THE SPANISH DANCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 35, 23 February 1940, Page 42

THE SPANISH DANCE

ERY small and dark is Roxina Garnier’ who, with her blonde _young husband, means to build a life i in ‘New Zealand. In London she was an authority on the Spanish dance. Pupil of the celebrated Else Brunelleschi, she arranged programmes, and herself danced, at Wyndham Theatre, at the Rudolf Steiner Hall, and for television. When Basque children poured into England, weeping, emotional, suicidal, she was set to dance to them-to divert, in a way to which they might respond, their anguished young minds from the horror of their experience. "But they felt so deeply. One little girl of twelve; who had seen both father and mother killed, was not to be consoled." Three times she triedand at last she succeeded. There were many such. "But they could dance?" "©, they could dance! I organised a group at Colchester. I worked in collaboration with Olga McClelland, of the National Joint Council for Spanish Relief. We sent groups round the schools and, of course, it is known how they kept themselves and the others to a large extent by seasonal perform-

ances in all the South Coast towns." "Yes, we heard that out here-and also that they were uncontrollable. Was it so?" She smiled. "They were-not English. They have temperament-are highly strung. And they were suffering terrible mental stress. "Even so-and I knew them all-I never saw them wild. Qnly distraught with grief, which is very different. "The worst lad was Audoni. He was turned away from all the schools. But he was 16and in Spain that is no child, but a man. At once, when he was offered work with the London Council, he became happy and useful to us."

"And will you dance here?" "When all my precious costumes, records, shawls, combs and castanets were stolen from the back of a car in Kingsway, I gave it up," she answered. "All the treasured essentials I had gathered together with such difficulty had gone. I was going, too-to New Zealand. I would not dance again..." But in her luggage is still-her music. "I don’t know what made me keep that . ; ." she said. ;

Well-we shall see.

Alison

Grant