Our Kiwi Home: Meet Miss P, the ballet teacher who shaped generations in Christchurch

Saturday, 4 April 2026

When Lorraine Peters was a 12-year-old student at Christchurch’s Fendalton School, she rounded up a group of girls, took a stick from the nearby willow tree to use as a pointer and direct her new ballet troupe into straight lines, and set to rehearsing her dancers for an upcoming Red Cross concert.

Fellow student Cliff couldn’t help but notice these ballet rehearsals happening during every morning recess and lunchtime, and his teacher, Mr Simpson, told him, “I’d steer well clear of that one son.” Cliff sensibly disregarded this well-meant advice and in time enjoyed 67 very happy years married to Lorraine. Together they had five children - three girls and two boys and - Lorraine assures me that they’re all fabulous.

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When I called in to chat with 89-year-old Lorraine, I knew straight away that I’d come to the right place, because the elegant lady who answered the door had all the poise and grace of a ballerina. With only one foot through the door, Lorraine immediately pointed out a photo on the wall of the Southern Ballet’s first productions of Giselle. She proudly told me everything I would ever need to know about the lead dancers, where their careers had taken them, and that the overseas critic had titled her review: “Giselle: World Standard.”

Lorraine mentioned she’d only moved into her lovely villa several months earlier, and I immediately thought I really must write a story about the people who’d done such a splendid job of settling her in. Every wall was covered with her family photographs and ballet memories – she looked as though she’d lived there for years.

Before we sat down for a chat Lorraine had to show me her pride and joy: a gleaming grand piano. She explained she simply adores Rachmaninov.

Lorraine was slightly surprised when my first question was not about the Southern Ballet Company she’d established 50 years ago but instead was about her parents. She said, “Well, my dad went to Fendalton School and won a scholarship to attend the School of Art, so I think that’s where my granddaughter, Ballantyne, got her painting and drawing abilities from. My father was the darlingist man, and although his name was James, he was always called Gentleman Jim.

“My mother was an amazing singer, and a professor from the Australian Conservatorium came over to Christchurch to judge a competition here. My mother could sing Italian aged 11 and sing a perfect top C - she was pretty amazing. The professor told her parents, ‘If she rests her voice for now, and then you send her to me, my wife and I will look after her, and by the time she’s 16, I will make her world famous - she will be the next Nellie Melba. As it happened, she didn’t take up that offer and luckily for me she met and married Gentleman Jim.”

Lorraine was born in Napier, then the family moved to Timaru and then Christchurch, where they’ve stayed since.

When Lorraine was very young, she used to take a tram and go to piano lessons with a professor who taught the piano. He had only 12 students, and the first time she played him Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu by ear he said he would take her on as a student “as I had a gift from God – and that was really quite a beautiful thing to say”.

After a while though, Lorraine had to make a choice and ballet won out. Even now, she still plays the piano and has always just loved music.

Lorraine started teaching ballet properly at 15 in the front room at home. Her parents cleaned out her bedroom and her father put up a barre.

Lorraine went to Digby’s Commercial College to learn typing and shorthand and then got a job because she had to earn some money to pay for her teaching studios. Her first job was at the Trotting Conference, where Mr Larcombe was the boss.

“You’re lucky I can remember all of this,” she said at this point.

I asked Lorraine if she’d had a dream at that stage of doing more with her own ballet, and she replied without a moment’s hesitation, “All I wanted to do was teach - I loved to dance, but I really loved teaching.”

I then asked Lorraine where the idea of Southern Ballet came from and she laughed and said, “A Royal Academy of Dancing examiner came out from London, and in those days, they only came out every two years. She went right throughout New Zealand from the north to the south, and this examiner failed most of the students in the North Island, so I was shaking in my shoes as I thought she’s going to fail all my students too. She completed her examining in Christchurch and called me in to discuss my students, and I thought, ‘oh no, I’m in for a terrible time.’

