Alfred Rodrigues

Alfred Rodrigues (18 August 1922 – 12 January 2002) was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer. His works have been produced by ballet and opera companies in many countries of the world.

Born in Cape Town, a cosmopolitan city near the southern tip of South Africa, Alfred Rodrigues made his first appearance on stage as a child. In 1936, when he was 14, he saw a performance by Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe when the company toured South Africa, and his interest in ballet was kindled. He joined the Cape Town Ballet Club in 1937 after he saw an advertisement placed in a newspaper by Dulcie Howes, asking for male dancers. Subsequently, as a student in the ballet classes of the celebrated teacher Cecily Robinson, he failed to show any particular talent as a dancer, but in workshops he did demonstrate a certain flair for choreography. He made his first ballet in 1938, a short piece for students in the Ballet Club set to a piano transcription of "Danse Macabre," a tone poem (op. 40) by Camille Saint-Saëns with spooky melodies, driving rhythms, and dramatic structure. Encouraged by Howes, he soon made two other works for the club, Le Roi s'Amuse (1940) and L'Île des Sirènes (1941).

Rodrigues's promising career as a choreographer was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. He joined the South African army and saw combat in Egypt and Syria before being demobilized at the end of the war. In 1946, he arrived in England on a troopship, made his way to London, and resumed his dance studies with Stanislas Idzikowski and Vera Volkova, who taught at the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. One of his first dancing jobs was in the West End production of Song of Norway, the hit musical with choreography by George Balanchine. The next year, 1947, he was invited to join the Sadler's Wells Ballet, as male dancers were in short supply in postwar London. In 1949, he was promoted to soloist and was encouraged to pursue his choreographic interests, whereupon he restaged L'Île des Sirènes for a tour by Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann, the stars of the company. As a dancer, he toured the United States and Canada with the company but made no mark as a performer. As a choreographer and producer, however, he was more successful, making several ballets for the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet that were well received.

Having won critical approval for his work, Rodrigues decided to pursue a free-lance route, concentrating on a career as a choreographer. He started in 1955 in Italy, with a production of Romeo and Juliet in the Roman amphitheater in Verona and a production of Cinderella for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Both ballets were set to music by Sergei Prokofiev, and both were staged especially for French ballerina Violette Verdy. After these two productions, he proceeded to mount his ballets all over the world, working in Poland, Denmark, Turkey, the United States, Chile, Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and South Africa. With his gifts for the theatrical and the dramatic, he generally favored narrative works.

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