Marilyn Rowe

Marilyn Rowe AM OBE (b. 1946), former prima ballerina, was the first graduate of The Australian Ballet School to become its director. One of 23 students in the first intake of The Australian Ballet School in 1964, Rowe was invited by Dame Peggy van Praagh to join The Australian Ballet at the end of the year. Promoted to principal artist at the end of 1969, four years later she and Kelvin Coe won silver medals at the Second International Ballet Competition in Moscow. She and Coe performed in New York and London, and became the first Australians to be invited to dance with the Bolshoi, Riga and Vilnius ballet companies. At the end of 1980, while pregnant, Rowe's husband died in an air crash. She went into seclusion, but when her baby was six months old, in response to demands from the dancers, she returned to the company as an adviser to the artistic director. Director of the Dancers' Company from 1984 to 1986, she was on the board of The Australian Ballet from 1994 to 2009, and was Director of The Australian Ballet School from 1999 to 2014.

Painted in Graham Thorley's studio in Trentham, Victoria, this portrait dates from shortly after Rowe was widowed. The young ballerina arrived with her mother, who looked after her baby while she posed in her Giselle costume.

Gift of the family of Graham Thorley in his memory and in tribute to Marilyn Rowe 2010
© Estate of Graham Thorley