She then performed in companies run by Léo Staats and Ida Rubinstein before in 1931 becoming a soloist with Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, dancing for several years in Europe and North America.

Later that year she joined Colonel Wassily de Basil's Monte Carlo Russian Ballet as prima ballerina on an extensive tour of Australia and New Zealand where she was fêted by critics and audiences.

Kirsova became a very popular student ballet dancer as a teenager in Copenhagen, and before she was 18 she was presented with a crown-shaped gold brooch scattered with diamonds by King Christian X of Denmark who was delighted with her dancing.

[23] Kirsova danced the waltz in Les Sylphides on that opening night and the British ballet critic PW Manchester recalled her "glorious back" and remembered her performance as "better than anybody I ever saw, except [Tamara] Karsavina.

In the opening week the receipts were poor, as audiences failed to appreciate the modern repertoire, but with a change of programme to more traditional Diaghilev-style ballets, with leading roles for Kirsova, the number of tickets sold improved markedly, to the extent that the theatre invoked a contractual "stop clause" to prevent the company leaving on their US tour.

[21] Kirsova had returned to the city of her greatest acclaim and was able to repeat her previous London successes in ballets like Les Sylphides, Choreartium,[36] and Le Beau Danube and also drew the admiring attention of the critics to her humorous performance in La Boutique fantasque.

One admired her "poise" and "intelligent eyes" and remarked that "quite a lot of pure Cockney" learnt from the porters in the fruit and flower market in which the Opera House stood "is finding its way into her vocabulary".

[42] As well as some of the classics there were two new ballets by Fokine: Don Juan and L'Épreuve d'amour, the latter featuring Kirsova in a "memorable" creation of Papillon in a shimmering butterfly costume designed by the French artist André Derain.

He goes on to observe that Igor Yousskevitch and Roland Guerard, also in the company, were among the finest classical male dancers of the period, and Tamara Tchinarova was a soloist "of individuality, strength, and extraordinary beauty".

Of that night she later said: "One felt the eagerness, the tension of an audience approaching a strange theatrical experience which it had long been denied – for although Australia had seen great individual dancers like Pavlova, Genée and Spessiva, this was their first introduction to Russian Ballet on a full scale.

[65] Towards the end of the season in Melbourne, Kirsova's pas de deux with Guerard in Scuola di Ballo was acclaimed as "a delicious fragment, bubbling with high spirits and humour".

[67] The dancers were not acclimatised to the excessive heat and humidity in Melbourne and the resulting fatigue on one night affected Kirsova: at the beginning of the Blue Bird pas de deux she collapsed on stage and had to be carried off by Guerard.

She was working hard, stimulated by appreciation, and her performances as the Street Dancer, as the Widow in L'Amour sorcier and L'Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird) pas de deux made her a firm favourite".

[70] Haskell declared that in this Australasian tour, which he followed as de Basil's liaison officer in the impresario's absence, "Kirsova, ever an exquisite craftsman, made a success of every role she undertook, and worked with exceptional intelligence and an eye for detail that I have rarely seen equalled".

[1] In his essay on the interpreters of the Ballets Russes, Lee Christofis described the "elegance, dramatic qualities and wit" that she brought to the stage, which "quickly made her the public's favourite ballerina".

[91] She married Fischer at the Anglican St Mark's Church, Darling Point, Sydney on 10 February 1938,[8] wearing a mauve chiffon afternoondress designed for her by Georgette Renal of Paris.

"[7] The school was in an eight-storey building at 21 Macquarie Place near Circular Quay on the southern shores of Sydney Harbour in the vast premises formerly occupied by the Italian Club, most of whose members had been interned at the beginning of World War II, and which had been closed by government order.

Prominent among them were Rachel Cameron, "a dancer of rare musical sensitivity and intelligence" who had been expelled from Edouard Borovansky's school in Melbourne; Strelsa Heckelman, the "baby" of the company who came to Kirsova on the advice of de Basil when she was only 14; Helene ffrance, who arrived at the studio in 1942 as "an awkward novice" but blossomed rapidly into a soloist "with unusual grace and purity of line"; June Newstead, an arresting stage personality; Nicholas Ivangine, who joined in 1943 but was already ailing and died very young of Hodgkin's disease; Henry Legerton, who had trained for a year in England and whose appearances with Kirsova were limited by his duties with the Australian Army; and, later, Paul Hammond (then working under the name Clementin) a dancer of exceptional elevation and a master of "some quite startling technical tricks".

The corps de ballet consisted mainly of Australian dancers who had been studying at Kirsova's school and included John Seymour, Victoria Forth, Helen Black, Trafford Whitelock, Jean Shearer, Bettina Brown, Marie Malloy, Joy Palmer and Peggy Chauncey.

[110] As well as enthusing over modern art Kirsova also loved contemporary music[12] and encouraged musicians and composers like Charles Mackerras, Frank Hutchens, Lindley Evans and the young pianist Henry Krips to visit the studio.

[117] She was even more optimistic in an interview with Melbourne's The Argus newspaper in January 1942, stating: "With foreign companies unable to encroach on this field, it is Australia's moment to prove that a regular ballet can be maintained here.

[12] The first, from 9–14 February, in aid of the Red Cross and the Legacy War Orphans Appeal, saw Les Sylphides once again, and the world premiere of Kirsova's new ballet Revolution of the Umbrellas, a story of social injustice and inequality, with music by Henry Krips.

The Sydney Morning Herald welcomed the "mobility and drama, and some moments of memorable beauty" and praised the "singularly fine work" of dancers Rachel Cameron and Peggy Sager.

A somewhat longer season from 18 to 28 September brought back Jeunesse, Capriccio, Hansel and Gretel and the classic Lac des Cygnes, and, to the delight of Sydney audiences, Hélène Kirsova herself was now dancing again, every night, for the first time since 1937.

"[126] By the end of this season the Red Cross and the War Orphans had benefitted by £3,755 and funds were also being dedicated to a new charity, Kirsova's own, which was intent on establishing fully-equipped children's playgrounds in the deprived and congested area of Erskineville in Sydney.

[129] There was, however, another premiere, Harlequin danced to the music of Maurice Ravel, and the appearance of other favourites: Les Sylphides, Hansel and Gretel, Capriccio, Lac des Cygnes and Vieux Paris.

Liking the packed houses and the early morning queues for tickets, and the widespread appreciation of the critics, J. C. Williamson offered Kirsova a tour of Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, starting in January and ending in May 1944.

Three days after closing in Melbourne, the company opened in Adelaide at the Theatre Royal, presenting a three-week season of Les Sylphides, Hansel and Gretel, Harlequin, Vieux Paris, Revolution of the Umbrellas, Lac des Cygnes, Capriccio, and Jeunesse.

[12] Michelle Potter has also suggested that in considering the reasons for the demise of the Kirsova Ballet "the issue of gender-bias, conscious or unconscious, in the male-dominated world of theatrical management in Australia of the 1940s cannot be discounted.

The planned Sydney season, due to open on 20 September at the Conservatorium, was postponed indefinitely, because – according to the Kirsova Ballet – the wartime Rationing Commission had refused them permission to buy costume materials.