State government on tip toes over allocating 500 seats bought to entice Ballets Russes cultural boost to Adelaide in 1936

The controversy of how South Australian premier Richard Layton Butler (top right) was allocating the 500 tickets that his government pre bought to entice the Ballets Russes company to Adelaide in 1936 was heightened by the organising committee of 700 for the thouands of mothers who'd prepared their youngsters for the empire pageant (at left) at Adelaide Oval, part of the state's European settlement centenary, being denied free tickets to the pageant (at left). The committee members got their free tickets. 
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia and Australian Ballet Collection

South Australian premier Richard Layton Butler had some of the gloss taken off his coup in bringing the Monte Carlo Russian Ballet's successful season to Adelaide in 1936 after it had been expected to bypass the city. 

Butler helped entice Ballet Russes and its Serge Diaghilev-inspired cultural revolution to Adelaide by having his government pre buy 500 seats (worth around £430) from what turned out to be a recording-breaking three-week season attended by 23,000 out of a population of around 250,000. The government's support was hailed as a precendent for Australia up to that time.

But it was how the 500 pre-bought tickets at £3 a seat were allocated that dogged Butler with questions in parliament and attacks in The Advertiser. Labor opposition leader Bob Richards asked the Liberal Country League premier Butler how the 500 seats would be allocated. Butler replied that he was " particularly anxious that all employees will be able to take a share in the centenary celebrations”.  As it turned out, “all employees” was really “all members of parliament and other dignitaries”.

A letter to the editor in The Advertiser (October 6, 1936) asked Butler “to explain why the Government should spend hundreds of pounds in purchasing tickets for the [Russian] ballet, and then offer them to people who can well afford to buy their own tickets.”  This was followed by the more stinging point that the organising committee of 700 for the thousands of mothers “who have been working hard ... to prepare their boys and girls” for the children’s empire display at Adelaide Oval, as part of the state’s centenary, “ have been refused free tickets to witness the pageant on the ground that it will cost too much money!” The committee members were given their free tickets.

In The Advertiser (October 12), Butler said that Ballet Russes tickets were “widely distributed among centenary helpers and organisations who had materially assisted the celebrations” including the women's centenary council, the Returned Soldiers League, the kindergarten association, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides Associations, and the taxpayers' association. But the list also included knights and members of parliament.

The next day, two Legislative Council members of parliament returned their free tickets. A member of Butler's own conservative political party, R.C. Mowbray, was reported as saying that the government purchase of the tickets was “utterly indefensible” and it government had “no right to offer him tickets, valued at 35/-, at the expense of the taxpayers”. The 35/- showed that the government had obtained that 500 seats at lower than £3.

But another correspondent to The Advertiser. E. Н. Hannaford questioned “why the Government should encourage these outside companies to visit South Australia: when it should help our primary and secondary industries to establish themselves in our State, and give work to the unemployed and relief to our overburdened taxpayers:”.

The Advertiser social writer Iisted more than 210 dignitaries at the glittering Ballets Russes premiere at Adelaide’s Theatre Royal, many benefiting from the premier's largesse. In addition to the vice regal party and parliamentarians, the list included Douglas Mawson and other distinguished academics, members of Adelaide’s establishment, including the Bonythons and Haywards, and notable balletomanes such as Robert Helpmann’s mother, brother and sister.

The criticism of Butler’s gesture had to be balanced by the effect of the Ballet Russes tours in Australia that basically constituted “the Big Bang, if you like, for Australian high art and music," according to associate professor Mark Carroll from the Adelaide University's Elder Conservatorium of Music and chief investigator of a research project into the tours.