Leanne Stojmenov’s first year in the seat as West Australian Ballet’s artistic director has, she admits, been pretty wild and wonderful.
Not only is she at the helm of Australia’s oldest continuously performing ballet company, founded in 1952 by the indomitably spirited Madame Kira Bousloff OAM, but Perth-raised Stojmenov has hit the ground running to curate her first program for 2027, coinciding with WA Ballet’s 75th anniversary season.
“It’s an enormous and massive responsibility going into the 75th anniversary,” 45-year-old Stojmenov says.
“I feel honoured to be entrusted with everything that has come before. It’s my role not to simply preserve that history, but to nurture it, celebrate it, and to also take it somewhere new.”
Stojmenov’s ambition for the company is to stay true to WA Ballet’s classical heritage, using it as a base for dancers to explore the capability of their bodies and artistry, while thriving in the excitement of staging unseen works.
She took the reins from guest artistic director David McAllister, who saw her homecoming, of sorts, when returning to WA Ballet in 2024 in the role of rehearsal director.
The step followed an illustrious career with The Australian Ballet that began professionally by joining WA Ballet at just 17 years old.
“I think the age of the next dancer was 26 back then, so I was really young, and in a company of 19 dancers,” Stojmenov recounts.
“I literally got thrown into the company and learnt each day what it was to be a professional dancer.
“Ted Brandsen was the director at the time, and he brought extraordinary works out. We did an incredible Carmen of his that kind of reminded me of Macbeth (WA Ballet’s most recent production). It was taking ballet somewhere perhaps WA Ballet hadn’t been before.”
A massive opportunity arose two months after she started when principal Lisa Miles went off at the last minute and Stojmenov found herself performing the Don Quixote pas de deux with the renowned Errol Pickford on opening night, proving a huge confidence boost.
Dance had slipped into Stojmenov’s life through a ballet school pamphlet in the family’s Beechboro letterbox, and she became hooked after one class.
Performing in a Diana Waldron production of The Nutcracker at Quarry Amphitheatre solidified her desire to become a ballerina, auditioning for Terri Charlesworth’s full-time program a week before starting high school, where she trained for five years.
“I had an amazing Russian teacher, and at the end of that training, I was meant to go on a European tour to do the Prix de Lausanne, an audition for other schools to finish off my training,” Stojmenov says.
“I did the audition for WA Ballet really for the experience. Ted called me in after the audition, and it was a really big decision for me. It would have been a very different path going to Europe. I decided to stay home and start with this company, and I think it was the best decision I could have made.”
Stojmenov spent two years at WA Ballet before joining The Australian Ballet in 2001, where she danced for the next 18 years, eight of those in the role of principal artist.
The Australian Ballet was where she met her dancer husband Marc Cassidy, the pair often performing together, which started when they partnered in a production of Don Quixote.
“He’s actually working in construction now, which is super different,” Stojmenov says.
“He’s gone through different iterations, but what is fantastic is that he really understands the art form, so he gets how it’s all-encompassing. Having that person who truly understands the enormity of the role, and what the art form requires, what the discipline requires, it’s amazing.”
The couple have an 11-year-old son, Max, who was born while Stojmenov was still at The Australian Ballet, returning to the stage for three more years after his birth, and she toured with him for six months.
“It was wonderful and probably the best time in my career, but I also felt like I wanted to give him some time while he was young, to be there for him,” she shares while reflecting on her official retirement as a full-time dancer at the end of 2018.
“I felt like I actually could have danced for another couple of years, but I really didn’t want to continue past where my physicality could be. At The Australian Ballet, you perform over 150 shows a year, and I don’t think that would be a very great time if you didn’t feel at your peak — particularly when I’d had such a wonderful career and had travelled the world and had so many experiences.”
Stojmenov moved back to WA with her family, settling in Craigie, and worked with the WA Academy of Performing Arts for four years before reuniting with Perth-born McAllister — her former artistic director at The Australian Ballet — at WA Ballet, who led the company for two seasons while searching for his replacement. He found it in Stojmenov.
