DANZ QUARTERLY Issue No 14
January, February, March 2009
Sir Jon Trimmer Celebrates 50 Years
By Ann Hunt
2008 has been a great year for Sir Jon Trimmer. It began with the anniversary of his fiftieth year with the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) went on to include a celebration at Government House to honour that tenure; a Civic Award for his contribution to the cultural fabric of the Kapiti Coast (where he lives), and culminated in November in his being named Wellingtonian of the Year.
Every positive thing you have ever read about Sir Jon is true. The man could charm a stone! Talking often and affectionately of his wife of 45 years, Jacqui Oswald, he seems a man at ease with himself and his place in the world.
He was born in Petone in 1939 into a happy, creative family of six children. “We all danced around the house and sang and played guitar and ukulele,” he said. “Mum danced in musicals around Wellington when she was young and my father played the violin in an orchestra, when he wasn’t in the shearing shed!”
He first studied ballet at age 12 from his sister Pamela, who at fifteen years older than him ran her own dance school.
Although he doesn’t remember it happening, his friends say he used to be teased at school for his interest in ballet. “I didn’t notice it,” he said. “I actually think that’s from having a lovely family life. You know, you go home and forget about everything. I mean even Dad danced around at home. It wasn’t something that was strange to me.”
By the time he reached secondary school at Wellington Technical College (now Wellington High School), ballet and dance in general consumed his energies and time. He remembers getting up in the morning and practising for an hour before catching the train to school. Then three nights a week he would take a train to Korokoro to take class with his sister Pamela.
At fourteen, Jon began attending the New Zealand Ballet Summer School directed by Poul Gnatt. Gnatt was the Company’s Artistic Director, and was to become a pivotal influence on Jon’s career.
“Poul was amazing – extraordinary! All the work he did to get the Company off the ground... I don’t think anybody else could have done that. He was eccentric enough to enthral people here, without being over the top,” he recalled.
After leaving school, he worked as a commercial artist for a year and thinks art in some form could have been an alternative career for him had dance not held such profound interest. So when at age 18, in 1958, Gnatt asked him to join his fledgling company, there was no contest. Because he had always danced, it seemed a natural progression. “I was lucky you see. My sister Pamela belonged to a little concert party and did concerts all around the Wellington area. Once I was looking reasonable, I went into the concert parties too. Then when I grew tall enough, Pam and I would dance in the clubs in Wellington, flamenco sometimes. So I danced before I joined the Company.”
Then in 1959 a Government bursary enabled him to study at the Royal Ballet School in London. On completing his studies, he remained in London until 1962, working at the Saddlers Wells Theatre, dancing in operas, musicals and ballets. “It was a fascinating time to be there,” he said. “People like Alicia Markova and Ram Gopal were still dancing.”
Yet all through this time, he felt the pull for home. “That’s what I really truly wanted,” he said. “Looking back, I think now, well I could have had quite a big career, better money and had a lovely life. But I still think I did the right thing.”
In 1963, he married Jacqui, also a Company dancer, who eventually became the New Zealand Ballet Company’s (NZBC) Ballet Mistress, retiring in 1994.
Together in the sixties, they spent time away from the New Zealand Company, dancing with the Australian and Royal Danish Ballet Companies. Internationally, Jon danced in Raymonda and Giselle with ballet luminaries Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.
In 1971, on learning that the NZBC was on the point of closure, Jon and Jacqui decided to return home and re-join the embattled Company. “I know that we did the right thing when we came back from Copenhagen and I’m very pleased we did that,” he said.
Having a Principal Dancer of his calibre at this time was a crucial point in the Company’s continuity and in 1974 he received a well-deserved MBE for services to ballet. He was knighted in 1999.
Over the years, he has danced with many wonderful ballerinas, but one of his favourites was Eva Evdokimova from the Royal Danish Ballet. Interestingly enough, Evdokimova was also Rudolf Nureyev’s favourite partner in the latter stages of his career. *
He has danced the majority of male principal classical roles and many striking contemporary ones as well, including The Prisoner (1974, Russell Kerr) and No Exit (1983, Ashley Killar) His favourite classical roles are Petrouchka and Albrecht in Giselle.
However, something he would really love to do and has not done is dance in a musical. “I haven’t got a great voice, but I can hold a tune and I can soft-shoe shuffle!”
But for now that will have to wait, as his preparation for the role of the Don in Don Quixote for the RNZB takes precedence.
This involves watching as many videos of other productions as possible and reading anything written in book form or that is available on the Internet. The music too is of great importance to him. Neither is he averse to using ‘Method Acting’ techniques to get inside the character. “I learnt the ‘Method’ a good few years ago when I was doing a bit of acting,” he said. “This ‘bit of acting’ involved playing the lead role in the award-winning television series of The Fire Raiser, plus playing opposite Helen Moulder in the acclaimed, Meeting Karpovsky.
“You draw on what you’ve got inside,” he continued. “You’ve got to draw on your own heart frankly, and bring out what you feel. And that’s what I think I enjoy about performing.”
Jon and Jacqui have lived for nearly 30 years in Paekakariki, a small seaside community about 50 minutes from Wellington. They grow their own vegetables and were for many years, vegetarians. But he received medical advice to include some meat in his diet if he wished to continue performing at his present level of physicality, which they now do.
At 69 he looks remarkably healthy and credits this partly to a mixture of yoga, Pilates and meditation (which his father also used to do), and living by the sea. “Living there does help, because you work in town and you get on the train and you just leave all your cares behind. Then over the hill, at Pukerua Bay, there’s the ocean – the openness!”
A great lover of birds, it seemed fitting that he should be wearing at his throat not a tie, but a beautiful mother-of-pearl brooch in the shape of a fantail. Such a friendly, inquisitive bird, ever in flight, seems like a kindred spirit to the bright, energetic Sir Jon T.
* Rudolf Nureyev: The Life, by Julie Kavanagh. Published by Penguin Books, 2008.
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