After more than 60 years of teaching ballet, Diana Waldron can still leap and twirl with the best of them.
And having being recognised on the Australia Day Honours List, she has good reason to have an extra spring in her step. The matriarch of WA ballet received the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to dance.
Enviably supple at 83, she flits up and down the staircase of the Quarry Amphitheatre, the iconic venue she created in the 1980s with her late husband Ken.
Diana began dancing at Patch Theatre Guild and Dance School in the city and as a 12-year-old was invited backstage at the Capitol Theatre when her father took her to see Ballet Rambert.
“Marie Rambert said I should be doing classical ballet so I started with Linley Wilson,” she said.
She was the first person to join the WA Ballet Company in 1952 and was co-artistic director until 1961, when she started Perth City Ballet.
As a qualified advanced teacher of the Royal Academy of Dancing, she has impacted the lives and careers of thousands of dancers.
The ampitheatre in Floreat bushland came about after Diana said to her architect husband that she wanted a quarry, as it was so expensive to stage productions at His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth.
He found one and, as they say, the rest is history.
While these days the Town of Cambridge describes the venue as its “jewel in the crown”, she said in the beginning the pair faced a lot of opposition.
But three local councillors backed the plan and with the help of a $600,000 grant a 700-seater Greek style theatre was created, opening in 1986.
The first ballet performed was Picnic at Hanging Rock, choreographed by Diana, with one section of the wall of the limestone quarry serving as Hanging Rock.
Diana is tempted to revive the ballet now her 15-year-old granddaughter Dominique is a suitable age to play a role.
Diana still teaches ballet from her home studio and has no plans to retire. “I just love my little three-year-olds.”