“Anyway, as it happens, she was just lovely, and she said, ‘I’ve examined in London where I can pass nobody in a week, but this morning I’m giving four of your students honours.’ She then said, ‘Have you ever thought about starting your own ballet company?’ Well, I thought ‘that’s pretty big’, so that got us thinking and that’s how we began.”

With the help of some wonderful parents and support team, Lorraine decided to establish the Southern Ballet Theatre Trust in 1975. The trust’s first ballet was Giselle, and it had seven houses completely sold out at the James Hay Theatre in the Christchurch Town Hall, “which was amazing, and they were brilliant”, Lorraine said.

“We also toured the company of 30 dancers all around the South Island. The New Zealand Ballet were wonderful and loaned us sets which was a huge help.”

Lorraine never really made much money from her teaching, she said.

“It’s quite funny because in the old days people used to say ‘Lorraine Peters has made so much money from teaching ballet, they bought Glynn Wye Station’. This is absolutely not true. In fact, at one point the chairman of our board said ‘we can’t keep going – we’ve got no money’.

“At the time I think I was being paid $250 a week for teaching, so I announced to the board that I wouldn’t draw any money, even though I was saving up for a new kitchen. I told the board my kitchen could wait – and from then on, I taught often seven days a week for free – for the love of it.”

The trust had the whole of the top floor above the cloisters in the Arts Centre, and the orchestra was in the building opposite. It was a wonderful place to be, Lorraine said. She would play Rachmaninov and other beautiful music upstairs for her ballet classes, and at the same time, the orchestra would be playing across the quad.

“It was glorious. It was such an exciting place.

“I had two people from the St Petersburg Ballet company visit us, and they asked if they could get a job with our company when their Australian tour had finished. We were thrilled to have them join us.”

Classes were held every weekday and on Saturday mornings, and expectations to be there were high. After school each day, Lorraine would collect her own children from school and race them around to her mother’s house.

“I couldn’t wait to get to the studio, and I was always running late by the end of the evening, because no-one ever got out of the studio door unless they had got the dance in their head. The poor parents would be waiting there to pick their children up after ballet, but nobody said boo - no-one dared come in the door.”

Most of the trust’s productions were danced at the Isaac Theatre Royal, and sometimes they would do a season of 16 performances. “The students absolutely loved performing to a full house,” she said.

I asked Lorraine if she sat in the audience for these performances and she replied, “I always liked to be backstage on the prompt side of the stage if anyone got out of line – but they never did – they were brilliant.”

At this point I asked Lorraine what her husband Cliff was doing during this time, and she explained, “Cliff was the dead opposite to me in many ways – he was hard working and ran the farm and did road contracting.

“When he was only 29, he got very, very bad cancer of the tongue, and they said he would lose his tongue and never speak again. Then a little bit went into his neck, so he lost all of those glands in his neck, and half of his tongue, and in fact he was given only seven hours to live. He actually lived until he was 90, with perfect speech and great health, but you have to have that will to live – and he did.”

A professor in Christchurch said Cliff was the only person who’d ever survived that operation to his knowledge, Lorraine said. “It was quite horrific at the time. Cliff was pretty amazing really and he was the major reason I could teach ballet as I did. He was not really a ballet man but always helped out, making sprung floors and putting up barres as required.”

Later he became very involved with the arts and chaired the Theatre Royal board and was very instrumental in saving the Theatre Royal from demolition way back in the day – “thank goodness he did”, Lorraine said. He also went on to chair the Southern Ballet Theatre Trust for several years, and was also the master of the Christchurch Hunt. He loved his horses.

In many ways, they were a great team, Lorraine said, but they were not without their “hiccups” and a couple of times during Lorraine’s career Cliff told her she would have to choose “ballet or me - poor Cliff as I was never home”.

