Resolution
BALLET
more adventurous policy than other companies. In sum, ballet spent most of last year looking back over its shoulder: and it is surely not neces- sary to remind the authorities of the petrifying fate of Mrs Lot.
So, if the powers that be are thinking of making any New Year resolutions, may I humbly offer a few for their consideration. All are Matters that must currently feature on the agenda of the Arts Council's Goodman-Harewood into in- quiry nto the future of ballet and opera.
First and foremost, the bad old touring routine must be speedily and utterly changed. In a fascinating article in the Deceinber issue of Dance and Dancers, John Field, who as Director of the Royal Ballet's touring company performs wonders both for his troupe and for ballet in this country, offers a clear and urgent khalysis of the awful problems created by the disruption of weekly dates. The wear and tear on dancers and ballets; the concomitant troubles ' of maintaining a repertory and developing young dancers as artists; the urgent need to discover Choreographic talent—these are matters of vital ncem him, y to him and to an one interested in Ellet. If Field, with fine dancers and a strong &rganisation to support him, finds touring exas- perating, how much greater are the difficulties for small troupes like WTB, who work on a far from generous grant, and what are the prospects for the new Rambert, which has made so radical $ change with its immediate past and now has to break in a fresh audience each week? And what Of Festival Ballet? The couple of triple bills at the end of their London season came as a wel- come antidote to the preceding month of heavily restored antiques, but this is hardly a forward- looking policy either in London or in the provinces.
Criminally short of funds, frighteningly short of choreographers (1966, you will recall, also in- cluded MacMillan's departure for Berlin), ballet Seems long only in nostalgia and good dancers. The need is to modernise the image of ballet itself (and this can only be done by providing opportunities for young choreographers), and Creak the audiences' monomaniac taste for swans, fairies and assorted middle-European peasantry. More than ever this seems to depend on the establishment of regional ballet and opera, working in close Opera House associa- tion. The dream is an old one—as Charles Reid notes below—but ballet, more than opera, has its troupes prepared to give the dream reality. Royal Ballet II may have their occasional seasons at Covent Garden, WTB their link with Sadler's Wells and Rambert with the Jeannetta Cochrane theatre, but these are not the permanent homes needed, any more than Festival Ballet's seasonal appearances at the Festival Hall constitute a proper tenancy. Only by locating companies in provincial centres and building from there a public proud of its regional involvement and as Committed to the future of its troupes as it is at present to the finest of our provincial repertory theatres (not to mention football teams) can we hope for a real future for the lyric arts.
The difficulties are enormous, and by no means all financial, but it is long past the time for some start to be made, no matter how slight, to bring to an end the currently wasteful diffusion of effort and the damnable tradition of 'muddling through.' If a German provincial city could give a welcome to John Cranko, why not an English one?—and it is a national disgrace that MacMillan, the finest choreographer of his generation, should have to leave the country to find a company on which to lavish his amazing gifts.
To 'end on a seasonal note, I have to report that ballet's Christmas was celebrated with all the usual immemorial ceremonies, from the transformation of the Nutcracker to the dressing of the I "gly Sisters: at Covent Garden there were a pair of fine Auroras—Annette Page and Doreen Wells—who almost made us forgive the raddled production; Margot Fonteyn and Annette Page were both enchanting Cinderellas, while at the Festival Hall nuts are being cracked twice daily to the sound of Tchaikovsky, which may well be a child's idea of heaven, just as Sydney Smith's involved path and trumpets. And so A Happy New Year to one and all—and especially to directors of ballet companies.
CLEMENT CRISP
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