BALLET
Solar Eclipse
T YIELD to no one in my admiration for 'Western Theatre Ballet and in my pleasure at seeing them at last installed at Sadler's Wells, but to find them moved in with a new three-acter that is almost a parody of their great achieve- ments is hardly what this well-wisher had antici- pated or hoped. WTB are strictly contemporary; never afraid of being fashionable, their creations have shown an immediacy in reacting to any fresh ideas in the theatre, from Beatle songs to the most Kinseyish of psychological soundings, bringing what Peter Darrell, their director, calls `the drama of the present-day world' into the swan-infested realms of theatrical dancing. The idea may not be particularly new, but WTB's realisation of it has given the company a force- ful identity and a bright, `get-away' image. Now every attribute of their past success is to be found grotesquely inflated and overstated in Sun into Darkness.
The intentions seemed admirable: score from Malcolm Williamson, scenario from David Rudkin, choreography from Peter Darrell, with Colin Graham as production consultant; here was a splendid collection of names for -a big modern ballet. Where did it all go wrong'? Partly in the assumption that by plonking con temporary life on stage you automatically make contemporary ballet, when it is the steps that need up-dating, not the themes; partly, I suspect, in the libretto.
Had Mr Rudkin not already proclaimed his ignorance of ballet, one might have hazarded a guess that this 'Play for Dancers'—ominous title—had been devised by someone unfamiliar with both the rules and possibilities of dancing. He has seized upon an incident that could make
a thrilling short ballet (indeed it did so, as Norman Morrice's The Tribute for the Royal Ballet); but expanded to three acts, plumped out with a garish parade of sexual and ritual cliches, sabotaged by the disparity between a naturalisti- cally observed community and the stylisation of dancing with its very different formal concepts, Sun into Darkness succeeds neither as dance nor as drama.
We are shown a Cornish village of lurid im-
probability, featuring a family where th, is mayor, uneasily married to a woman N(10 seems in rapid succession wife, wanton and priestess, and their virginal daughter and 'sensi- tive' son, both of whom are attracted to a `Stranger'—though it is mother who gets him in the end. Add two whores with strip-tease training, two carriers with a low-comedy acro- batic act and gorilla suits, the local priest who is a dabhand at organising ritual killings, season with a drunken orgy, castration, homosexuality, a dash of fetishism, flagellation, rape, a motor- bike and a murder, and you have a readily recognisable picture of a rural community. And all this at carnival time, too!
The comparison with Morrice's powerful The Tribute is inescapable; both ballets are con- cerned with a seasonal festivity where the don- ning of masks and costumes, the choice of a Stranger as a sacrificial figure, release passions that burn briefly and violently during the carni- val night. Morrice wisely did not specify his locale and the implied abstraction gave force and impact to the action, while the tightness of a single act had a dramatic impetus that Rudkin's three scenes lack.
Sensational where it should have been sensi- tive, peopled by characters whose psychological development seems minimal, the work is curi- ously unmoving. Faced with the need to sustain this preposterous affair over three acts, Darrell has found himself o'er-parted and succumbed to the emotional blatancy of the libretto. In works like The Prisoners, Jeux, Homme, he has shown a considerable subtlety of means; in Sun into Darkness every point is bludgeoned home. The choreography lacks unity, with naturalistic movement, academic dance, music-hall routines all jostling each other; its prime merit is that it inspires the cast to give uniformly good per- formances.
Williamson's score is not to my taste; undeni-
ably efficient, it seems affected by the omni- present stridency of the piece; like everything else, it is a disappointment. And yet, and yet . . . here is a new three-act ballet and, when all's said and done, WTB are making a vital attempt to extend the range of dancing. That Sun into Darkness shows a miscalculation of means, though not of aim, does not detract from the importance of this type of experiment. Like Frankenstein, WTB have concocted a monster up at Schloss Sadler's; well, it was a brave try— even if they do have to keep it locked up in the East Wing.
CLEMENT CRISP
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