Thorpe `too close' to MacMillan
Jann Parry
KENNETH MACMILLAN: THE MAN AND THE BALLETS by Edward Thorpe
Hamish Hamilton, f14.95
There is no shortage of choreographers in the world: only of good choreographers. The pantheon of truly great ballet creators is amazingly small: Petipa and Ivanov in the 19th century, Balanchine and Ashton in this. The ranking of the rest is largely a matter of taste, with much depending on whether you like your ballets long or short, `pure' dance or with a story to tell.
It is too soon to assess where Kenneth MacMillan will eventually belong in the international hierarchy. He is still in his mid-fifties, with some 60 ballets behind him. He now holds two major positions: he was appointed associated director of American Ballet Theatre last year and he remains chief choreographer of the Royal Ballet. His biographer, Edward Thorpe, claims that he is at the height of his powers. But his more recent creations for the Royal Ballet have not been unqualified successes (Isadora, Valley of Shadows and Different Drummer) and so far he has only revived existing works for American Ballet Theatre.
It has been a long time since MacMillan actually fulfilled the nominal terms of his contract with the Royal Ballet. He is supposed to produce a full-length ballet for Covent Garden every two years and a new one-act work each year for both com- panies. (Full-length is a misnomer, for who can define how long a ballet should be? Ashton's two-act ballets can be as 'full' as MacMillan's three-act blockbusters.) In recent years, MacMillan has shown an increasing interest in directing stage plays and in recording his ballets for television. His future career may lie in directions other than making dances. As a choreographer, he is likely to be increasingly influenced by American trends in music, films and books. MacMil- lan has always been susceptible to the mood of the moment. It comes as no surprise to learn that he is thinking of making a ballet for ABT to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem, which was given its premiere in America. He has already made liturgical ballets to Faure's Requiem and to Poulenc's Gloria from the Catholic Mass, both of which have gone down a treat with audiences, if not with critics. MacMillan's great strength, as well as his weakness, is his refusal to recognise that there may be subjects ballet cannot cope with: revolution and war, for example; rape, incest and childbirth. All these, and more, have featured in his work. Thorpe claims that MacMillan has demonstrated that 'ballet can illumine with poignancy and subtlety the private and public prob- lems of our time.' He goes further when discussing Valley of Shadows, based on Georgio Bassani's novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, to which MacMillan has added three scenes set in a concentration camp: 'To portray the greatest horror of our century in terms of classical ballet was typical of Kenneth's conviction that the medium can be made to reflect the most serious of subjects.'
The theory is praiseworthy but MacMil- lan's execution of its leaves much to be desired. One scene in a concentration camp might conceivably work: three, with- in the space of a comparatively short ballet, become theatrically ineffective and MacMillan's stylised choreography is more suitable for the inmates of a balletic lunatic asylum than a death camp. His ballets cry out for an editor or director who could prune the parts that clearly do not work. The Royal Opera House appears to have no such figure. Most of MacMillan's long ballets have had to be cut after their premiers, for practical reasons of avoiding overtime, according to Thorpe, rather than for the aesthetic ones urged by critics.
The problem is that MacMillan's true gift seems to lie in creating intimate, hot-house works revolving around a series of central pas de deux; yet he has been required to make three-act ballets using the full resources of a large company of dancers. Dame Ninette de Valois, the founder of the Royal Ballet, predicts in her foreword to this book that his duets for the leading characters in his ballets may outlast the ensemble padding that surrounded them. She draws an analogy with the 19th-century ballets which survive only in fragments — a pas de deux from Le Corsaire, a set of divertissements from Paquita.
Dame Ninette's brief contribution is the most thought-provoking part of the book, which otherwise gives little assessment of MacMillan or his ballets. Thorpe is too close to his subject to be either revealing or dispassionate. The dance critic of the Standard, he is a friend of the MacMillan family; his wife, Gillian Freeman, wrote the scenarios for two of MacMillan's bal- lets, Mayerling and Isadora. The occasion- al intimacies are merely tantalising: we learn how MacMillan met his future wife, Deborah Williams, where the MacMillans go on holiday, and what the family pets are called. But there are no descriptions of the choreographer's relations with de Valois, Ashton or any of the dancers.
Lynn Seymour, who created many roles in his ballets and who was once a close friend, gives a far more interesting account of him in her book, Lynn. She is gossipy, prejudiced and possibly wrong-headed ab- out him, but at least she makes him come alive as a person and a creator, which is more than Thorpe does. He is discreet to the point of prudishness, backing away at key points with such irritating evasions as `for some unaccountable reason', or 'has never been definitely explained'. Why, for example, did MacMillan allow Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, who cre- ated the roles of Juliet and Romeo, to be downgraded to fifth cast when his ballet was first given? 'Kenneth was deeply dis- tressed. . . but could do little about cast- ing' is the unsatisfactory explanation.
If there are few insights into the man, there is correspondingly little analysis of the ballets. Thorpe gives bare outlines of the action and tells how the music and designs were chosen. He puts himself in the untenable position of appearing not to make judgments although he is a profes- sional critic. While he refrains from quot- ing from his own reviews, he still indicates clearly his approval or disapproval of the reviews he cites by his fellow critics.
The book's main value is as a chronicle of MacMillan's career to date. It provides the first comprehensive list of his creations and productions, in this country and else- where; but it tells you little more about the man than you would read in a Covent Garden programme. In fact, you would be better informed and entertained by spend- ing the price of this book on a ticket for one of his ballets.
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