Ballet
Nutcracker and nut
Robin Young
Dance is not the most various medium of artistic expression, but in the postChristmas season London ballet had a fair crack at both fairytale dreams and insane nightmares. No surprise that the former were the more successful, even if the latter and less familiar could be described as more interesting.
The fairytale dream was, of course, the traditional Festival Ballet revival of The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall — commodious for the audience and boxoffice receipts, if not specially so for the company and sets. This year's Little Clara, Teresa Jones, was fresh and fey, compared with last year's, whose three seasons in the role had spoiled her pristine charm. Fritz (Jonathan Rant, an appropriately named youngster) was irrepressibly unpleasant in a suitably boisterous fashion — everybody's idea of the child to avoid at Christmas.
Many of the adults were familiar in their roles, but I had not seen Gaye Fulton and Alain Dubreuil as the principals before. Miss Fulton is a rather careful, but proficient performer — attractive rather than glamorous. Dubreuil has a willing charm and ready smile which ingratiates him with the audience even at his (few) shaky mothents. While lacking the bravura and virtuosity of Samtsova and Prokovsky, the pair earned the plaudits they won from, admittedly, a relatively undemanding audience.
Elsewhere some of the costumes (Waltz of the Flowers particularly) seemed more excruciating than ever, but the dancing through the company was noticeably stronger, with Michael Ho's lively jig no longer so outstanding among the divertissements. Even Noleen Nicol's and Jean Pierre Alban's Arabian dance, which I remembered as an embarrassment, was on this occasion, as seductively persuasive as it is meant to be.
Despite the general improvement, however, Nutcracker remains an economy-pack second best by comparison with the Royal Ballet's Cinderella. Clara's clumsy travelling walnut is no match for Cinderella's coach, and the best efforts of John Travis, as Madame Bonbonniere emitting children from her petticoats, or Terry Hayworth as a hard-working Drosselmeyer cannot compensate for the inimitable virtues of Sir Robert Helpmann and Sir Fred.erick Ashton as two deliciously distasteful Ugly Sisters.
Turning to nightmares, Robert North's Brian, premiered in London Contemporary Theatre's current season at the tightly filled Place, is intended as "a picture of insanity from more than one viewpoint, in a jig-saw puzzle where the various pieces make more sense as the dance progresses." I cannot say that it succeeds in this aspiration since the words by John Dodson and slide photography by Sally Potter introduce more red herrings than insights. The dance itself however is both dramatic and intriguing. Linda Gibbs is mother/wife/mistress and Stephen Barker is father/brother/alter ego. North himself is the demented hero and has for himself the moments of dancing which best suggest the violent force of madness.
A programme packed with dance invention was completed by May O'Donnell's vigorous work-out, Dance Energies, and Anna Sokolow's Scenes from the Music of Charles Ives in which Larrio Ekson introduced an even more sensuous narcissism than I can remember former interpreters of the central solo contriving.
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