Ballet
The Grand Canyon
By CLIVE BARNES
According to the critical canons laid down before the war (I am not sure which war) The Two Pigeons might be thought pretty tawdry stuff. It is a complete re-working of a nine- teenth-century ballet with music by Messager that could at best be called thinly tuneful. The story is slight, conveying nothing more than motto-messages such as 'True love never did run smooth' and 'Home is best'—admirable senti- ments both, though not the most original. Two young lovers are living la vie boheme in a Paris attic and the nineteenth century, surrounded by pigeons and a corps de ballet. The boy runs after a gipsy girl and is beaten up for his pains. He returns to his first love, sadder and wiser.
Judged as a play without words, The Two Pigeons can be called nonsense. But judged as a ballet, from my side of the canyon it looks like SPECTATOR, OCTOBER 26, 1962 a masterpiece. The gipsies, all flashing eyes and flouncing dances, are nothing but fantasy and like the corps de ballet they are used purely as decoration. The ballet only has two real characters, the young lovers, but these are de- picted with infinite care and compassion. It is very difficult for ballet to reach out and touch life; it does it best when, like a Zen archer, it is not aiming. Here at the heart of this poetic fantasy are two recognisable modern lovers—their games, their petulance, their sYin- pathy, their off-hand ecstasy. And as so often with first love, there are gipsies round the corner.
Ashton's theme, in both its real and fantasy elements, has given rise to finely wrought choreography which, not unexpectedly, reaches its height in the dances for the lovers. Here Ashton evokes a mood of playful sensuality with choreography completely satisfying on its own visual terms. The ballet was mounted eighteen Months ago by the Royal Ballet's touring com- pany, and has now been newly produced, and slightly revised, for the resident Covent Garden troupe. Lynn. Seymour, the original ballerina, is still available to play the young girl, and gives a performance that opens out like a rose- bud. Her lover is now Alexander Grant, who acts with more subtlety than his predecessor, Christopher Gable, but at present lacks some- thing in ardour and still has to find the full measure of the dancing. The gipsies are led dashingly by Georgina Parkinson and Robert Mead, and the whole company, a little stiff at the first performance, were by the second alreadY relaxing into the ballet's mood. It is a work to be seen, but not to be watched with literal eyes. Ballets do not tell stories like plays or novels' They have their own methods.
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