Collection
Amateur filmmaker Ewan Murray-Will captured unique and candid images of one of the world’s greatest dance companies.
These films are from the Chesterman Collection at the NFSA, which includes 25...
Video
In a series of moving portraits, Ewan Murray-Will films Hélène Kirsova with friends and family at her wedding reception. In the first shot, Kirsova stands with her newly-wed husband, Danish Vice-...
Video
This unique and candid home movie footage of members of the Ballets Russes company was taken at Sydney’s Bungan Beach in the late 1930s.
Wearing what looks to be Christmas decorations around her neck...
Video
Filmed in slow motion, two women and a man (Paul Petroff) make human formations on the shoreline of the beach. A woman dressed in black swimwear runs towards Petroff and leaps into his arms. He holds...
Video
Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe – shown here on tour in Australia during 1936-37 – revolutionised ballet by giving equal emphasis to dance, music, drama and design.
Three puppet figures – the Moor (Thadee...
Video
Hélène Kirsova performs in this excerpt from the one-act ballet, Le Beau Danube. Ewan Murray-Will films the action from an elevated position left of the stage.
Video
In the final scenes from Léonide Massine’s symphonic ballet Les Presages, dancers from the Ballets Russes du Monte Carlo move frenetically across the stage, performing a series of strange gestures...
Video
In this brief colour sequence from the ballet Thamar, Thamar seduces a man whom she is going to lure to her castle before killing him.
