Yvonne Cartier

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Yvonne Cartier

Yvonne Cartier’s artistic biography coincides with the rebirth of theatrical dancing in England after World War II.

Born in New Zealand circa 1930, it was there that she took her first steps on stage, aged four, in a pantomime. While studying ballet in New Zealand with Valerie Valeska and Bettina Edwards, she saw the Borovanski Ballet on tour, and decided to make dance her career. In 1946, following in the footsteps of Bettina Edward’s student Rowena Jackson, she emigrated to England on scholarship to the Royal Ballet School, studying with Winifred Edwards, George Goncharov, Vera Volkova and Audrey de Vos …

In London, she joined the Saint James’ Ballet, run by Alan Carter. Amongst the company’s other members were Peter Wright, Rolf Alexander and Beryl Morina, and its choreographers – inter alia - were John Cranko, Angelo Andes, Pauline Grant, Alan Carter.

At the instigation of the painter John Piper and the then Lord Stonor, in order to save the 18th century Kenton Theatre at Henley-on-Thames, John Cranko formed his own company, with Ken Macmillan, Peter Wright, Peggy Tait, Vassili Sulic, Sonia Hana, Margaret Scott (later to found the Australian Ballet School.

With Michel de Lutry (ballet master for the project), his wife Dominie Callaghan, and Sonia Hana (later Peter Wright’s wife), Yvonne Cartier took part in one of the very early television programmes, BBC’s Ballet for Beginners. When the Ballet for Beginners Company went on tour, it was joined by Ken Russell (later the film-maker), who danced Coppelius to Yvonne Cartier’s Swanhilda.

She then took odd jobs in revue theatre in London, such as Sauce Tartare with Audrey Hepburn (with Muriel Smith, the first Carmen Jones, choreography by Andree Howard and Buddy Bradley). It was whilst dancing in cabaret that she came across Larice Arlen, ballet mistress, wife to Stephen Arlen, Managing Director of Sadler’s Wells Opera.

Larice Arlen pushed Yvonne Cartier to re audition for Sadler’s Wells Ballet Theatre Ballet, which she joined, and there created ballets for John Cranko, Andrée Howard, Walter Gore and Ninette de Valois.

At Ninette de Valois’ request, she then joined the main company at Covent Garden. There, she also danced all the classics, her contemporaries being Elaine Fifield, Margot Fonteyn, Harold Turner, Pamela May, Nadia Nerina ...

Following a serious injury to the ankle, inoperable at the time, Yvonne Cartier left England for France circa 1957, and worked for twenty years as a mime with the celebrated troupes of Jacques Lecoq and Marcel Marceau, and as choreographer and movement specialist to theatre companies. At the Ecole Charles Dulin, she taught mime and movement, and then acted as assistant to Michael Cacoyannis for Les Troyennes at the Théâtre national populaire, translated by Sartre, which production she later staged for the Festival d’Avignon. She also assisted Georges Wilson for his staging of Grandeur et Décadence de la Ville de Mahagonny at the Théâtre national populaire.

Thereafter, she returned to the classical dance, teaching in several Paris-area Conservatoires, notably the Nadia Boulanger Conservatory in the Ninth Arrondissement.

Yvonne Cartier has trained several high-level artists including Muriel Valtat (ex First Soloist, Royal Ballet) and Betina Marcolin (principal, Royal Ballet of Sweden). She was Consultant to Beryl Morina’s authoritative « Mime in Ballet » (2000), Woodstock Press, Winchester (the female artist in the photographs is Professor Cartier’s student Muriel Valtat). Yvonne was the photographic model for Gordon Anthony (Plates 11 to 14, 20, 25, 27, 28 and 30) in Felicity Gray’s Ballet for Beginners (1952), Phoenix House Limited, London.

Yvonne Cartier continues to teach and coach at Paris, to this day.