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When the company had trouble paying wages, one of its supporters was Cambridge law fellow, Bryan Earle (Rufus) King (1906-1987), an important figure in the promotion of black interests and a supporter of a National Museum on his home country St Kitts and also of the Caribbean Artists Movement established in 1966. He had continued to dance and was photographed by Angus McBean. Pasuka, who in part left Jamaica to escape prejudice, was found dead in his Paris apartment with rumours that he was killed by a lover. His life and work were reflected in the BBC documentary Ballet Black (1982). He was interviewed as part of a queer oral history project (Hall Carpenter) but deflected direct admissions of his sexuality (he had married) in what Professor Nadia Ellis has described as the ‘politics of delicacy’. Riley gave up dance when the troupe disbanded and turned to painting and sculpture (he studied at the Slade). A lack of funding saw it slip into obscurity but the two men behind Les Ballets Nègres were Jamaican Berto Pasuka (born Wilbert Passerley, 1919-1963 ), proclaimed by the ballet critic of The Stage as ‘the most colourful dance personality since Isadora Duncan’, and Richie Riley (Richard Riley, 1910-1997). The BBC recorded performances that including Market Day and others were Cabaret 1920 and De Bride Cry.
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There were 21 dancers, 18 of whom were black. The only black ballet company in Europe, their ground-breaking performance received both critical praise and public acclaim and allowed them to move to the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill and play in other European venues.
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On 20th April, Les Ballets Nègres performs for the first time at the Twentieth-Century Theatre in Westbourne Grove. He had contributed ‘Commentary’ to Commercial Art and Industry in the 1930s, along with Cyril Connolly. Conran was Hon Secretary to the Contemporary Art Society in the 1950s and 60s and Director of Manchester City Art Galleries 1962–1976. He also owned a 1946 work by Jackson Pollock. Amongst works owned by Jeffress were paintings by Soutine, Roualt, Modigliani, Balthus and Vuillard, Picassos’s Femme Assisse (Dora Marr, 1938) and De Chirico’s The Painters Family (1926). Conran was the first curator of Kenwood House and would commission a new catalogue of paintings there under the editor Sir Anthony Blunt (published in 1953).
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Both Conran and Cross were painted by Cedric Morris (1930- respectively Cross was one of Morris’s lovers). It was with this couple that John Minton stayed, at their house Ocho Rios, on his trip to Jamaica. Cross has been described as a wealthy ex-ballet dancer and as a guardsman. Amongst these were the orchid grower Angus Wilson and his lover Paul ‘Odo’ Cross. He organised loans from Jeffress but also other gay benefactors. According to research by Peter Jones from Southampton Solent University and Gill Hedley, this group was probably orchestrated by Loraine Conran (George Loraine Conran, 1912–1986*) who had been appointed the youngest Curator of the Southampton City Art gallery aged 26 in 1939 just after marrying. Arthur Jeffress loans a number of the more important paintings in his collection to the first (a second is held in 1947) of two exhibitions at the Judges’ Lodgings in Winchester (19 August to 21 September) under the auspices of the Circle for the Study of Art (CSA).