“He celebrated what I had to offer, and it really helps when you’ve got someone who believes in you to do really well in your articulation of your job,” she says.
“I absolutely loved walking back in the doors. I wouldn’t say it completely felt like home because when I was here it was a company of 19 dancers, and I returned to a company of 40 dancers, doing repertoire that was similar to what I did at The Australian Ballet.
“I found how to be back in this art form in a way that has actually been my most rewarding job yet. To lead through the lessons that I’ve learnt. It’s completely rewarding and it feels right.”
Technically, they were different doors Stojmenov came back through, with the company having moved in 2012 to the purpose-built WA Ballet Centre in Maylands, following six decades in borrowed rehearsal spaces.
Born in Russia and raised in France, founder Kira Bousloff first came to Australia in 1938 as a dancer with the Ballets Russes.
It was during a holiday to Perth in 1952, where Bousloff likened the coastline to the French Riviera, that she and husband James “Jim” Penberthy adopted it as home.
Bousloff started WA Ballet that same year before the curtain rose on the company’s inaugural season at His Majesty’s Theatre in 1953, featuring 10 performances of Le Bal, Romane and Bousloff’s own Moment Romantique.
Rehearsing in those early years happened wherever there was room to dance, including classes in a boatshed near Barrack Street, where dancers waded through floodwater at high tide.
The company established more permanent homes at North Fremantle Town Hall in the 1970s and His Majesty’s Theatre from 1981 before finally moving to Maylands.
Bousloff had directed the company until 1969. She died in 2001, leaving a legacy that demonstrated the strength of her conviction.
“It was from sheer passion and her determination and courage that has set the foundation for WA Ballet,” Stojmenov says.
“It really is something that I have come back to with the whole programming of this 75th year. Her courage, her imagination and her passion for ballet has resulted in us having such a successful ballet company in WA.
“My teacher Terri Charlesworth was inspired by her. . . I feel like that has been inherited through the generations.
“I never had the opportunity to meet her, but I think everybody was completely intoxicated by her. I spoke with Petal Miller Ashmole (a Perth-born ballerina who trained under Bousloff) not so long ago about her, and the way people’s eyes light up when they talk about her, she was an incredibly inspiring woman.”
Stojmenov’s 2027 season is a program woven with tributes and celebrations, beginning by honouring the company’s founder in Ballet At The Quarry: Kira by performing Bousloff’s favourite romantic-era ballet Les Sylphides on a double bill with the WA premier of choreographer Stanton Welch’s Divergence.
Welch is the son of former 1980s WA Ballet artistic director Garth Welch, whose 1981 season of Peter Pan was WA Ballet’s first official sell-out production.
“These aren’t just historical footnotes, it’s like a thread that connects one generation to the next,” Stojmenov says.
The centrepiece of the 75th anniversary season is The Dream, pairing WA premieres by two of the most significant choreographers of the 20th century — Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, a one-act take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jiri Kylian’s Forgotten Land.
Genesis moves to Studio Underground for its season choreographed by the dancers of WA Ballet, and Greg Horsman’s Coppelia returns with its distinct Aussie take on the mechanical doll classic.
The year will finish with the Australian premiere of Scottish Ballet artistic director Christopher Hampson’s The Snow Queen, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that inspired Disney’s Frozen.
“I believe by bringing international voices here, we can continue to remain connected to the global conversation of dance,” Stojmenov says.
“Something that is an exciting alternative to The Nutcracker is really thrilling for me because we still want to keep it festive, but I think it’s going to be such a beautiful ballet for the whole family.
“I am really excited to see the dancers take on this repertoire. It is super challenging, both physically and artistically, but we’re at a point where they’re ready to take this on, and I just can’t wait to see them shine on stage.”
WA Ballet 2027 season packages on sale from 10am, October 14 and single tickets on sale from 10am, October 28 at waballet.com.au
Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.
Sign up for our emails