27 AUGUST 1965, Page 16

Leaving

By CLIVE BARNES

WHAT can I write about? For here after six years I am saying farewell to these columns and, for that matter, this country. I could, I should and, duty being what it is, I will write about the end of the Bolshoi's London season. Perhaps I might mention Peter Wright's admirably correct and equally lively new Haydn ballet for Western Theatre Ballet, or murmur something about the briskly enterprising Copen- hagen Ballet Theatre in Denmark, or the Holland Festival with Paul Taylor's triumphant guest appearances. Justifiably I could do all that.

I could also mention Jose Greco and his Gypsies, who ignited their slow-burning and .damp camp-fire at the Festival Hall this Mon- day—but, of course, most important is the Bolshoi. Mme Rambert put it to me fairly and squarely. She said: 'Of course, with such pure- dance-genius, nothing else matters—choreo- graphy, scenery, music, it all does not count.' She is right. To see Maya Plisetskaya, emoting as grandly as Theda Bara in full breast-heaving flight, is to be aware of a dimension British ballet scarcely explores. And this whole-hearted identification with life and character is typical, yet one must not forget the fantastic level of Russian ballet technique, and the simple, sig- nificant fact that all the women are positively marvellous, and all the men think so too. I some- times think that if I could leave one message with British ballet, on my departure, it would be simply that sex is here to stay. There honestly is no substitute—not even smoking!

But have I no other message to dredge up from my sad subconscious? For during this long, wet summer, the patterns of British ballet have unobtrusively been shifting around. Now seeing the shift, new alignments of power, new unanswered questions, new worries and new hopes, I can almost regret going to New York. Yet it is time for a change. I have been writing about British ballet for more than fifteen years— in common justice I had to give over some time. Now it's America's turn to suffer!

Strangely the physical fact of departure seems absurdly impossible—yet when Balanchine's wonderful New York City Ballet come to Covent Garden next week I know that they will be greeted here by a graceful pen, well, known else- where yet new to these pages. I have known Mr. Clement Crisp since we were Oxford con- temporaries, and, the reader is warned, I flatter myself we share many of the same dance atti- tudes and prejudices. Over the past six years I've seen a lot of ballet and thoroughly enjoyed writing about it here. To adapt Miss Lillie, don't think it's all been fun, but it has. Yet I wonder how much fun Mr. Crisp is going to have. 'Because, undoubtedly, storm clouds seem to be gathering over British ballet.

A few months ago, everything was going smoothly. The British ballet companies all appeared to have a place and a function, all operated with an apparently effortless efficiency. Now suddenly British ballet is facing a time of crisis. After the failure, artistic and financial, of the £40,000 production of Swan Lake,

London's Festival Ballet had found itself faced with extinction. This has been averted by some strange combination of private and public benefactors, yet the troubles besetting the com- pany were symptoms of its artistic and economic ills—these have to be cured at root, and one has no en.vy of the physician.

Nor is Festival Ballet 'the only company in difficulties. Ballet Rambert, its running mate

in that curious invention of the Arts Council, the 'Two Ballets Trust,' which is intended to help both companies, is not free from difficulty. And curiously the Arts Council, which was, understood, pledged to make a merger between Festival Ballet and Ballet Rambert, has so far not mentioned this during Festival's troubles. Yet now surely is the time . . .

Undoubtedly a merger between these corw panies could be extraordinarily useful, even if the combined 'company continued to function

as two units; indeed, I am inclined to say particularly if the combined company continual in that way, but utilising to the full the vastly superior repertory and artistic sense of the Rambert with the vastly superior dancers of the Festival. One wonders what the Arts Council is waiting for. Christmas, perhaps.

Nor are Festival Ballet and Ballet Rambert the only balletic problems to be faced. At present the Arts Council supports to some extent a number of small ballet companies, including the vitally important Western Theatre Ballet. Yet it cannot find cash for the recently formed London Dance Theatre, a small company in a different class from all the others, except West- ern. Money must be found for this.

And on the subject of the Arts Council and money, is the Council satisfied, if it in fact knows, that the government grant to opera and ballet at Covent Garden is fairly distributed between the two arts? More and more I am con' vinced that a committee of inquiry, with terms as wide as those of the Goodman Committee on the London orchestras, must be set up to investigate the state of British ballet, and, for that matter, British ballet audiences. I am sure we are not making the best use of our resources. Equally I am certain that while we have very fine choreographers, designers, dancers and ever! musicians, our ballet is terrifyingly short 01 strong directors and administrators. But. 01 course, not only ballet—in the arts we are a nation of the blind leading the blind.