Born in Sydney, Valrene Tweedie received
her early dance training with Mischa
Burlakov, Louise Lightfoot and Leon Kellaway.
Her early stage experiences were with
the First Australian Ballet and the Polish
Australian Ballet.
Tweedie was the only Australian dancer
to audition successfully for the Ballets
Russes companies that visited Australia
between 1936 and 1940. At the age of
14 she auditioned for Colonel de Basil
in Sydney and joined his Original Ballet
Russe in 1940. As Irina Lavrova she danced
with the company in Sydney, Melbourne,
Adelaide and Brisbane. She left Australia
with the Original Ballet Russe in 1940
and over the succeeding years danced
extensively in North and South America
with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
and Ballet Theatre.
Tweedie returned to Australia in 1952
and in 1953 became third artistic director
of the National Theatre Ballet. For the
National she staged several ballets with
which she was familiar from the de Basil
repertoire, including
Le Carnaval in which she
danced the role of Columbine and on other
occasions Chiarina, and
Le Coq d'or in which she
danced the role of the Queen of Shemakhan.
Tweedie also choreographed her own works
for the company including
Caprice to Prokofiev's
Classical Symphony. After
the demise of the National Theatre Ballet
as a professional company in 1955, Tweedie
joined the cast of the Cole Porter musical
Can-Can. Subsequently she
went on to choreograph for Tivoli revues,
to work in educational ballet programs
for the National Theatre Movement, and
to choreograph for the Elizabethan Opera
Ballet Company for which she made her
Australian-flavoured
Wakooka to a commissioned
score from John Antill.
Tweedie began full-time teaching in
1956 working within the Cecchetti system.
During her teaching years she also founded
Ballet Australia to encourage the creation
of new Australian choreography. Her own
choreographic works were diverse. In
some of her Australian-inspired works
Tweedie, influenced by Agnes de Mille
and de Mille's efforts to find an American
dance idiom, experimented with movement
that might express the Australian experience.
Tweedie retired from full-time teaching
in 1985 but remained involved with the
Cecchetti Society for the rest of her
life. She returned to the stage in 1992
as Clara the Elder in the premiere season
of Graeme Murphy's
Nutcracker for the Australian
Ballet. She also appeared in revivals
of the work in 1994 and 2000 and was
cast by Stephen Baynes in
Requiem in 2001 also for
the Australian Ballet.
Tweedie was the recipient of a Medal
of the Order of Australia in 1991, and
an award for lifetime achievement at
the 1998 Australian Dance Awards.
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