When Frederick Ashton, the company's chief choreographer, was called up for military service in the Second World War, Helpmann took over from him while continuing as a principal dancer.

Helpmann was born in Mount Gambier, South Australia, the eldest of the three children of James Murray Helpman (1881–1927), a stock and station agent and auctioneer, and his wife, Mary, née Gardiner (1883–1970).

[2] After being what his biographer Kathrine Sorley Walker calls "an uninterested and recalcitrant scholar" at Prince Alfred College, Adelaide, Helpmann was taken on as a student apprentice by Anna Pavlova when she was on tour in Australia in 1926.

[4] Robert Helpmann cited Melbourne eccentric, beautician, radio broadcaster, actor and dancer Stephanie Deste as one of the influences over his dancing and acting career.

Sorley Walker writes that he and Fonteyn were a "perfectly matched partnership", exemplified by "their superb rendering of the Aurora pas de deux in The Sleeping Beauty".

[1] Helpmann's non-ballet work in the later 1930s included his Oberon in Tyrone Guthrie's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Old Vic, which also starred Vivien Leigh as Titania and Ralph Richardson as Bottom.

[1] During the Second World War Sadler's Wells Ballet became a prominent contributor to public morale, giving London seasons interspersed with a demanding programme of provincial tours.

[27] During the war Helpmann played his first film roles: the supercilious traitor De Jong in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) and the comically fussy Bishop of Ely in Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944).

[30] The first new work staged at the reopened house was Adam Zero (1946), with a libretto by Benthall and music by Bliss, choreographed by and starring Helpmann as an Everyman figure.

[37] Helpmann joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-Avon for the 1948 season, playing the title role in King John, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and alternating with Paul Scofield in a new production of Hamlet.

[39] Between these plays Helpmann acted in the Powell and Pressburger film The Tales of Hoffmann, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham and choreographed by Ashton.

[41] On Coronation night in June 1953 Helpmann returned to Covent Garden as a guest artist to dance Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake.

[42] The following year brought two contrasting directing engagements: the first was The Tempest at the Old Vic, with Michael Hordern as Prospero, Richard Burton as Caliban and Claire Bloom as Miranda.

[35] He joined the company as an actor later in the year, playing Shylock, Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Saturnius in Titus Andronicus and the title role in Richard III.

[35] During 1957 Helpmann played the title role in Jean-Paul Sartre's Nekrassov,[46] and then took over the lead part of Sebastien in Coward's comedy Nude with Violin in London.

[48] Helpmann toured Australia in the piece in 1958–59, after he had returned to ballet for a season at Covent Garden in The Rake's Progress, Hamlet, Coppélia, Miracle in the Gorbals and Petrushka.

[49] At the start of the 1960s Helpmann worked mostly in non-ballet theatre, forgoing the opportunity to create the role of the Widow Simone in Ashton's La fille mal gardée in favour of directing Vivien Leigh and Mary Ure in Jean Giraudoux's play Duel of Angels on Broadway.

[2][35] In 1963 he choreographed his sixth work for The Royal Ballet, the short-lived and critically damned Elektra, with music by Malcolm Arnold and featuring Nadia Nerina, David Blair, Monica Mason and Derek Rencher.

He was keen to promote Australian talent, and recruited Sidney Nolan to design the costumes and scenery and Malcolm Williamson to compose the score.

[56] The musical received tepid reviews, but Helpmann's production, with designs by John Truscott, was praised as a "dazzling" and "gorgeous spectacle"; the show ran for well over a year.

His biographer Christopher Sexton comments that Helpmann and van Praag "complemented each other with their different personalities and skills: she the pedagogue, teacher and administrator; he the restless 'jet-setting' star who spent six months of the year overseas and attracted international names to perform with the company".

[62][63] Among those appearing were the Royal Shakespeare Company, led by Judi Dench and Donald Sinden, in The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night; Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears brought the English Opera Group; there were art exhibitions from Pompeii and Mexico.

[62][63] Nureyev also presented his version of Marius Petipa's classic ballet Don Quixote, dancing the romantic lead, Basilio, with Helpmann in the title role of the deluded knight.

Nureyev continued to play Helpmann's old role of Hamlet in revivals of the 1942 ballet, and the two starred in a film of Don Quixote with the Australian company in 1973, shown internationally and subsequently published on DVD.

"[70] In 1977 Peter Wright, director of the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, invited Helpmann to appear with the company in two of his old starring roles: the Red King in Checkmate and Dr Coppélius in Coppélia.

The following year Helpmann appeared with Diana Rigg in Harvey Schmidt's musical, Colette, which opened in Seattle but folded before reaching Broadway.

Irving Wardle wrote in The Times, "It is not a large part, but Helpmann's hooded smiles and baleful oeuillades, his capacity to express elegant corruption to his beringed finger-tips, lodge one imperishable image.

[73] In 1984, together with Googie Withers and John McCallum, he toured in Ted Willis's play Stardust, and joined his sister Sheila to record two episodes of the Australian soap opera A Country Practice, which were shown in 1985.

[83] Senator Stan Collard said: In the House of Representatives the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, said, "No one should underestimate Sir Robert Helpmann's role in the development of the growing maturity of Australia's art and culture.

[88] The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) describes Helpmann as "the complete man of the theatre", but adds that in some people's view he worked in too many fields to achieve supremacy in any one of them.