Only a small portion of Guy Detot’s art studio is dedicated to his years as a professional ballet dancer.
Prior to moving to Penola on South Australia’s Limestone Coast in 1990 to start a farm with his then-wife, the Frenchman had always performed.
“I wanted to be a ballet dancer when I was 12 years old,” Detot said.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)Like Billy Elliot, Detot’s raw talent led him to great success.
From humble beginnings in Paris, he went on to tour the world for 20 years before following love to Australia.
“That half an hour [drive from the airport] changed my life. I fell in love with the country. I fell in love with the trees,” the 67-year-old said.
When his marriage ended, he returned to his first love — wood carving.
Since then Detot has devoted his days to Penola and sculpting creations out of red gum, which he considers the “best wood in the world”.
“A lot of people really like what I do here. Some people think I’m a bullshit artist, but I don’t care.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)Dancing with the best
Detot remembers being fascinated while growing up by the ballerinas who practised in a gym hall. He says he tried to replicate their twists and turns from afar.
“It was so expensive my mum could never afford [it] so I did gymnastics.”
Then as a 16-year-old, while attending Ecole Boule, an art school in Paris, he seized an opportunity to dance — and learn with the eight- and nine-year-old girls at the hall he was boarding at.
After three years of night classes, he persuaded Hans Zullig, the director of Folkwangschule, a famous dance school in Germany, for an audition.
“I learnt that [he] was in Paris so I rang a very famous concert hall in Paris … [and rented] it. I say to him ‘I rent the place, I rent it for an hour on this day at this time. Can you come?’
“That was it, I never turned back.”
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)Falling in love with Australia
In Germany, Detot formed a close friendship with Australian dancer Shelley Linden but it wasn’t until years later when they reunited in England that their relationship blossomed.
Detot moved to Echunga in the Adelaide Hills to be with Linden in 1982.
“[I knew instantly] that’s where I wanted to live.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)He bided his time modelling for Vogue and John Martin before landing a role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1983 Song and Dance.
The performance led to a spot at the Australian Dance Theatre where he stayed for seven years before he left to start his own theatre company.
While successful, it became too hard. He and his wife — who had always wanted to live on a farm — moved to Penola, where they started a family.
“The aim was to create a little place where people would go and see the Clydesdales [at the farm].
“But I’m not really a farmer. My fences were terrible, but I tried.
“It was a great adventure but I needed creativity.”
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)He started carving red gum at night and selling pieces to interested viewers.
When his relationship ended in 1995, he bought a studio and lived in a caravan out the back.
Guy’s love affair with red gums
Guy Detot’s first experience of eucalypts was in the forests in the south of France, near where he used to surf as a boy.
“The smell gets me every time,” he said.
But it was in Penola, a town bordered by paddock trees, that he truly fell in love with them.
“At sunset or sunrise [when] the sun goes through the [red gum] trees, it’s like you’re in a cathedral.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)Carving them was bound to happen. As a boy, he was given his first pocket knife and would spend endless hours creating boats out of oak and pine.
And as a performer, he would always travel with a small carving kit.
“I didn’t understand the difference between one piece of wood and the next. Now I know,” he said.
His sculptures today are mostly all from red gums. He’ll pick up limbs on walks with his dog or at the footy, sometimes farmers gift pieces.
The wood he chooses to work with “talks” to him.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)“[Sometimes] I need to take a piece of wood and look at it for some time.”
And his style?
“Organic. Expressionist. It’s figurative but it’s also not precisely figurative.”
Nowhere he’d rather be
Detot, while lonely at times, loves his life in Penola.
“I love to sit on the front of my place on the verandah with a glass of wine and watch the sunset.
“I’ve travelled everywhere [but] I just love to sit there.”
He remains good friends with his former wife, and has since had long-term relationships but currently lives alone.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)He can’t see himself anywhere else.
“I’ve been offered some money for this place [but] where would I go? Where would I go that’s better?”
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