NO, NO, NINETTE: SIR.—May I be permitted, through the courtesy
of your columns, to take issue with my good friend Clive Barnes about his article 'No, No, Ninette!'? Few thinking ballet lovers today would quarrel with his argument : but what I—and I am certain many others—will quarrel with is his proposed solution of the problem. Of course opposition ballet is needed : but what is needed is a shop window not for the white-headed boys of the establishment, who have received lavish opportunities to get their work on the stage.
If such a company could be established as suggested by Mr. Barnes, let it. in heaven's name, be employed to display those choreographers whom Dame Ninette seems unwilling to touch with a barge-pole. For example, I find it scandalous that a choreographer of the calibre of Jack Carter, who scored a resounding artistic success with Witch Boy in 1958, should have been offered absolutely nothing since by any English company save London Morning in 1959, a ballet which was doomed from its very conception, and which, I imagine, he undertook only because, after all, even a choreographer must live. There are numer- ous other examples which spring to the mind of any- body interested in English ballet.—Yours faithfully, Harlow School of Ballet, JANET KERSTE.Y 5 Ladyshot, Harlow, Essex
Previous page
