Dance
United We Dance Festival (San Francisco 9-14 May)
International spin
Jann Parry
No need for headphones and inter- preters at San Francisco's United We Dance Festival celebrating the signing of the United Nations Charter in the city 50 years ago. One hundred and fifty dancers from 13 different companies all spoke ballet, although backstage notices were helpfully translated into nine languages. The Festival was hosted by the San Francisco Ballet, whose modern headquar- ters, which also house the company's school, includes 11 dance studios. Daily class took place in the three largest studios, where dancers from China, Russia and Venezuela rubbed shoulders with those from Europe, Japan and Australia. The only company not to share the morning rit- ual was the National Ballet of Cuba, who took class behind closed doors.
This was probably to protect ageing dancers from callous young eyes: Alicia Alonso, the company's founder-ballerina, is at least 73, and a number of her female col- leagues must be well into their fifties, if not more. The festival was the first time the company had been able to visit the United States since 1979, and the veterans were determined to come along. Alberto Mendez's ballet for them, In the Middle of the Sunset, was a Norma Desmond fantasy from Sunset Boulevard, with Alonso, the old, blind star (still, terrifyingly, on pointe) worshipped by her acolytes — and, she must assume, her public. Since the ballet, set in colonial times, was presented without irony, it gave a bizarre picture of a time- warped Cuba.
Helgi Tomasson, artistic director of the festival, and of the San Francisco Ballet, had asked each invited company to bring a new work, preferably by a resident chore- ographer, with music and designs by national artists. Although not every troupe was able to comply, the results highlighted, even exaggerated, national characteristics. The most revealing dancing, however, was not on stage, in the stylised ballet-based language used by choreographers, but at the back-stage parties after the shows, when the dancers let their hair down to popular music from their own countries or to the lingua franca of rock.
The only choreographer to address the United Nations theme directly was Britain's representative, Christopher Bruce, artistic director of Rambert Dance Company. Rambert is no longer a ballet company — hasn't been since the mid-Six- ties — which was one reason its contribu- tion, Bruce's Meeting Point (to Michael Nyman's saxophone concerto Where the Bee Dances) stood out from the others. However, the principal reason for the piece's success as the hit of the festival was the sophistication of its means: a rich vocabulary of steps, drawn from baroque and folk dance, as well as ballet and con- temporary dance; exhilarating music (played by Gerard McChrystal on saxo- phone); elegant designs (by Marian Bruce); and above all, the wit of its choreography and its dozen dancers.
Although Bruce quotes from Kurt Jooss's anti-war ballet, The Green Table (1932), Rambert's formally-dressed diplo- mats, unlike Jooss's, are concerned with harmony rather than cynical profiteering. Fists brandished in anger become hand- holds for flying lifts; the airy flourish of a cigarette develops into a courtly bow. The ritual is an urbane one, very different from the faux-primitif rites invented by other companies (the Australian Ballet, the Tokyo Festival Ballet). Meeting Point, which enters Rambert's repertoire at the end of June, is a mature work, its heart not on its sleeve but embedded in the fabric of the dance.
The only piece to match it was Mark Morris's Pacific, for the San Francisco Bal- let. Set to sections from Lou Harrison's Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano, the ballet, which draws on Indian classical and folk dance as well as Western forms, could be seen as a prayer for peace. Three colour- coded ensembles, blue, red and green, finally unite in a leaping, whirling finale, arms flung heavenwards. San Francisco Ballet's women don't have the earthiness that Morris's movement requires; the men were more formidable, bare-chested with voluminous skirts billow- ing about their pounding legs.
Most of the other contributions were `abstract' stylistic exercises, either gutsy (the Dutch National Ballet, Aterballetto from Italy, Ballet British Columbia) or sleek (the Royal Danish Ballet, the Nation- al Ballet of Caracas, Leipzig Ballet). Uwe Scholz, West German director of the Leipzig Ballet, choreographed two high- minded pieces about man's inhumanity to man. Without programme notes, it would have been impossible to tell that his Pax Questuosa, an acrobatic trio seemingly designed for former East Germany's Olympic gymnasts, was a 'choreographic statement reflecting on the German mad- ness of World War II'.
Scholz's choreography was an extreme example of a predilection for manipulating dancers into shapes and groups without any interest in steps to link the poses. Subject matter tended to be generalised: only the Russians (the Bolshoi) and Chinese (the Shanghai Ballet) were concerned with spe- cific narrative. Yang Yang Lin, Shanghai's director and choreographer, presented a new ballet, Peach Blossom Pond, that would have satisfied Mme Mao, telling as it does the story of a pure maiden killed for rejecting the advances of a villainous clan chief.
Maybe this is representative of modern ballet in China, just as Fokine's works for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, now so dated, must once have seemed revolutionary. More likely, the Shanghai Ballet, which does not appear to have changed much since the 1960s, is the only company in China with enough clout to get foreign sponsorship for its trip to San Francisco. Six young dancers from the Bolshoi (spon- sored by a dance wear manufacturer) man- aged to make it, in spite of recent upheavals in the Bolshoi management which threatened their participation.
Sergei Bobrov, a former choreographic pupil of the ousted director, Yuri Grig- orovich, had to have his new ballet, The Infanta and the Jester, approved by the new team, Vyacheslav Gordeyev (artistic direc- tor of the Bolshoi Ballet) and Vladimir Vassiliev (general director of the Bolshoi Theatre) just before he was due to leave for America. Although Bobrov is obviously influenced by Grigorovich — and Mart he has a distinctive talent and an ability to use difficult modern music, Schnittke's `Concerto Grosso No 1'. The Infanta and the Jester may not suit western tastes (at least, not those of us who abhor jesters and cute female dancers) but it is deeply felt and very Russian. The festival proved that strong national dialects of ballet still pre- vail; bland, 'international' choreography, such as Helgi Tomasson's for the San Fran- cisco Ballet, has not yet taken over the world.
Jann Pany is Dance Critic for the Observer
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