Ballet
Swans' Way
By CLIVE BARNES AMONG the intriguing differ- ences between the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden and its touring brother is that at Covent Garden they have Le Lac des Cygnes, while in the provinces they just have _ eer Swan Lake. The explanation is quite obvious, for it is a widely known fact that common people outside the great metropolis don't speak Frog, but a truly bewildering distinc- tion is that made on the programmes between the 'artists of the Royal Ballet' at Covent Garden, and the 'artistes' on tour.
Last week and the week before 1 was able to see some performances of Lac des Swans, danced both by the artists at Covent Garden and the artistes at the Granada, Sutton. Covent Garden is by far the nicer theatre, but then its prices are higher. So far as production goes the result was a draw. The version of Swan Lake given to the gawping Sutton yokels is (can democracy be carried further?) virtually identical with Le Lac des Cygnes presented to us sophisti- cates at Covent Garden. That is to say it is un- musical and dramatically nonsensical.
The most significant of the performances was, by necessity, Margot Fonteyn's return as Odette/ Odile at Covent Garden last Tuesday, after a lapse of nearly two years. In ballet there is a tacit agreement that one should not speak, or it speak not write, unfavourably of a great artist, particularly if that great artist has reached the age of indiscretion. There were moments in Fonteyn's performance in which she surpassed everything she has previously achieved in the ballet: for example her entry in the last act, her face drawn with suffering, had a new truth and poignancy. Elsewhere in the ballet, par- ticularly as Odile, her technique in my opinion was simply not strong enough to carry the role. The audience roared; and since almost all my colleagues have sincerely raved s'aout it, 1 am perhaps carping. But despite the admitted gains, I must choose to remember Fonteyn's great Odette/Odile as it was. There are many roles in which she continues to reign unquestioned; and if there is even a measure of half .truth in the few dissenting voices amid the praise, I hope that she will in future concentrate on the ballets that still show her magnificence unimpaired. While Fonteyn disappointed, Beryl Grey sur- prised. When she last appeared at Covent Garden nearly two years ago, the home-spun simplicity was overlaid with mannerisms which she seemed to affect like dangling pieces of costume jewellery. Freelance ballerinas, un- moored from company discipline, are the natural prey of such illusions of grandeur, and it is con- sequently the more surprising that she appears not only to have lost nearly all her former affec- tations but also to have acquired a more deeply felt eloquence in her dancing. Still a more imperial Odette than seductive Odile, Grey's interpretation only just fell short (often in moments of triumphal archness) of total con- viction and greatness. It was distinctive and sat- isfying, as, at a lower level, was Shirley Grahame's performance at Sutton. Grahame, virtually a newcomer to the role, gave it with a delicate shade of pathos. Her dancing could have been stronger and more authoritative, but she has a promise well worth nurturing.
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