Hélène Kirsova (1910–1962), dancer and founder of Kirsova Ballet, the first professional ballet company in Australia. Born Ellen Wittrup Hansen in Copenhagen, she trained as a dancer in Paris, toured with various companies in South America and danced in Paris and London. A founding member of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in 1932, four years later she toured Australia with the company as a leading dancer, turning in sparkling performances in Petrouchka and Le Carnaval. At the end of the tour in 1937 she went back to England but returned early in 1938 to marry the Danish Vice-Consul in Sydney, Erik Fischer. In 1940 she began a ballet school in Sydney, and the following year she established the Kirsova Ballet. She employed several dancers who had stayed in Australia following the Ballets Russes tours to Australia, including Tamara Tchinarova, and took on some young Australian dancers who would later have significant careers, such as Rachel Cameron, Strelsa Heckelman, Paul Hammond and Peggy Sager. An important patron of Australian artists, composers and set designers, Kirsova commissioned designs for her original ballets from artists such as Loudon Sainthill, Amie Kingston, Alice Danciger and Wolfgang Cardamatis. The Kirsova Ballet folded in 1944, but Kirsova kept her school running until she retired to Europe in the late 1940s.
