Born in Toowoomba, Queensland, as Laurel
Gill, Laurel Martyn received her early
dance training with Kathleen Hamilton
in Toowoomba and Marjorie Hollinshed
in Brisbane. In 1933 Martyn left Australia
for further training. In England she
studied with Phyllis Bedells and in 1934
won a choreographic scholarship from
the Association of Operatic Dancing (later
the Royal Academy of Dancing) with her
first composition
Exile. She passed all her
Royal Academy exams to Solo Seal and
in 1935 won the Adeline Genee gold medal,
the second Australian to do so in the
then short life of the competition, which
began in 1931. In 1935 Martyn also arranged
the dances for a production of
The Waltz King and in the
same year received second prize in a
choreographic competition, the Pavlova
Casket, for her ballet
Sigrid.
Martyn joined the Vic-Wells Ballet (later
Sadler's Wells Ballet) in 1936. She was
the first Australian woman to be accepted
into the company and by 1938 was a soloist.
While in England she changed her name
from Gill to Martyn, also a family name.
She danced in many of Frederick Ashton's
early ballets including
Horoscope,
Nocturne and
Le Baiser de la fee and
also spent time in Paris studying with
the Russian emigre ballerinas Lubov Egorova
and Mathilde Kchessinska.
Martyn came back to Australia in 1938
following the death of her father. On
her return she took up a position in
Melbourne with well-known teacher Jennie
Brenan. While teaching for Brenan she
was offered the dancing lead in
Hiawatha, a pageant produced
by T. E. Fairbairn and choreographed
by Brenan, which opened in Melbourne's
Exhibition Building on 21 October 1939.
The ballet cast of 80 was led by Martyn,
Serge Bousloff and Lawrence Rentoul.
While performing in
Hiawatha Martyn was noticed
by Edouard Borovansky who persuaded her
to join his fledgling Borovansky Ballet,
which she did in 1940 following a brief
return to Queensland. Martyn, along with
Edna Busse and fellow-Queenslander Dorothy
Stevenson, was Borovansky's leading artist
in the early Borovansky days and she
danced and created leading roles with
Borovansky until 1945. Created roles
for the Borovansky Ballet included the
Spirit of the River in Borovansky's meditation
on his Czech homeland,
Vltava. While with Borovansky
she also restaged
Sigrid and reworked what
is probably her best known work,
En Saga, which premiered
for the Borovansky Ballet in 1941.
Martyn left the Borovansky Ballet after
her marriage to Lloyd Lawton in 1945.
But in 1946, at the request of the Melbourne
Ballet Club, Martyn took on the directorship
of Ballet Guild, as the Melbourne Ballet
Club had renamed itself. She was its
director for an extended period. Ballet
Guild became Victorian Ballet Company
in 1963 and Ballet Victoria in 1967.
Martyn was at the helm until 1973. She
also established a school associated
with Ballet Guild and students from the
school augmented professional dancers
in Ballet Guild productions. Martyn created
many original works for Ballet Guild
and Ballet Victoria productions and collaborated
with Australian composers, including
Dorian Le Gallienne, Margaret Sutherland,
John Tallis, Esther Rofe, and Verdon
Williams, and Australian designers, including
Alan McCulloch, Len Annois, and John
Sumner. Some of her works also had specifically
Australian themes, notably
The Sentimental Bloke (1952)
and
Mathinna (1954). Other significant
works that Martyn made in this period
included
L'Amour enchantee (1950),
a full-length
Sylvia (1962),
Voyageur (1956) and
Eve of St Agnes (1966).
Martyn also developed a specific method
for teaching dance especially to children,
the principles of which she published
in
Let them Dance (1985). She
also was instrumental in forming the
Young Dancers' Theatre, for which she
choreographed several works in the 1980s,
and the Classical Dance Teachers Australia
Inc, which provided in-service training
for dance teachers. She was also on the
steering committee for the Australian
Institute of Classical Dance in the early
years of its development. Martyn guested
with the Australian Ballet as Mar in
The Sentimental Bloke in
1985, as the mother of James in
La Sylphide also in 1985,
as Berthe, Giselle's mother, in
Giselle in 1986 and as Miss
Maud in
The Competition (Le Concours)
in 1989. In 1991 she reproduced Michel
Fokine's
Le Carnaval for the flagship
company. In 1997 she was the recipient
of the award for lifetime achievement
at the inaugural Australian Dance Awards.
For more about the early years of Ballet
Guild and Martyn's involvement in it
see
'Inspiring
mentors: Valrene Tweedie and Laurel
Martyn',
National Library of Australia News,
July 2002.
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