Dancing for de Basil (Danse Collection $26.95)
After a hurried midnight audition for Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe Company in 1938, a young Vancouver ballerina's dancing dreams came true. Rosemary Deveson, 16 at the time, and Pat Meyers, another local dancer, were invited to join the renowned Russian company. "They will be great stars in the world of ballet,"; Colonel de Basil said in The Vancouver Sun of February 4, 1938. "The perfection of their technique is absolutely phenomenal."; Deveson's name was immediately changed to Natasha Sobinova and she spent the next two and a half years touring and performing around the world. During this period she meticulously recorded her adventures in letters to her parents reprinted in Dancing for de Basil (Danse Collection $26.95), edited by Leland Windreich of Vancouver, a correspondent for the New York based Ballet Review. "Quite a lot of immorality in the company,"; Deveson wrote home from Kansas in 1938, "Most of the bigger girls paired off with boys of the company. We suspected this but didn't believe it till we were told. Not very nice, is it!"; Deveson soon adjusted and travelled with the international company around the globe until September of 1940. When an opportunity arose to lease the penthouse of the Georgia Hotel for a dancing school, she opened the Rosemary Deveson's Vancouver School of Dancing four months prior to her 20th birthday.
Deveson married twice, raised three daughters, taught professionals Lynn Seymour and Lois Smith, choreographed for Theatre Under the Stars and was honoured with her own sidewalk 'star' on Granville Street's Theatre Row in 1995. "This is a fascinating read for anyone contemplating life as a dancer in a large classical company,"; says ballerina Karen Kain, "because, surprisingly, things are not all that different in 1996 than they were in 1938.";
[BCBW 1997]
Deveson married twice, raised three daughters, taught professionals Lynn Seymour and Lois Smith, choreographed for Theatre Under the Stars and was honoured with her own sidewalk 'star' on Granville Street's Theatre Row in 1995. "This is a fascinating read for anyone contemplating life as a dancer in a large classical company,"; says ballerina Karen Kain, "because, surprisingly, things are not all that different in 1996 than they were in 1938.";
[BCBW 1997]
Submitted on August 20, 2003 in By David.