BALLET
Markova and Dolin Festival Ballet Company. (Stoll Theatre.) MARKOVA and Dolin have returned to the Stoll Theatre with their Festival Ballet for a season planned to last a couple of months. The company, which includes such dancers as Riabouchinska, Krassovska and Paula Hinton, has greatly improved in general standard and authority, and is obviously settling down into a per- manent professional group. On Monday night the programme opened with Les Sylphides, and, although I have seen her dance it innumerable times, I must confess that each time Markova left the stage I found myself longing for her return. This is in no way meant as a disparagement of the rest of the dancers, but how can it be otherwise ? Markova is one of those rare creatures—a great
artist—who, whatever she may have lost in technical prowess with the passing of years, has more than made up for it in artistry and spiritual depth.
Up to now the Festival Ballet has been somewhat hampered by a repertoire of too well-known works, so it was refreshing to see it present Lichine's Impressions, a ballet new to London. I think it is a pity that the choreographer chose Bizet's Symphony in C. for the music kept recalling memories of Balanchine with whose idiom Lichine's work is distinctly related. Impressions has, however, a freshness and a certain personality behind it, and its difficulties were bravely tackled by the dancers. It was delightful to see Markova in so unusual a setting. I did not care for the repetition of so many ronds-de-jambe in her pas-de-deux with Dolin, but otherwise this movement was a sheer delight. In contrast with this came the gaiety and attack of the third and fourth movements, the whole—as the title suggests—being the personal impression made by the music upon the choreographer. It is of small import that in a ballet of this kind the ideas behind each movement would probably not have come across without the aid of programme notes.
Riabouchinska, whose untidy foot-work was very obvious in Impressions, appeared to much greater advantage in Petrouchka. the last item on the programme. This ballet has always been famed as a masterpiece, but I can sympathise with the younger generation if they wonder at its reputation. One can only imagine that Petrouchka, more than most ballets, was irrevocably bound to its original cast, which would explain why so many companies have wisely refrained from reviving it. The Festival Company gives a commendable performance, but in this instance that is not nearly enough. The ballet must move one to the very depths ; it could and should be the greatest of all balletic tragedies. LILLIAN BROWSE.
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