There is, of course, no ballet in Australia. I expect it is still necessary to begin with this statement. There are ballets in Australia, some of them produced by Australian choreographers; there are even a few ballet companies. But there is no ballet in Australia in the sense one can refer to ‘ballet in Russia’, or ‘ballet in America’. Perhaps we need an indigenous tradition of dance, a sense of dance as articulating social and religious attitudes, customs or conventions; perhaps we need a lively curiosity about the cultural achievements of the past (which is to say, a curiosity about the possibilities of our own culture). Whatever the reason for its ineptness, the phrase ‘ballet in Australia’ obscures the true station of ballet among the theatrical arts practised in this country. And the current discussion of ways in which we are to develop a ‘distinctively Australian style of dance’ seems to me equally inappropriate: to propose such an aim is, at best, uninformed, probably unreal and precious. In a country such as Australia where there is no tradition of performance and creation of dance, the development of a distinctive style must depend on the vision and dispatch of an individual, or a number of individuals. And to elevate this personal, perhaps idiosyncratic, quality to the status of a national style is naive. Moreover, if an Australian style is a remote possibility where no vital tradition exists to assimilate and remould the innumerable influences that characterize a true style or manner, the acceptance of public taste as a guide to desirable cultural habits and interests is even more dangerous. A ballet which would be immediately acceptable (that is to say, commercially successful) among the theatre-going public would be a ballet of considerably less than the first rank. It is, one learns with experience, the third or fourth best we needs must love when we see it.

The fable that ballet is a popular art is now firmly entrenched among audiences, dancers, critics and directors. Ballet’s origins as an aristocratic spectacle are lost to sight in the enthusiasm to inject contemporary subjects into a thoroughly ancien régime mode. It may be that these origins, in an oppressive and petrified society, have been and always will be a limitation on the sort of life the form can obtain. However the case may be, it is saddening that a form of such potential richness, capable at best of filling an imaginative world with a drama of shapes, sounds, colours, gestures and motion, should be in the realisation so trivial and vulgar. Such popularity as ballet enjoys is achieved in banality and tawdriness, and unless the ballet itself offers something of value, no informed or receptive public is likely to appear. The possibilities of the form, therefore, wait upon the education of dancers, directors and répetiteurs: reappraisal must begin here, or it will not begin at all.