Czech prima ballerina/ Marceau mime protege Zora Semberová adds to Flinders University 1960s drama renown

Besides her university drama courses, Zora Šemberová also founded the Australian Mime Theatre in Adelaide.

Adelaide was the beneficiary of Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1968 when Zora Šemberová, a distinguished dance teacher and former ballerina with the Prague National Theatre, left Czechoslovakia and became a long-term teacher of drama at Flinders University.

Besides being one of one of the most important interpreters in Czech dance and the first person to perform the role of Juliet in Sergei Prokoviev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet, Šemberová was also taught mime by Marcel Marceau. Her drama course students at Flinders University included film director Scott Hicks and his wife Kerry Heysen, mime artist Jennifer Hope, Greig Pickhaver (the HG half of Roy and HG), Christian Manon, future Adelaide lord mayor Michael Harbison and theatre director Gale Edwards.

Born in 1912, Šemberová grew up in the Czech city of Brno and began studying dance at nine with Mme Gugenmoz and later Jaroslav Hladík. Šemberová went on to study at the schools of Olga Preobrajenska in Paris, Tatiana Gzovska in Berlin and Rosalia Chladek in Austria. She studied mime in Paris with Marcel Marceau, and was also influenced by modernist Jarmila Kröschlová.

Šemberová performed with the National Theatre ballet group in Prague from 1928-30 and 1943-59. She performed at the Gaumont Palace in Paris and was a soloist in Brno from 1932-41 and at the New German Theatre in Prague 1942-43.  She taught at Prague conservator and academy of performing arts. She decided to stay in Adelaide after her 1968 move with the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Besides her university drama courses, the also founded the Australian Mime Theatre in Adelaide. She returned to the Czech Republic several times after 1989.

Šemberová received an Adelaide Critics Circle lifetime achievement award in 2003. She died in Adelaide at the age of 99.