A determined nature drove Lynette Wills through initial setbacks to the top ranks of The Australian Ballet. Her performances of a pivotal role in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake secured her position as principal artist, which she held for 17 years, until leaving the stage after the birth of her second child. Despite vowing that she would never teach dance, she has found great satisfaction in her time as a classical teacher with The Australian Ballet School and then as its head of Head of Teaching and Learning.  

 

Our History Makers – Lynette Wills

By Rose Mulready

 

Lynette Wills was born to be a ballerina – but not in the way you might think. She emerged into the world with a club foot and hip dysplasia, and as a baby spent five months in plaster. The doctors recommended ballet classes to help her realign and strengthen. At first, Lynette didn’t much like them. “There was no dream to start with; it was a necessity.”

 

Her family moved to Canberra when she was seven, and when Lynette started taking classes with the renowned teacher Betsy Sawers, ballet came alive for her – once she’d got over the shock of everyone being so much better than she was. In her first class, she panicked and ran out of the room. But she was soon lured back. Sawers had been a nurse, and “her anatomical understanding was deep. That was clear in her teaching. And the atmosphere of her classes was so enticing, passionate and creative.” Canberra, in the 1970s, was not on the touring schedules of the major ballet companies, but Sawers showed her students videos of the superstars: Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Makarova. Lynette was inspired, and eventually auditioned for The Australian Ballet School. She didn’t get in.

 

Every dancer must have determination. “I thought, ‘I would like that no to be a yes!’ My parents were very against me missing any more school, but I begged and begged to have another year, dug my heels in, worked terribly hard, and got in.”

 

Lynette, herself a forthright personality, was immediately struck by the school’s “lively and fiery” founding director, Margaret Scott, who took the first-year students for class once a week. “She had a great respect for the technical base – if you don’t get the small things right, you can’t get the big things right. She was always urging us to keep exploring our technique: to learn more, learn more, stand in first position and learn some more! She was very clear on certain muscular engagements – she was constantly slapping her thighs and calling, “Up here, girls, up here!”

 

The Russian dancer Ai-Gul Gaisina, who embodied the Vaganova technique with its expressive use of the upper body, neck and head, was another favourite. “The way she would speak, her posture – she commanded the room. She always wore a shawl, it was a prop for her to demonstrate the styles and poses.”

 

Most unusually, in an era when girls still vastly outnumbered boys in ballet classes, the intake in Lynette’s year was a perfect split: 20 of each. Pas de deux class was evenly balanced, and further enhanced by the great star Kelvin Coe as the second-year teacher. “The boys loved him – he was a wonderful partner, so he had some great tips and tricks to impart.” Lynette learnt the fine art of building an understanding without words, without even eye contact. “You both have to be constantly listening to each other through touch. It’s like having a conversation through his hands on your waist. You can’t do it for him, you have to trust him and give the control to him.” These days, in pas de deux classes at the School, the teachers have the girls hold the boys up and try and walk them in a circle once or twice, so that they’ll realise the difficulty of finding someone else’s centre of balance, and be patient with their partners.  

 

Lynette and her fellow students took every opportunity to press their noses to the windows where the company dancers were rehearsing, idolising their heroes and dreaming of their futures. Lynette had her favourites: “Lisa Pavane – immaculate, so technically clean, in a class apart. Always Steven Heathcote – I could watch him every day. Miranda Coney – she just embodied characters, lost herself in the stories, abandoned herself to them.”

 

Lynette joined The Australian Ballet in 1991. Her first years with the company were spent under the directorship of Maina Gielgud, who was known for giving big opportunities to young dancers. In her second year, Lynette was cast as Kitri, the lead in Don Quixote – “just one show, but it kept me going for a year.” With her huge almond eyes, high cheekbones, dark hair and long limbs, she became known for fiery roles, villainess roles. She was promoted to senior artist, the rank just under principal artist, but when Gielgud was replaced by Ross Stretton, her career stalled. Even when Stretton was succeeded by David McAllister, Lynette’s peer and friend, he warned her she might not ever reach the principal rank. 

 

Enter a return season of Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, a bold modern remake of the ballet that had become a sensation. Lynette was eyeing off the role of the Baroness von Rothbart, Prince Siegfried’s ruthless mistress, drawn to its emotional depth and texture. By this time, she had been with the company for a decade. “I finally knew the kind of artist I wanted to be. I had the confidence.” She had to ask twice to be listed as an understudy, but eventually, when all the other Baronesses were injured or sick, she had her chance. In a studio rehearsal, Murphy told her, “Have a go if you like,” and was taken aback to see that she had mastered the solo. “I know it all, Graeme,” Lynette told him. “I know every step. I know the whole ballet.” He gave her a show, and she shone. After her performance in the opening night of the Sydney season, McAllister made her a principal artist. 

 

Good years followed. Lynette danced the Baroness on opening night of The Australian Ballet’s legendary 2005 tour of London. She danced with cherished partners: Robert Curran, Geon van der Wyst, Steven Heathcote. She danced Hanna in The Merry Widow, Princess Aurora in Stanton Welch’s new production of The Sleeping Beauty, and ballets by her favourite contemporary choreographer, Jiří Kylián – “his works take me to another place.” She returned to the stage after her first baby, but after her second, she decided that she’d done enough. “I’d had my time. You can’t do it forever: young people need chances as well.”

 

Despite her enviable career, some of Lynette’s most memorable moments are the ones behind the scenes. “The camaraderie, the silly jokes, the lying around together exhausted in the common room, the high jinks in the dressing room. You make lifelong friends.”

 

For many dancers, the obvious next step after retirement is teaching, but Lynette had always sworn she would never teach. “I was obnoxious about it.” However, she couldn’t resist an invitation to join The Australian Ballet’s Dancing the Dream program, journeying to far-flung regional locations to give the children there a ballet class. “Some of these people had never done ballet, had never seen ballet. It was joyful.” Once again, Lynette had found her dream where she least expected it. She returned to The Australian Ballet School and began learning her trade, sharing a class with Madame Tang Shu, who had studied at the Beijing Dance Academy and had “incredible knowledge – a tiny little person, but unrelenting. Not mean at all – just ‘This is how we do it. Again!’”

 

“I always thought that when I stopped dancing, I’d be sick of ballet, that I’d have to get far away from it. But ballet is really different when it’s not about you. You understand it more, you see it in a different light. Being a teacher is nice, it’s generous, you get to give back. I love nurturing someone’s confidence so they can be their own best teacher. They need to understand what we’re telling them, not just do it because ‘I told you so’. You have to be a thinker. I often ask them, ‘If you were going to teach it, how would you give the correction?’ You have to get them to trust and respect you, and then you can push each other – hard!”

 

These days, The Australian Ballet School is a different place from the school Lynette knew. For one thing, instead of leaving school at 16, the students are kept in an academic stream, and as well as dance learn English, psychology, health, human development and drama. They leave with a graduate diploma that they can, after their dance careers, parlay into further study. Former students have become everything from lawyers to physiotherapists to news presenters. The drive and discipline it takes to become a ballet dancer are highly transferrable skills.

 

As well as technique and artistry, Lynette tries to give her students what they will need to navigate the challenging career of a professional dancer. “Mentally, it’s all about resilience, and about being kind and respectful to yourself when you’re working. We focus on the whole person. The students’ health and wellbeing and happiness is our foremost duty of care. We see a person who dances, not a just a dancer. Whether they make it or they don’t – we try to make the journey a positive one.”