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| Joseph Janusaitis, Marilyn Rowe and Ross Stretton in Monotones, 1975. |
Another student of Madame Babicheva Ballet school was Joseph Janusaitis. In 1964 he was awarded a Borovansky scholarship to the Australian Ballet school and later joined the Australian Ballet. He remained in the Australian ballet from 1966 to 1982. He was born 31 May 1946, the youngest of six children, the family arriving in Australia in 1950, settling in Adelaide.
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| Joseph Janusaitis in make-up for Elektra, the Australian Ballet, 1966. |
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4 comments:
Joseph's family resided originally in Mt Gambier and were friends of my parents, Joe & Joan Jakutavicius. I remember Joseph in our front garden as a young boy in his early teens & at that stage he was already a ballet dancer. The family moved to Adelaide & I never saw Joseph again.
Hi Sandrute
How amazing to read your comment. We left Mount Gambier after our house burned down. I must have been about nine years old.
We moved to Adelaide and I began ballet classes when I was eleven with Madame Babicheva.
After moving to Melbourne and graduating from the Australian Ballet School I joined the Australian Ballet. I danced with the Australian Ballet for over 15 years.
I now reside in Melbourne and from time to time perform as Guest Artist. Several years ago performed in Graeme Murphy’s Nutcracker the Story of Clara as on of the emigre.
Joseph
I remember, with nostalgia, seeing the enormous portrait of Joseph over the 'fireplace' in quote . . . "Joseph's Room" in Clifton Street. Edvardas, Jonas, Viktoras, Romualdus and Juozapas (my spelling - sorry, memory not what it once was lol). I have never met 5 such powerful men in my life. . . Their Father was a fine man. Antanina (Mamochka) had a wonderful contralto voice and delighted in cooking up a storm for each week end when family gathered in the old dining room (Incredible Mural on that wall . . ) The pride of her life was her 5 sons upon whom she doted. Joseph, however, 'mano berniukas' {my baby boy} was doubly precious. When visiting, you had better be prepared to look at all the new scrap book items and listen to his latest attainments or, don't bother going . Their sister was a very beautiful woman - a talented coiffeur, with her own salon as I recall.
Joseph had the grace of a gazelle and totally fascinated me with his ability to tippy-toe across the stage, effortlessly and with elegance whilst holding his partner, {Josephine Jason ?} aloft with one hand only and, never even raising a sweat.
It is nearly 60 years ago but I still miss the wonderful times spent at Clifton Street. Halcyon days indeed.
Hello I am very happy to read this post by another ballet student of Madame Babicheva. I started ballet classes with her in her Adelaide Arcade studio when I was 6 in 1959 or early1960. My older sister also had started around then too. My first concert was in the Tivoli and I was a bluebell. My sister was a fairy.
Bronwyn Dunstan ( Donald’s daughter) was the bumble bee - a main character. I wish I remembered more about that concert. There were more that I was in during the next 5 years but I stopped going to classes when I was 12, as I’d been going 5 times a week by then.
My mum remembers Joseph. Also she remembers a lot about those ballet days. She went to a class Madame had for the mothers. Also Madame had not long before, taken on my mums young ballet students in Port Pirie, cos my mum Joan Wood ( née Harrison), had to leave her dance school teaching cos she married my dad in 1948.
I loved my bluebell costume my mum made. But sadly I have no photos from that concert . I wish I could find out if anyone was seeing this who was in my ballet class. One girl who was also very good in my class was called Vida. My name was Christine Wood.
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