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Marilyn Patricia ROWE  AM, OBE (1946 - )

Prima Ballerina, Teacher, Artistic Director

Marilyn Patricia Rowe was born on 20 August 1946 at King George V Hospital Camperdown NSW. She was the first child of Paul Maxwell Rowe and his wife, Fay Patricia, nee Barton, who had married in Broken Hill on 24 February 1945. They had three children – Marilyn (1946), Peter and Margaret (1959).

 When Marilyn was born, Paul and Fay were living in Ramsgate and Paul was working as a carpenter and joiner. By 1954, they were living in Taren Point Road, Taren Point, but by 1977 had moved again to Victoria where they lived in Camberwell. When Paul Rowe died on 7 January 1994 they were living at Steel’s Creek, Victoria

 At the age of six Marilyn Rowe was attending classes at Frances Lett’s Ballet School at Kogarah School of Arts. Frances Lett had been a soloist with Helene Kirsova’s company and had taught ballerinas Elaine Fifield and Rhonda Russell who later became a member of the Boravansky Ballet. A fellow student at Miss Lett’s school, Rhonda McKinnon, recalled that, going home Marilyn had to catch the Punt across the Georges River between Sans Souci and Taren Point. The Captain Cook Bridge connecting the two points was not opened until May, 1965.

 Marilyn Rowe’s outstanding talent was recognised very early. When the Australian Ballet School opened its doors in March1964 she was one of  twenty three students (all female) in its first intake and was awarded a scholarship. The School is the national centre for excellence in classical dance training and was opened, with Margaret Scott (later Dame Margaret Scott AC DBE) as its first director, just 15 months after the formation of the Australian Ballet. The course was normally two years but Marilyn graduated to the company after only one year at the express wish of Dame Peggy van Praagh, the founding artistic director of the Australian Ballet.

 As a ballerina, Marilyn Rowe had a brilliant career and an acclaimed partnership with Kelvin Coe OBE. They won individual silver medals and the award for the most outstanding couple at the Second International Ballet Competition in Moscow in 1973. In 1968 Igor Moiseyev choreographed The Last Vision for them and in 1971 Rudolf Nureyev coached them in the leading roles of his production of Don Quixote for their debut in New York. Other notable Australian Ballet partnerships were with Gary Norman and John Meehan.

 Marilyn Rowe performed to great acclaim all over the world and many roles such as Andre Prokovsky’s Anna Karenina and Ronald Hynd’s The Merry Widow were specially created for her. In 1978 Rowe and Coe became the first Australians to be invited to dance with the Bolshoi, Riga and Vilnuis ballet companies.

 In 1976 Marilyn was invited by the Australian Prime Minister to participate in The Rights of the Child concert at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York. She performed at concerts for Royal Family members and in 1980 was awarded the Order of the British Empire, OBE, for services to dance.

 In 1982 Marilyn Rowe was appointed to the Australian Government’s Immigration Review Panel and the Australian Ballet’s National Council, also the Dance Panel of the Victorian Ministry for the Arts. In 1999, she was appointed Director of the Australian Ballet School, a position she held for 16 years, retiring after the School’s 50th Anniversary. She was the first graduate of the Australian Ballet School to be appointed as its Director.

 A fifty five minute film by Michelle Mahrer The Three Ballerinas, highlighted the careers of the Australian dancers Lucette Aldous, Marilyn Jones and Marilyn Rowe. When Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote was filmed, he chose Marilyn Rowe to perform in the role of Queen of the Dryads.

 Among the many awards that mark Marilyn Rowe’s contribution to ballet in Australia, in 2015 the Australian Ballet School’s residence was named in her honour. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Australian Dance Awards. A plaque bearing her name is included in the The Walk of Fame as part of the Melbourne Arts Walk.

 Marilyn has also been a member of the jury in many international ballet competitions in Europe, Asia and America.

 In 2003, she was included in the First Honour Role for Women honouring her contribution to Victoria and the nation.

 Personal Life

 In 1969, Marilyn Rowe married Christopher Maver who was technical director of the Australian Ballet and they set up home in Camberwell. They were a close and happy couple and in an interview published in The Australian Women’s Weekly in July 1978 Marilyn declared ‘we don’t have many close friends….we’re happy with each other.’ She also said ‘I’d go crazy in this business if I didn’t have Chris.’

 The couple spent most of their spare time renovating their large, Edwardian-style house, filled with antique furniture collected by Marilyn. She also spent time gardening and cooking, making jams and jellies from fruit picked from trees in their garden, bottling their own wine, using a spinning wheel and knitting intricate patterns with the wools she had spun. Always a hard worker (she would often wear out three pairs of shoes in a three act ballet), Marilyn would don overalls and help Chris dig a cellar under the house and carry 2,000 bricks from the street to the back of the house. Although in her teenage years she had missed out on the social life of her friends, Marilyn was grateful that her mother, though supportive, was not ‘a ballet mum’ and allowed her to choose what she wanted to do.

 During the interview, she also disclosed that she wanted to have a baby. In October, 1980, at the height of her career, Marilyn Rowe announced she would retire temporarily while awaiting the birth of her first child. Sadly on 17 December 1980 the wreckage of a small plane was found on the slopes of the Bogong Mountains about ten kilometres south east of Tumut. The pilot Bruce McKelvey, a former Qantas pilot, and the sole passenger Chris Maver, did not survive. The pilot had reported severe turbulence and icing. A Coroner’s report in July, 1981, concluded that this had caused the engine to stall causing the crash.

 Maver’s wife Marilyn Rowe was devastated by grief and, having a strong sense of faith as an active member of the Uniting Church, retreated to a prayer house in a Catholic convent where two Presentation Nuns cared for her. Marilyn’s doctors were concerned for her welfare as her weight dropped dramatically to 45 kg but she gradually found peace and spiritual comfort. She credited the nuns with making her realise it was time to get on with life and to do something. Through her church and the ballet school she worked to raise funds for various charities. 

 On 27 May 1981 son Christopher Peter was born at St. Andrew’s hospital, East Melbourne, five months after his father was killed in the crash. Before the accident, Marilyn had intended to make an early return to ballet but still grief-stricken she was finding it difficult to contemplate life without Chris. Determined to bring up the baby and do all the things she and Chris had planned, she decided to stay in the house where she and Chris had been so happy. Her parents lived nearby in Camberwell and her sister Margaret moved in to help with the baby.

 Marilyn Rowe later married Peter Cowden and they had a son, Jonathan, born in 1988. Peter Cowden died in 2002 of cancer.

 On 20 November, 1981, it was announced that Marilyn Rowe would return to the Australian Ballet to dance the title role in the Merry Widow to open on 2 December at the Sydney Opera House. As part of the settlement of the Dancer’s strike in 1981, she was appointed, at the insistence of the dancers and the Board of The Australian Ballet, to the position of Ballet Director/Acting Artistic Director and Guest Artist. Other significant appointments followed culminating in becoming the Director of The Australian Ballet School from 1999 to 2015.

 After a career where she danced all the major roles in the company’s repertoire, was recognised internationally, had major works created for her, directed many of the leading dancers of the Australian Ballet and brought into its repertoire a large number of modern and classical ballets, Marilyn Rowe retired from the post as Director on the 50th Anniversary of the School.

 Marilyn Rowe always paid great tribute to Dame Peggy van Praagh, whose vision led to the creation of the Australian Ballet Company and School. In her Dame Peggy van Praagh memorial address, she said; ‘I learned from her that if the vision is right and true, not selfish or egotistical…part of a big picture to benefit all….if you have integrity, courage…resilience and passion…you will succeed.’

Colleen Passfield 2018

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