The Display

Described as the first wholly Australian ballet, The Display had an all-Australian cast, with sets and costumes by artist Sidney Nolan.

The inspiration for The Display came to Robert Helpmann in a dream in which he saw his friend, Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn, naked on a dais surrounded by lyrebirds.

Several years earlier, in 1955, Hepburn (then touring Australia with the Old Vic) took Helpmann to Sherbrooke Forest within Victoria's Dandenong Ranges to see his first lyrebirds in their natural surroundings.

The men play a game of Australian rules football, a sequence for which Helpmann invited VFL great Ron Barassi to coach the dancers.

For decades, it was assumed lost until dance historian Michelle Potter chanced upon a copy in the National Library entitled A scenario for a ballet by Patrick White.