The octagenarian impresarios who introduced generations of Russian ballet stars to a mass audience in London have been honoured with one of the top awards in dance.
Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, of Hampstead, were presented with the Royal Academy of Dance’s Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award for their lifetime contribution to dance in Britain in a ceremony at the Royal Opera House.
The award has been previously given to the choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton and dancers Dame Marie Rambert and Dame Ninette de Valois.
Lilian Hochhauser said they were delighted. “I’m not accustomed to receiving awards although we had a very nice one from the Russian embassy.”
Mr Hochhauser, 86, whose family fled the Nazi threat in Slovakia in 1938, fell into music promoting when he was asked to organise a concert for schools when in his early 20s and it proved a huge success.
Within a few years, he had met and married Lilian, whose own parents came to London to escape pogroms in Russia, and they embarked on a career presenting music and dance at venues from the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Opera House.
They first introduced ballet to mass audiences at the now defunct Empress Hall near Earl’s Court with a short-lived London company called the Metropolitan Ballet whose stars included the partnership of Freddie Franklin and Alexandra Danilova as well as Svetlana Beriosova, Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin and Leonid Massine.
But for many, it is their association with the famous Russian companies of the Bolshoi and the Kirov - now known as the Mariinsky - that made them famous, working with stars such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova.
No one had seen the Russians in London until 1956 when the Hochhausers were involved - although not responsible for - the Bolshoi’s first visit on a government to government initiative. “Of course, we were all completely and utterly bowled over,” she said.
They brought the Kirov to London for the first time on its first tour of the West in 1961 - on the trip during which Rudolf Nureyev famously defected - followed by the Bolshoi again in 1963 on the first of regular UK visits.
Mrs Hochhauser said it was difficult to organise when they started. “Communications are better now. You had to wait for three hours to get a telephone call through to Russia in the early days. And it became easier when we could directly with the companies rather than through the ministry of culture.”
They have continued to present companies from a dozen different countries alongside a classical music programme with performers such as the violinists David and Igor Oistrakh and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and composers including Dmitri Shostakovich.
The couple have no intention of retiring and are bringing the Bolshoi ballet and opera back to the Royal Opera House next year. “And we’ve got plans for the future, they are just not ready for public consumption yet,” she said.