Subiaco Stories...Janina Cunovas, Ballet Dancer (1954).
The article and photograph are from Trove, the database of the National Library of Australia. No copyright infringement intended.
Daily News, 8 June 1954.
Ballet life
AUSTRALIA has meant a new life for ballet dancer ; Mrs. Janina Cunovas, of Subiaco. With her ballet dancer husband Boris and daughter Inga, she came here five years ago - speaking little English.
For Mrs. Cunovas, who had been a professional ballet dancer all her adult life, it meant cooking, shopping and housework for the first time. "I knew nothing about such things and even had difficulty buying my own groceries," she told me.
But she has overcome those difficulties now. She manages to run her home efficiently, teach ballet and dance in city and country towns. One of her pupils is daughter Inga, now 16. The Cunovas lived in Lithuania until the communists started to move in there. The family then moved to Vienna, where Mrs. Cunovas danced in the Opera House. In a refugee camp in Germany after the war, she I was permitted to join a ballet company to dance for the American troops, "These were hard times," she said. "We were moving from place to place, there were no hotels, and we had no new I material to make costumes.
At times we stayed up ; all night converging old costumes." Ballet runs in the family — Mrs. Cunovas' sister is! also a professional dancer.
