Ballet
Black, White and Grey
By CLIVE BARNES EVERYONE, well, nearly everyone, seems in some way prejudiced about Beryl Grey. This king- sized Swan Queen, with her round English face and round Russian man- nerisms, sparks off im- mediate controversy, with the few sniping whines of critics' bullets being heard against an explo- sive background roar of audience enthusiasm. Her past career has been distinguished—the first British baby-ballerina, dancing Odette/Odile in Swan Lake on her fifteenth birthday; the first British dancer to appear at the Bolshoi Theatre; the only dancer, I think, to have inspired a poem from a Poet Laureate.
She still has a huge public following, more loyal and fervent than that conjured up by her contemporary Moira Shearer, or even perhaps by her seniors, Markova and Fonteyn. And she is still, by the reckoning of ballerinas, young. Now in her early thirties, she is just at that age where twentieth-century dancers are expected either to fade quietly away or to proceed blaz- ingly to the summit. (It's a fascinating thing, but no post-Diaghilev dancer has reached the abso- lute top before the age of thirty-five.) Yet for all this Grey is a .strangely inconsistent dancer and when she returned to Covent Garden last week dancing Swan Lake, stalwartly partnered by Bryan Ashbridge, her performance was a Patcfr, work quilt of qualities, with good and bad 1. almost equal profusion. When Grey is at her best, as her back arch' imperiously, or her great arms swoop down as1' at the drop of a feather, they could break Prince's back' in two, or her body yields so°, into a plastic pose with sculptural rightness. 11; moments like these I only want to open my moil and and let out a long-drawn oath of admiration I' not allegiance. No sooner is the oath spoken 0311 the image crumbles, while her hands flap 05r lessly in the wind, her face simpers with 111 artificial radiance that sends quite seven-eighth of the audience into a cosy swoon, and her wh° body—so eloquent five seconds before' goes amorphous, losing its classical line perhg! in some misguided effort to emulate the Bols110 plastique. Her acting is abominable, 'soft all° sickly for Odette, rapturously coquettish f't Odile, and all with such basilisk willades 5111'1 to the gallery that until it breaks into cheers one fears for its safety. How a dancer can be so good and so bill within a twinkling of an enchainment, I fail l° understand. It is a pity that many of her adverse critics, understandably when hard pressed Pt space, tend to level out her black and white 0°11' ties to a universal grey that sounds like mediocrity. Mediocre is one thing this whnle• hearted dancer is not. On the other hand her interpretation of Odette/Odile is shallow while her dancing is undisciplined. As a free-lance bat: lerina, wandering around the world unhookee from her moorings, she lacks the discipline 3 permanent company could give her, and has 110 one to please but herself and her audience. Per haps here is the secret of her inconsistency. Mild artistic schizophrenia can also be din!' nosed in the Western Theatre Ballet. which; recently gave a one-night stand at the RoYai Court Theatre, before embarking for the Th6tre des Nations in Paris and subsequently a Spanish tour. Not seen in London for nearly two year' the Western Theatre Ballet now looks in some danger of being torn between the eggheads and the public. Trying to equate the irreconcilable aims of bringing ballet to the people (in this case the West Country) and also of being British ballet's self-appointed, but very necessary avant. garde, has resulted in a sadly conventional chandeliers-and-champagne party piece -called Berl de la Victoire, which I wrote about a few months ago. Also new to London, and this time new to me as well, was Peter Darrell's Chiaros" cum, which could perhaps point the way out of the company's difficulties. A series of dances for three couples, set to Milhaud's Saudades (10 Brasil, it is clever (not unpleasantly so) and 1011 of fresh, original choreography. Lightly explor• ing human relationships in an apparently plotless ballet--following in the wake of Jerome Robbins at a respectful distance—its point needs sharpen' ing. Even so, it was strongly danced, especiallY by a high-jumping little humming-bird, Brenda '1, Last, and obviously makes an appeal on more than one level. Personally I would like to see .
Western Theatre Ballet based permanently in London, but if it wants to continue in its pioneer' ing missionary work then Chiaroscuro is the mess sage to hand out at its meetings—not Ba! la Victoire.
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