Helpmann

Idzikowski was also involved with the Royal Academy of Dance’s Production Club, started in 1932 to allow students over 14 to work with choreographers; Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann were among the early volunteers, and later a young John Cranko created his first work there.

Unforgettably played by the dancer Robert Helpmann, he capers around the streets of Vulgaria with a cage disguised as a cart full of tempting treats.

He won Australian theater’s prestigious Helpmann Award for best actor for the role.

It used to be that this festival was a child-free zone, a playground for the old, so much so that one half-wondered whether a cackling Robert Helpmann was loading all the under-fives into cages and whisking them out of town.

Her longtime Royal Ballet partner Robert Helpmann described the moment in a documentary about Fonteyn: “When she came to the third prince, she had caught such a miraculous balance that she didn’t even take his hand, she just smiled at him. Well, I thought the audience would explode.”