In December 2018, when news came that Sir Jon Trimmer had retired after six decades with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, it felt like a body blow. Trimmer’s dance magic was so embedded into the RNZB’s DNA that the thought of not seeing him, even in small cameo roles, hurt.
His ballet history is our ballet history. Jonty, as he was known, and his wife, Lady Jacqui Trimmer, were there when the national company first made a commitment to take ballet to the people.
He was also a brilliant dancer and actor, a generous mentor who always had time for younger dancers and brought joy to countless thousands. He could lift his leg above his head well into his 70s and had a wicked sense of humour that would have the company rolling with laughter.
Trimmer’s history with the company began when he took summer school classes in Wellington, aged 14, with Danish dancer and teacher Poul Gnatt.
Born in 1939, Trimmer grew up in Petone in an artistic family. His father was a wool classer by day and played the violin in orchestras by night. His mother was a dancer who as a child watched musicals from the wings of Wellington’s St James Theatre. Trimmer started dance classes when he was 12 in his sister Pamela’s dance school. By age 13, he was performing in dance concerts around the Wellington region with his younger sister, moving on to cabarets in clubs such as the Majestic, where he danced flamenco.
Gnatt recognised his talent and began nurturing the young dancer, partnering him with older girls so he could develop his strength and physical confidence.
In 1957, Gnatt invited the 18-year-old to join his recently formed New Zealand Ballet Company. On the same day, 15-year-old Jacqui Oswald, Trimmer’s future wife, joined the nine-member troupe. With trucks full of costumes, props and sets, they lurched over country roads performing in any town that invited them, sometimes on makeshift stages. These tours remain an integral part of the RNZB’s schedule.
He spent a year with the company before winning a bursary to study in London at the Royal Ballet School in 1959. After a year’s study, preferring to dance, he joined the Sadler’s Wells Theatre for two years, performing with such stars as Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn. After returning home to marry Jacqui, they both danced with the Australian Ballet in 1965-66 and then the Royal Danish Ballet in 1968-69.
After learning of the New Zealand Ballet’s dire financial state, the Trimmers returned home in 1970. The couple had to break their contracts with the Washington DC Ballet and went from earning several hundred dollars to $75 a week. At this time, the company had been suffering from funding and management issues and a disastrous amalgamation with the New Zealand Opera Company by the then Arts Council had carved a considerable hole in both organisations. Trimmer convinced the council to keep a pared-down version going, and the full company was restored several years later.
In his prime, Trimmer was known for his lifts and high leaps and was ranked among the world’s top male dancers. This technical brilliance gave him an electric stage presence. His favourite ballet was Stravinsky’s tragedy Petrushka, a role requiring not only virtuosic technique but considerable acting skills to convey the straw puppet’s desperate unrequited love. Trimmer first performed it in 1967 and it remained his favourite, despite having danced countless other roles. He enjoyed the classical repertoire, with lead roles in Giselle, and La Fille mal gardée.
Great dancers make the transition from technical mastery to depth of characterisation as their bodies find the restraints of age. Very few can achieve this, but for Trimmer it was seamless and his theatrical genius produced remarkable performances in the latter part of his long career.
Audiences will recall such character roles as his irascible Captain Hook in the 2009 performance of Peter Pan, a role so delectably wicked he had children squirming in their seats.
One of his comic masterpieces was playing the matron in RNZB artistic director Gary Harris’s 2010 version of The Nutcracker, set in a hospital. His first role in The Nutcracker had been as the prince in those early tours. He loved the ballet, appearing in five different productions over the years.
At 69 and celebrating 50 years with the RNZB, he starred in Harris’s Don Quixote in the title role. He relished the opportunity to play the hero once again – though a doddery and confused one – after a stint of playing old ladies and witches.
His last major ballet with the RNZB was the 2017 production of Romeo and Juliet, where his sensitive interpretation of Friar Laurence was unforgettable, such was his depth of conveying the impending tragedy of the young lovers.
In 2017, he performed a duet with William Fitzgerald in LARK by company choreographer Loughlan Prior, a story of an old man and a young man in conversation.
Trimmer’s last performance with the company was in The Long and the Short of It, for Tutus on Tour in Kerikeri on December 12, 2018. This was also created for him by Prior, and he performed it with Luke Cooper, marking the end of his 60 years with the company.
Trimmer had often expressed the desire to keep dancing into his 90s, but it was not to be and he retired at 79.
His prowess as an actor was evident elsewhere through the years. He played the title role in the television series of Maurice Gee’s The Fire-Raiser and was nominated for a best actor award. He performed with Helen Moulder in her award-winning play Meeting Karpovsky on a national tour in 2004. Trimmer and Moulder first met at an acting school in 1985, and Moulder was so impressed with his movement he became her muse for the play. Trimmer and Moulder reprised the work for his 80th birthday celebrations.
Having been made an MBE in 1974 for services to ballet, Trimmer was awarded a knighthood in 1999.
Often sporting a beret and a mischievous smile, he was a much-loved man about Wellington and in hometown Paekākāriki, where the Trimmers shared their love of gardening and their ever-present cats. He died of cancer on October 26, aged 84. He will be sorely missed. Haere rā, Jonty.
