Christina Gallea-Roy
“Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”
338 pages, b/w and color illustrations
Book Guild Publishing 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84624-690-6
by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2015 by Ilona Landgraf
They met each other by coincidence at a rehearsal in Germany of the American Festival Ballet before a tour to Spain: Alexander Roy, who had performed his first ballet steps in bombed-out Magdeburg, Germany, and Sydney-born Australian Christina Gallea. What started as a collaborative dance career at the end of the 1950s grew into a lifelong artistic and personal partnership. They ran their own company and were successful worldwide.
Lady Fortune was surely by their side.
Christina Gallea Roy’s memories of the hurly-burly decades on the international dance scene are recalled in her book, “Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”, an engaging, worthwhile read. An instigator for it was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is actively interested in documenting independent dance companies.
Based in London, the couple toured around the world with International Ballet Caravan, which in 1973 was renamed Alexander Roy Ballet Theatre. They appeared in East and West Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Malta, Southeast-Asia, North and South America, and once even in Bombay.
Gallea Roy writes candidly, uneuphemistically, with a gorgeously dry sense of humor that comes sparkling through from time to time. She provides informative insight into the personalities of renowned ballet teachers at the time in Paris, depicts the daily challenges of an artist’s life with subtlety and a well-practiced eye, and intersperses touching anecdotes. Guayaquil (Ecuador), for example, confronted them with a completely empty stage – no curtain, no lighting equipment, musty dressing rooms (apparently unused since Pavlova’s performance there in 1917) – and just one day to get it ready before the curtain rose.
Only once, in 1972, was a performance canceled. The ramshackle transport van couldn’t cope with Southern France’s summer heat, the crew crept ahead at a snail’s pace, and they finally stood ten minutes late in front of the already locked theater portals. Nevertheless, France seemed to be their favored travel destination, maybe because of the excellent cuisine: “mixed hors d’oeuvres, pâté en croute, boeuf en daube . . . vegetables, salad, cheese, fruit and ice cream.” However, at postshow parties in the United States, they sometimes had to be content with carrot sticks, dips, and lukewarm wine.
They were grateful, Gallea Roy notes, to have experienced neither an earthquake nor a revolution in South America, but it had often been by a hair’s-breadth. In 1987 a general strike was called one day after their departure, and in 1992 the company left Caracas at the last minute before a revolution broke out. These were hazardous times!
The Roys maintained their optimism and courage, and remained true to themselves and their creativity despite financial shortages and constantly recurring cuts in cultural funding. Thirty-four years at the head of a company was not easy going, but it was a story of success.
The text was published first in Ballet Review, 40.4, Winter 2012/13.
| Book: | Christina Gallea-Roy : “Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance” 338 pages, b/w and color illustrations Book Guild Publishing 2012 ISBN: 978-1-84624-690-6 |
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| Photos: | 1. | “Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”, book cover, Book Guild Publishing 2012 |
| 2. | Christina Gallea-Roy, 2012 | |
| Photos by courtesy of Book Guild Publishing. | ||
| Editing: | George Jackson, Marvin Hoshino |
