Zora Šemberová, the First Prokofiev’s Juliet, Died on October 9th
Dancer, choreographer and dance teacher Zora Šemberová died on 9th October 2012 in Adelaide, Australia. She was 99 years old.
She was introduced to classic dance by Mme Gugenmoz and Jaroslav Hladík. She attended Olga Preobrazhenskaya’s school and studied ballet with Tatyana Gzovskaya in Berlin. She was also interested in expressive dance. She studied with Rosalie Chladek, the modernist, in Laxenburg, Vienna; Jarmila Kröschlová, the representative of modern dance, had a great influence on her. She got her first important contract in ballet in Brno where she danced the character of Mariken in The Miracles of Mary, Tao.Cho in Poppy’s Blossom or Juliet in the world premiere of Prokofiev’s ballet. Then she worked in the National Theatre in Prague and she had been a soloist since 1945. She got several unforgettable roles like a solo in Lachian Dances and the main role in the world premiere of Vostřák’s ballet Viktorka in 1950.
In the 1950s, she started to deal with choreography. She cooperated with leading opera directors Bohumil Hrdlička and Alfréd Radok who she worked with at The Opening of the Springs created for Laterna Magika in 1958.
Since the mid-1940s, Šemberová had been teaching at the Prague Conservatory and shortly at the Academy of Performing Arts. She sought for personalities and led her students to creativity; many of her students are great people: Pavel Šmok, Vlastimil Harapes, Ladislav Fialka... and her most famous student Jiří Kylián.
In 1968, she was invited by Reiner Radok (Alfréd Radok’s cousin) to Australia to teach acting classes at the Flinders University. After the invasion of the Eastern Bloc armies in Czechoslovakia, she decided to stay in Australia. She taught at the university in Adelaide where she received an honorary doctorate as the first Czech in the field of dance. She also participated in compatriotic social life. She contributed to foundation of the Czech Business Chamber and she actively participated in the Czechoslovak Club. She also founded a pantomimic company Australian Mime Theatre and published several books.
After 1989, she returned to the Czech Republic several times. In 1993, she became an honorary member of the National Theatre in Prague and she received the Thalia Award for her work in 1999. In 2005, she was awarded the Gratis Agis for exemplary promotion of the Czech Republic abroad.
Source: Arts and Theatre Institute
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species