Ballet
Teacher's Pet
By CLIVE BARNES WHAT, I wonder, is bal- let's equivalent to the opera-goer who fancies canaries? Whatever it is, he would dote on Nadia Nerina. You might call Nerina the most perfect machine for dancing in the Western world, and at that surprisingly valid technical level she has all the sweetness physical perfection inevitably brings. It is true that she is much more than just the top girl in the class and teacher's pet, yet undeniably it is the faultlessness of her dancing that first appeals, making her the rose-red apple in the eye of every well-bred ballet connoisseur.
The mechanical aspect of Nerina can probably be seen at its noblest when she dances the Don Quixote pas de deux. This is a hack display piece, taken out of a full-length nineteenth- century ballet with cheerfully meretricious music by Minkus. The pas de deux is vulgar, showy and yet as exciting as a brass band blasting away at a Sousa march. For me, at least, there are few things in the theatre more beautiful to watch than a virtuoso ballerina in full cry, accomplish- ing impossible things with heroic grace. Last week Nerina found her top form in this Czarist razzmatazz, and her flashing, curvetting dancing gave the pimento-flavoured choreography a finesse and polish that made it glitter like one of Covent Garden's own chandeliers.
Prigs in the ballet audience dismiss such circus- style dancing as empty acrobatics, and so deny themselves a great deal of pleasure. Like the sobbing Neapolitan songs of your recital tenors, or the tinselly salon pieces of your virtuoso violinists, this type of dancing must be done magnificently or not at all. Nerina has all the ease and assurance, all the style and authority a dancer could wish for, so that you are left pop- eyed and chuckling at the impudence of her devastating confidence trick.
Similar qualities are to be found in her recent performance of the full-length Swan Lake, and here again her dancing produces the same hard- won patterns of perfection. She now seems in- capable of an insignificant movement, and her body demonstrates all the academic virtues. From the Swan Queen's first swooping jump she never puts a feather wrong. No wonder that when she first danced this at the Bolshoi a few months ago, the Russians cheered her for fifteen minutes! But now, although she has come back with a welcome touch of snow on her point- shoes, I still find myself more enthralled than moved.
It is the sort of performance that effectively defeats criticism. Marvellously danced, intelli- gently acted, the whole interpretation has been as carefully thought out as if it had been pro- duced by Zeffirelli. Fonteyn herself, I would say, has never danced so brilliantly, nor perhaps acted so resourcefully. Despite this, my enthusiasm is tempered, almost inexplicably. At the moment Nerina seems to have everything, except the individuality of greatness and that instinctive ability, rare and vital, to become absorbed With the character. As ballerinas go, Nerina is still young. She can hardly improve, yet she may easily develop.
Previous page
