BALLET

Sea change

CLEMENT CRISP

Just when I began to fear that the Royal Ballet had given up new choreography as a bad thing—and heaven knows that much of the choreography we see nowadays is a bad thing—two new ballets, one by Ashton, one by David Drew, and the first professional staging of a work by Geoffrey Cauley, happily prove me wrong. First, of course, to Ashton's Lament of the Waves, premiered last week. It is typical Ashton in that it is untypical; or, if you prefer, it is typical in showing Ashton finding novel and exciting aspects of his previous creativity. Like some skilled horticulturalist, he takes cuttings from his earlier ballets, a tender little shoot, a half-concealed bud, and then strikes and nurtures it to produce a new and arresting plant.

This is particularly noticeable in his later works where a brief incident in one will flower unexpectedly in a later piece; in Sin- fonietta the middle movement with its aerial tumbling and turning has reference to the vision scene in Ondine where the sprite was held, dipping and posing, by unseen cavaliers. Lament of the Waves, on a first viewing, sug- gested not only references to Ondine--natur-

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but also to Friday's duet in Jazz Calendar; and as always with Ashton's ballets further riches and pleasures will be revealed after ten and twenty visits.

Lament is an extended pas de deux, on the theme: 'two young lovers are drowned'.

Below the shimmering surface of the waves

(Jacques Dupont's silken drapery from Pelleas et Milisande, and the only thing

worth saving from that other tale of expir- ing lovers) we see two young bodies drift to the sea-bed and, as we are always assured

happens with victims of drowning, their past lives flash before their eyes. In Lament time is relative; as their bodies swirl and sink in death, the young lovers' joint life and passion is briefly relived in images of remarkable beauty.

The couple—Marilyn Trounson, with her precise and sensitive style, and Carl Myers, with a handsome and expressive physique— are called upon to sustain seventeen minutes of choreography which is set to Gerard Masson's irridescent score. The dancing is marvellously apt in relating their plight to their emotions, which seem to undergo a sea- change, with love, tenderness and the fears that assail them as they drown transmuted by their surroundings: Ashton has inter- woven present and past, showing the expres- sion of love within the physical attitudes of death by drowning.

Much of the choreography finds him extending the danse d'kole to capture love's tenderness in the parallel activity of bodies at the mercy of the sea: swimming, drifting, striving against the currents. There are sequences as vividly different as anything in a Tetley ballet; others—like the impeccable academic arabesques in which Trounson seems to drift towards the surface of the sea—that are pure classicism. Amazingly everything holds, choreographically speak- ing, together; the theme carries through, told with swift internal changes of pace and style that reflect the double death of love and life, couplings and struggles that are emotional as well as physical. It is exquisitely

danced by both young artists, though I sus- pect that with experience the projecting of the emotional development of the piece will be stronger. But what an extraordinary work it is; Ashton the poet of the classic pas de deux, that betrothal dance of the ballerina and her cavalier, has here journeyed far and fruitfully into the future.

Meanwhile, out at Stratford on Avon, at the end of last month, the Royal Ballet Tour-

ing Section has been reaping the harvest of Leslie Edwards' Choreographic Group: new ballets from new choreographers. David Drew's From Waking Sleep (music by Alan Hovhaness, and fine designs by Ian Mackin. tosh) relates to the Buddhist way of en- lightenment: our everyday life is a waking sleep from which the favoured man will be aroused to full awareness. The work centres on Nicholas. Johnson as 'The Favoured', excellently in control of both technique and the ballet; his 'Awakening Self' is the lovely Margaret Barbieri, beset by experience (three 'Unknowns' who make three-dimensional shapes with elastic cords a la Nikolais) while the hero is attended by a crowd of followers. The work did not seem entirely clear in expression at the premiere, but even viewed as a piece of plotless dance it is full of bright choreographic ideas, notably for the men, with splendid opportunities for Nicholas Johnson, splendidly taken.

The other novelty in this same pro- gramme was Geoffrey Cauley's Lazarus, white clothed, white lit, and shining with originality. It is a most stimulating piece; the action takes place in the mind of Jesus as he prepares to raise Lazarus. The battle be- tween flesh and spirit, between Christ's man- hood and his divinity; Lazarus' reluctance to be raised as he cowers in the tomb—one could as well write womb; the mocking of the disciples; all are part of a ballet having that rarity, intellectual vigour, and with a dance style that seems pared to the bone. I admire the work very much: it shows that Cauley possesses a singular choreographic vision.