Ba Ilet
Physical Invention
By CLIVE BARNES LIKE Gaul, Balanchine's Rotor& Fantasque is divided into three parts, and indeed there is some- thing Gallic about the whole ballet. With its -French music (Chabrier at his lushest) and chic, extrovert elegance, Bow,* Fantasque has a sleek Parisian gloss. The Russian-American Balanchine is generally, and justly, rated among the two or three finest choreographers in the world, and Bow,* Fantasque is typical of his better ballets without being among his best. It is as plotless as music, with the dancers suggesting emotion rather than narrative. The three movements are each written for a pair of soloists and a separate corps de ballet, the first movement being a classi- cal burlesque that is too soft for satire and too narrow for farce. The romantic middle move- ment is basically one of Balanchine's favourite pas de deux—a theme of lovers' meetings and partings upon which he has over the years made innumerable languorous variations. The evanes- cence of love, all traced out with the yearning arabesques, and final solitary walk, is given, as eve • with Balanchine, a self-conscious sadness and too lingering a glance at the rapturous pity of it all, that is only saved from being kitsch by the pure beauty of Balanchine's physical inven- 'ion. The idea here is as fundamentally trite as some lyric poems or a pop singer's wail, but the dances carry the distinction. The final movement is choreographic technique taken to the end of the line, a triumph of visual counterpoint. Circles and diagonals of dancers swirl across the stage in a royal tournament of buoyantly assertive movement.
There is something Gallic about the ballet, yes. But it is not for nothing that Balanchine is an American who was born, as Balanchavadze, in the Georgia that is thousands of miles from Alabama. The work was originally written for the athletic, spare bodies of Balanchine's own New York City Ballet, and the detailing is Byzantine in its intricacy. Now London's Festi- val Ballet have produced it—they were given the work by Balanchine, and it was rehearsed by one of the City Ballet's ballet mistresses, Una Kai— and although I am properly grateful, it has lost something in translation.
The first movement where Balanchine guys the conventions of his own classicism, needs dead- pan underplaying. When first given in London ten years ago (it hasn't been seen here for eight) it had Tanaquil LeClercq and Jerome Robbins and went like a delicately-fused bomb, all the more explosive for its gentle under-emphasis. Ronald Emblen for Festival Ballet has the right idea, but the antic hay (or old corn) produced by his partner Marilyn Burr is as much like Balan- chine's conception as Reveille is like the New Yorker. Belinda Wright and more particularly John Gilpin are fine in the second movement. However the company's Argentinian guest artist, Olga Ferri, in the finale seems to be a Balanchine dancer neither by nature nor by temperament, even though she tries hard and is respectably partnered by Vladimir Skouratoff.
The company, obviously appreciating the, for them, rare opportunity of appearing in a genuine ballet, danced gratifyingly well, even though the oblong Festival Hall stage cramps the ballet's finale to its considerable detriment. Pattern and design are here almost everything—imagine a square painting squashed into a rectangle and you will see what I mean. Despite this, Bourrde Fantasque is so far superior to nearly everything Festival Ballet currently produces that I am in no mood to argue. On the first night Anton Doha, in one of his celebrated curtain speeches, sup gested that Balanchine was going to give Festiv Ballet another work in the near future. TI nearer the better I would say.
As well as Baur,* Fantasque, London last week saw the Royal Ballet give John Crankee Sweeney Todd its first Covent Garden perforr • ance, as well as the over-publicised, under' dressed Ballets Africains starting a season at the Piccadilly Theatre. When Cranko's piece grise of Edwardiana was originally produced at Stratford- upon-Avon, I wrote unkindly of it at length. No to be brief, its virtues are almost entirely atmospheric and derive largely from Alix '5 wonderfully evocative street scene. The most surprising thing about Cranko's routinely pallid choreography is that he has not seen fit to reform it before showing the ballet in London.
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