Remembering Sir Jon Trimmer - a National Treasure
By Peter Boyes
 
26 October 2023 was a sad day for all who knew and loved Sir Jon Trimmer. It was the end of an era losing New Zealand’s most recognised ballet personality. His ballet history is our ballet history. Jonty, as he was known, and his wife, Lady Jacqui Trimmer, were there in the early days when our national company first made a commitment to taking ballet to the people of New Zealand. As a teenager, lucky enough to occasionally take company class, I was in awe of his technique of his joy of dancing. He was my hero and a classical dancer I hoped someday to emulate.

Trimmer’s history with the Royal New Zealand Ballet began when he attended summer school classes in Wellington, aged 14, with the Danish dancer and teacher Poul Gnatt (founding director of the company) and lasted until December 2018, marking his 60 year involvement with the company.

Born in 1939, Trimmer grew up in Petone in an artistic family where music and dance were an integral part of family life. His father was a wool classer by day and played the violin in orchestras by night, his mother was a dancer and his five siblings were all very talented in their own right. Trimmer started dance classes when he was 12 in his sister Pamela’s dance school. By age 13, he was performing in dance concerts around the Wellington region with his younger sister, Rae, moving onto cabarets in clubs such as the Majestic, where he danced flamenco.

Trimmer was blessed with a natural facility perfect for dance. Gnatt recognised his talent and began nurturing the young dancer, partnering him with older girls so he could develop his strength and physical confidence.

In 1957, Poul Gnatt invited the 18 year old to join his recently formed New Zealand Ballet Company. On the same day, 15 year old Jacqui de Joux Oswald, Trimmer’s future wife, joined the nine member troupe. With trucks full of costumes, props and sets, they lurched over country roads performing in any small town that invited them, sometimes on makeshift stages.

He spent a year with the company before winning a bursary to study in London at the Royal Ballet School in 1959.

After a year’s study, preferring to perform, he joined the Sadler’s Wells Opera Ballet for two years, performing with such stars as Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn. He then returned home to marry Jacqui, they both danced with The Australian Ballet 1965-66 and then the Royal Danish Ballet in 1968-69.

Instead of taking up a contract with the Washington Ballet in 1970, Jonty and Jacqui returned to New Zealand, at a time when the ballet company was suffering from funding and management issues and a disastrous amalgamation with the New Zealand Opera Company by the then Arts Council. Trimmer convinced the council to keep a pared down version going, and the full company was restored several years later.

Other financial crises were to come over the decades but always the Trimmers remained on hand to ensure the survival of the Company. On numerous occasions Jonty was approached about becoming artistic director, but he did not see himself in that capacity, preferring to tread the boards instead.

Pamela had laid the foundations of Jonty’s classical technique and, under Poul Gnatt’s guidance, Jonty honed his technical abilities and furthered them with his training in England and Denmark. When Russell Kerr became director of the company, he recognised that Jonty was not just a fine dancer but had an innate artistic sensibility and through his mentorship encouraged Jonty to explore the depths of characterisation required for various his roles.

In his prime, Jonty was known for his classical line, intricate footwork and beautiful ‘ballon’ (lightness and elevation of his jumps) and was certainly ranked amongst the world’s top male dancers. He could have been an international star but chose instead to share his gifts with his homeland. Jonty made dance appear easy, and this is the greatest attribute a dancer can have. His technical brilliance was superb, but he also had an electric stage presence. He could walk on stage and an audience would immediately be drawn to him by his charisma, regardless of whether he was dancing or not. 

One of his favourite ballets was Stravinsky’s tragedy ‘Petrouchka’. In the 1964 production, when Alexander Grant (guesting from the London’s Royal Ballet) danced the title role, Jonty appeared as the Charlatan, the puppet master. At just 24 years of age, Jonty completely captured the essence of the cold hearted, manipulative Charlatan.  When the production was revived in 1967, Jonty was Petrouchka, a role requiring not only virtuosic technique but considerable acting skills to convey the straw puppet’s desperate, unrequited love. Petrouchka is usually portrayed by shorter dancers, but Jonty’s height did not deter him and his was one of the most poignant renditions I have ever seen.

Throughout his career, Jonty displayed his versatility whether it was a classical role, character role, or in a contemporary work and often all in one performance. As Jonty said “I stopped dancing princes at a certain age but went onto old men, old women and witches”. As he moved into his forties he was still dancing classical roles but he gradually stepped into character roles, many of which required considerable vigorous dancing. An example was his portrayal of the Entertainer in Gray Veredon’s ‘Ragtime Dance Company’, where he danced a particularly lengthy solo, with all the vigour and panache of someone much younger in years.  

Some great dancers have the opportunity to transition from technical mastery to depth of characterisation as their bodies find the restraints of age, yet few are successful. For Jonty it was seamless and his theatrical genius produced remarkable performances.
His Dr Coppelius, Herr Drosselmeyer in ‘Nutcracker’, the title role in ‘The Rake’s Progress’ and ‘Don Quixote’ are just a sampling of the wonderful characters he imbued with his craft. No performance was ever the same. He found within the roles subtle differences to keep his characters fresh and alive. These portrayals will also remain alive in the memories of audiences forever. Sharing a dressing room with Jonty for many years I was always fascinated by the ritual of applying layer after layer of greasepaint and watching him transform from Jonty into the character he was portraying that performance.

