Russian Ballet at Covent Garden
STAGE AND SCREEN The Ballet
Tun production last Friday (an Eton-and-Harrow-match evening) of an extremely inferior Spectre de la Rose brings to a head the question of the Fokine ballets presented by De Basil's company. These have been unsatisfactory right from the first season at the Alhambra : and since De Basil
settled at Covent Garden a definite weakness on the produc- tion side has become more apparent, one on which I feel bound to expatiate, favoured, as it is, by the patronage of those who (for the time being) go to Covent Garden ballet as a matter of course just as they go to opera. Whatever the benefits to ballet of such social prestige, there are also obvious dangers which, in the long run, might easily prove fatal : the end would come suddenly, without obvious warning. .
Take this Spectre de la Rose. It was not the fault of the dancers or of the orchestra, which was excellent. It was apparent that the dancers had not been fully instructed in the kind of feeling that belongs to this ballet. The girl even mimed her part with definite gestures that were in complete conflict with Fokine's conception. The choregraphy was sometimes equally and similarly at fault. The insult to the balletomane was a direct one, inasmuch as at a neighbouring theatre Fokine himself has this summer produced Spectre de la Rose. The question arises : would De Basil have chosen to offer us this Spectre de la Rose were he himself playing at the Alhambra ? And again, would he have been able to proceed so leisurely in the matter of new ballets ? Les Noces, pro- duced in America, was announced for the first week. It has not been given. And why do we not see Jeux d'Enfants with its beautiful dicor by Miro, the one fine and " modern " setting that De Basil has given us ? This ballet was a great success in De Basil's first season at the Alhambra. At Covent Garden it has not been given more than half a dozen times or so. For the moment De Basil appears to reason thus : they turn up to see Boutique endlessly ; for me it is more economic and why risk this popularity ? But he does risk it.
As for those of the Fokine ballets that are given also by other companies, two alternatives will finally present themselves if the critics know their jobs. De Basil must either obtain Fokine himself to put them on afresh or he must discard one or two of the most characteristic. In the latter case De Basil would be compelled to forgo some part of his undoubted leadership in the world of ballet and that, I believe (for such is my faith in him and in the company he has built .up, an incomparable organisation with Massine at its head, and in the miracles he has wrought for ballet), would be a catastrophe. He has taken up the mantle of Diaghilev : where De Basil falls, ballet falls with him.
Since we are offered a diversity of ballets it needs to be explained why we should clamour for a new ballet (not of a mere divertissement type) as for something essential to our pleasure. I believe that ballets run on in the back of the mind just as tunes run on, sometimes in the front of the mind. These become stale unless they are qualified by the introduction of a new refrain setting up a new relation. This is true also for the dancers. Just as classical ballet gives point to modern ballets and vice versa, so every new ballet refreshes the old ballets. Now, since last year, nothing new has been running on in the mind except Cent Baisers (I do not include Jardin publique because the music is in- tractable). And, for me, Cent Raisers is almost a torture. For me to watch Baronova and the rest tearing round the stage on their points over a period that seems endless and for the minimum of effect, is to experience a discomfort that gives me an idea of what a lover of horses would feel if, for the pleasure of some soft indifferent. Nero, his thoroughbreds were galloped on a harsh and gritty road. Well, we must await Massine's new work to the Berlioz symphony. Mean- while my own pleasure, at any rate, is .lessened, especially since, as in previous years, more was promised before the season opened than has been performed.
.ADRIAN STOKES,
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