Two N.Z. Dancers To Join Royal Ballet

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 2

Two N.Z. Dancers To Join Royal Ballet

Two 17-year-old New Zealanders have been given contracts which will enable them to leave the Royal Ballet School, where they have been studying, and join the resident company at Covent Garden.

The youngest members of the celebrated Royal Ballet Company, they are Caroldene Horne, of Auckland, and Donald Kirkpatrick, of Wanganui.

When Lord Snowden recently visited the Royal Ballet School to take photographs of Dame Ninette de Valois and her graduate class, he seemed impressed by Caroldene’s dancing and took many pictures featuring her.

The photographs were for possible publication in "Life” magazine.

Today, when the Royal Ballet School presents a matinee performance at Covent Garden, Caroldene will dance the leading role of Aurora in the third act of the “Sleeping Beauty.” The following week she will dance Swanhilda in an outdoor production of “Coppelia” in Holland Park, London.

Caroldene, the only daughter of Mr and Mrs A. C. Horne, of Kohimarama, began dancing at the age of seven. She had early training with the Gee School of Dancing and then with Rowena Jackson and Philip Chatfield at the Auckland Academy of Dancing. She also won many prizes at Auckland competitions festivals.

At the age of 15 she won a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council bursary and came to London, accompanied by her mother. She was immediately

admitted to the Royal Ballet School and topped the firstyear class. Last Christmas she returned to New Zealand for three

months and danced in several Auckland productions choreographed by Philip Chatfield before returning to London to take graduate classes under Dame Ninette de Valois. Thrilled by her success, Caroldene says she will tour the Continent in September and the United States in April next year with the Covent Garden company. Equally thrilled to be a member of the Royal Ballet Company is Donald Kirkpatrick. He said he had not really expected to pass the audition because he had been at the Royal Ballet School only one year after coming from Wanganui, where he studied with Doreen Shaw.

He is understudying some main roles at the school’s matinee performance at Covent Garden today.