BALLET
WHEN Paula Hinton and Walter Gore packed their trunks and sailed to Australia, the world of ballet regretfully said " au revoir " to two of its most lively personalities. But their absence has proved simply a matter of months, and on Sunday night, at the opening of Ballet Workshop's autumn season, they, together with Michel de Lutry, presented Gore's new work Peepshow.
One of the outstanding characteristics of contemporary art is its general air of gloom and despondency. Mostly the wretched and sordid are interesting and worthy of perpetuation ; mostly it is the psychologically twisted who claim the attention of brush or pen. All else is escapism. Well, if Peepshow is escapism, how gladly Sunday night's audience welcomed it ; how thankful they were to escape for a while from the intellectual smartness of despair. The curtain of Peepshow rises on a twentieth-century version of a canvas by Degas—or rather it only half rises, for just the legs of the three dancers are visible, find they perform most wittily to the music of Jean Francaix. As the theme develops, the other parts of the body are brought into view, but there is little dancing in the ordinary sense of the word,_for each dancer remains throughout within the limits of his or her individual peephole. It is even misleading to talk of Peepshow as a ballet ; it is a gay and complete little vignette, admirably suited to the tiny stage of the Mercury, beautifully rounded as are all the works of Walter Gore, and executed with much style and humour by the choreographer and his two partners.
LILLIAN BROWSE.
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