Throughout the various stages of his career, Jonty was the muse for choreographers from here and abroad, who came to work with the Company. Memorable were his roles in Bernard Hourseau’s ‘Carmina Burana’, Ashley Killar’s ‘No Exit’, Captain Hook in Russell Kerr’s ‘Peter Pan’ to name but three of the many roles made especially for Jonty. Loughlan Prior choreographed ‘Lark’ for Jonty and William Fitzgerald in 2017 – a story of an old man and a young man in conversation – and ‘The Long and Short of It’ for Jonty and Luke Cooper in 2018, which was included in the programme for Jonty’s last performance with the company in Kerikeri on 12 December 2018.

Jonty’s last major ballet with the Royal New Zealand Ballet was the 2017 production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, where his sensitive interpretation of Friar Lawrence is unforgettable, such was the depth of conveying the impending tragedy of the young lovers.

His prowess as an actor was evident elsewhere through the years. He performed an odd and challenging role in a Mercury Theatre production of the ‘Kiwi Concert Party’, where he moved about in a ghostly manner linking the sections together in mime and hovering over the war characters like a guardian spirit. He played the title role in the television series of Maurice Gee’s ‘The Fireraiser’ and was nominated for a best actor award. He performed with Helen Moulder in her award winning play ‘Meeting Karpovsky’ on a national tour in 2004, again in 2014 and reprised his role for his 80th birthday celebrations.

Having been made an MBE in 1974 for services to ballet, Jonty was awarded a knighthood in 1999.

Acting and dancing were not his only talents. Over the years he became an accomplished potter and painter and he revelled in the creative process.
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Often sporting a beret and a mischievous smile, he was a much loved man about Wellington and in hometown Paekakariki, where the Trimmers shared their love of gardening and their ever present cats. He died of cancer on October 26, aged 84. He will be sorely missed.
 
Sources: Sir Jon Trimmer, Francesca Horsley
Sir Jon Trimmer’s oral history was commissioned by the National Dance Archive and is lodged in the Turnbull Library (ATL Ref. OHInt-0208-11).

The following text is taken from the Royal Academy of Dance website with their permission. We thank the RAD for allowing us to reproduce this obituary of Eli Gray-Smith.

The RAD was very sad to hear that the highly respected and much-loved RAD dance accompanist, Eli Gray-Smith, passed away on Sunday 7 April.

Born in Dunedin in 1927, Eli lived a long life full of rich experiences. He began playing for RAD dance classes at the age of 14 for well-known dance teacher Lily Stevens and credits her with teaching him the phrasing of dances, the flow of movement and the vocabulary of steps. This gave Eli a sense of dance that made him a very skillful and much sought after accompanist. As Eli said when he retired in 1996, that experience “started a love-affair which has lasted all my life, not only with ballet but dance movement in general…to this day, I would rather play for an exciting class than for a performance.”

He studied music at the Royal Toronto Conservatory as well as playing for the National Ballet School and other RAD schools in Toronto. From there he went to New York and played for the famed choreographer George Balanchine at a time when Balanchine was working with Stravinsky on Agon and “every week this great composer of the century came in to watch class and rehearsal”. Eli also became the pianist for the San Francisco Ballet and accompanied Martha Graham’s pre-classical dance classes for drama students.

Eli played for the RAD in London for many years later becoming the RAD’s official exam accompanist for Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa – a role he enjoyed for 23 years. Deirdre Tarrant, RAD Registered Teacher and former RAD examiner recalls: “Touring on examination sessions was always fun with Eli as a companion. This was an era very fondly remembered and appreciated by the examiners of the time who loved his music, magic and wit. Eli was a unique part of the RAD in New Zealand for us”.

Returning to settle in NZ, Eli continued to accompany dance classes, RAD exams, and the RAD Summer School, for which he organised both classes and social life for the team of pianists until his retirement in 1996. After that, he continued to teach a select group of students and to play on Saturday mornings for dance teacher Shone Dunlop-MacTavish.
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In recognition of his significant and distinctive contribution to dance both within the RAD and for the wider dance community, Eli was presented with the RAD’s prestigious President’s Award in 1994. The RAD is indebted to Eli for his many years of excellent and dedicated piano accompaniment and for the skill, knowledge and flair he brought to the role. Many RAD members will remember him fondly and our deepest sympathies go to his family and friends.

Following our 2024 AGM NDANZ are happy to reintroduce Keith as our Chair. For Keith's annual report please see previous News post.

Keith McEwing
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Although originally a music scholar, Keith McEwing has always had an interest in dance. Taking adult beginner ballet classes after completing a Bachelor of Music, this led to contemporary dance performance, studying Baroque dance, and learning American style Latin and Ballroom dancing, which he now runs his own studio teaching. Interested in movement and its analysis generally, he also practises and teaches Taijiquan and has a keen interest in movement notation systems, working regularly with Beauchamp-Feuillet, and Kinetography Laban notation systems.