BALLET
War dance
CLEMENT CRISP
A couple of years ago BBC television showed a film of a Brazilian folk dance ‘‘hich originated among the slaves imported by the Portuguese; under cover of the dance the slaves, who were forbidden to fight, were able to kill each other. I was suddenly re- minded of this murderous encounter while watching Kenneth MacMillan's new ballet, uiven its premiere in Stuttgart by John Cranko's company a fortnight ago. Strindberg's Miss Julie charts the war between the sexes and between social classes, and in making his version, MacMillan—as with The Invitation and Les Hermanas, and to a lesser extent with Romeo and Juliet —builds his dance structure on the themes of a literary work. Here it is the bat- tle to the death between the aristocratic Miss Julie and Jean, her father's valet, which MacMillan propounds in fierce, sensuous and very beautiful dancing.
The adaptation from Strindberg is free (in Introducing characters only mentioned in the Play: Julie's parents and her fiance, and in ,howing the villager's dance in the Count's barn), but entirely faithful in catching the ferocity of the relationship between Miss
Julie and Jean. The relative strengths of the two principals, and the social chasm that separates them, are studied in the first two of the ballet's three scenes. We see Jean in dalliance with his girl-friend, Kristin; we watch Miss Julie's complete domination of her fiancé, whom she whips like a horsewoman with an unworthy mount. Eventually amid the festivities of a Midsum- mer Eve dance where gentry and villagers can mingle, Miss Julie confronts Jean—though she has stalked him throughout the action, making constant comparisons between his virility and her fiances weakness. Jean, whose strength has hitherto been shown in a calculated disregard of Miss Julie's provocation. suddenly asserts himself in a tearing, bravura variation that is like a gauntlet flung at her feet, and when he leaves to return to the kitchen, she follows him.
The third scene is the crisis of the ballet, a duet of extraordinary emotional and choreographic complexity in which the balance of dominance constantly shifts between the two. Miss Julie dresses Jean in a frock-coat, forcing him to ape the gentleman; Jean removes it and starts to clean the Count's riding boots. Miss Julie then places her arms inside the boots and in a stunningly erotic sequence, rubs Jean's body with them; she has already swept the central kitchen table clear of bottles, making it plain that this is to serve both as bed and battleground, and in a pas de deux of im- passioned beauty, Jean rapes her on it. MacMillan here contrives the seemingly im- possible task of presenting their copulation in dancing of the most eloquent lyricism: the manner of The Invitation and the love scenes in Romeo and Juliet made richer, even more expressive. There follow Miss Julie's despair, anger, her feeling of degrada- tion and her fantasies of flight with Jean and Kristin; finally she takes Jean's razor and exits to her death while Jean sits down and starts to polish the riding boots again.
The total effect is amazing; the ballet lasts some 63 minutes; the structure, despite a couple of slight longueurs, is tight, precise; the score by Andrzej Panufnik gives sure dramatic support and the performances from Marcia Haydee and Frank Frey are superb. Haydee catches everything of the aristocratic bitch on heat, broken by Jean's strength, in dancing of extraordinary fire and technical radiance. Frey is that rarity, a dancer with a big style (whose roughness exactly suits
Jean's character) who is also a marvellously sensitive actor able to project the slightest nuances of feeling with unerring force. The power of these two artists, inspired by MacMillan's inventions, makes for un- forgettable dancing and unforgettable
theatre. Lucky Stuttgart.
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