The Year's Dancing
THE year 1957 has been about as full of activity in the dance field as any other postwar 'year; plenty of foreign dance companies—but no leading foreign ballet company— have paid visits, and the four lead- ing English companies have covered tens of thousands of miles and danced some hundreds of performances on strange stages since January 1. The two former Sadler's Wells companies, the London Festival Ballet, the Ballet Rambert, all went touring at different times of the year—to North and Western Europe, to Middle Europe, to China, to America. On the surface these were flag-showing occasions (and certainly Festival Ballet in Europe and Bal- let Rambert in China displayed to new audiences the fact that English ballet has something worth occasional export), but they were also hard- Planned business affairs intended to reap both sterling and dollars. Without a doubt these far- thing tours have helped to keep those companies which are starved of subsidy active and intact in a period when the home touring market turns week by week into a more desperate gamble. Including absolutely new ballets premiered, London showings of ballets already seen else- SON where, revivals from some time past, and reconstructions (on the same themes and music) of ballets first made long ago, five leading English ballet companies will, by December 31, have averaged three new productions each for the year; a sufficient commentary on both general shortage of funds and shortage of worth-while ideas on which a management can take a risk of pleasing the public.
The new and 'newish' works of this list ranged from the Covent Garden novelty The Prince of the Pagodas, by way of Festival Ballet's revival of a full-length Nutcracker, to Western Theatre Ballet's The Prisoners (three characters and twenty minutes) and Ballet Rambert's Conte Fantastique. No new and obviously potentially top-class choreography, music, decor, staging or theme was revealed among any of these works. At present the art of ballet is stuck in a morass of indecisions; some want, and some equally vehemently don't want, a continuous reviving of nineteenth-century classical ballets, or an expansion of the 'human situation' themes of a Tudor or a Howard, or a development of the abstraction-to-music treat- ment of Ashton and Balanchine. This sense of an uncertain future is bound up with the open and the concealed rivalries between companies (mostly hanging on the question of: who gets all the Arts Council money, and why?), but it also partly derives from the unnecessary conflict between the claims of ballet to be, at one and the same time, an Art and an Entertainment. The artistic worth of the year's effort can fairly be .outlined in a summary of what was noticed with rapt attention throughout approximately 200 performances seen. Congratulations: To Ballet Rambert for carry- ing on at all and maintaining the most original repertoire among the world's ballet companies : to Western Theatre Ballet for starting operations, and showing three fresh ballets : to Beryl Grey for her courage in leaving the security of Covent Garden and going freelance pioneering in Latin America, South Africa and Russia. Interesting novelties: Benjamin Britten's score for The Prince of the Pagodas: the Jose Limon Company in Moor's Pavane and Concertino: Meriel Evans's first (and brilliant) choreography for an item for the City Ballet Company.
Performances of top quality: Margot Fonteyn and Svetlana Beriosova in almost everything this year: Violette Verdy in Rambert's Giselle and Coppelia: Lucette Aldous (with Ballet Rambert) in everything. No progress visible: In devising fresh ideas for decor for any company : in techniques for filming ballet of any kind. Sensations of the year: Two ballerinas leaving Covent Garden (Beryl Grey and Elaine Fifield): Peter Darrell:s masterly choreography, in a post- Tudor style, for The Prisoners. Prospect: The trend to revive more old-style three-act ballets and to create new full-length ores is developing—guided by nothing more posi- tive than a general feeling that what 'brought 'em in and made money' years ago might be made to work again. Covent Garden did one early in the year (as did the Russians in Leningrad). Festival Ballet banks on making a successful Christmas and New Year season out of the freshly choreo- graphed, three-act, uncut-Tchaikovsky-scored Nutcracker—which might really set the trend moving towards becoming an active policy for all major companies.
A. V. COTON
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