancing/Dance) and organised the teaching of the association's syllabus in Australia. Brenan was the first president of the Royal Academy in Australia and was the first overseas representative to be elected to the organisation's grand council.
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The Australian production of Annie Get your Gun, an enterprise of the J. C. Williamson organisation, opened in Melbourne on 19 July 1947. Its first season in Australia just over twelve mon...

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National Library of Australia

Australian Dictionary of Biography
National Library of Australia
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