By this stage, they owned Glynn Wye Station in the Lewis Pass area, but they always lived in Christchurch too. Glynn Wye was “ginormous” and such a beautiful place, she said. Lorraine gave up running the ballet school and went to help Cliff on the station. Their two youngest daughters did correspondence school (Te Kura) and Lorraine became their teacher. She also mowed the lawns and cooked for the station hands.

“I was busy because at one stage I was cooking for 13 men. That was a job and a half, because I also did all their lunches, cleaned their rooms and did their laundry using an old wringer. Can you believe how long it took me to hang up all their laundry on the long line. One day, I arranged for an ice cream van to visit, and they thought that all their birthdays had come at once. I did too, as I love ice cream.”

Although Lorraine was not teaching ‘officially’, she did have some students come and stay at Glynn Wye, so their lessons could continue, and of course they loved to visit the farm, she said. One mother who used to travel to Christchurch from the West Coast every week to take her daughter to class said, “I’m going to ring you once a month until you come back,” and that’s what she did.

“After a while, I ended up travelling backwards and forwards for about 18 months between Christchurch and the Lewis Pass… Eventually I convinced Cliff and we returned to make Christchurch our base again and I took up teaching again as, although Southern Ballet had got a new teacher … it hadn’t really worked out.”

At this point Lorraine interrupted what she was saying to tell me I must have been a fantastic music teacher – then she continued, “Some people are born to be teachers. I just love to have a room full of beautiful students.

“I’ve always had a stick when I teach, obviously not to hit anyone with, but to keep in time and to lean on and direct the dance routines. One year the boys took the floorboards up in the studio and hid my stick under the boards as a prank. I asked, ‘who’s got my stick, who knows where my stick is’ and there were a lot of grins. The Press found out about this and it caused a lot of merriment. I loved my students.”

I asked Lorraine if she had any involvement with Southern Ballet now, and she replied, “Yes, I love to go and visit. Until recently I even taught a few private lessons. When we had our 50 years celebration they’d done something so wonderful for me. They’d named one of the studios, The Lorraine Peters Studio with a big sign, which was an absolute honour. At our 50th celebrations my old student Fiona Tonkin, who is now our patron, gave a wonderful speech.”

Fiona trained with Southern Ballet and was invited to join the New Zealand Ballet Company and the Australian Ballet Company during her training. She chose to stay on with Lorraine for one more year and then go to Australia. She became a principal artist with the Australian Ballet and danced major roles in London, New York and St Petersburg – where she received a standing ovation. She even danced before Queen Elizabeth II, and met her backstage afterwards.

At that point Lorraine scurried off to find a copy of Fiona’s speech and here’s a very fitting quote from it. For me Fiona’s words capture the magic of what was happening in Christchurch all those years ago.

“Whenever I have been asked who my role models are, I have never mentioned stars of the time, or of the past. Instead, my memory would go back to my time being taught by Lorraine and the formative experiences with the Southern Ballet Theatre.

“I now realise that it takes an especially dedicated and passionate individual to not only inspire young minds but to somehow magically awaken the individual’s love of the artform. Lorraine has always had this gift – a gift to have her students trust and respect her, no matter what is happening in their personal world. Thank you Miss P. Bravo.”

My final question for Lorraine had to be whether she was proud, and she replied instantly, “Oh goodness yes, I’m proud of my students, they were all such lovely unassuming people and not one of them ever gave the impression that they were the greatest. I’ve lived a very full life and shared the love of dance with hundreds of students.”

We both agreed we’d had a lovely afternoon chatting and laughing, and then to make things even better Lorraine produced afternoon tea for us. There was a large plate of delicious, buttered muffins, and of course slim, graceful Lorraine showed all the restraint that you would expect from a ballet mistress.

I, on the other hand, considered it would be terribly ungrateful of me not to show my full appreciation. Since I didn’t have to worry about how I might look in a leotard I helped myself to another - I was terribly hungry.

As we said goodbye Lorraine told me our chat had made her day, her week even, and I said I felt exactly the same way.