BALLET
The Festival Ballet. (Stoll Theatre.)—Ballet Workshop. (Mercury Theatre.) MARKOVA will be greatly missed by the Festival Ballet audiences, and many people will be asking themselves how the company will fare without this exquisite lyrical dancer, whose partnership with Dolin was of such long standing. In the circumstances, therefore, it is all the nicer to be able to note an all-round improvement in standard since the Ballet last appeared in London. Anton Dolin is to be congratulated on the steadiness with which he is moulding his company and giving opportunities to young dancers to take positions of responsibility.
Choreographically the opening programme was undistinguished, and Scheherazade's revival merely reaffirmed the fact that we have grown far away from this type of ballet. Lichine's Symphonic Impressions does not improve upon acquaintance, and, in any case, it is not a good curtain-raiser. Swan Lake and. the Don Quixote pas de deux must necessarily depend for interest upon their per- formers, and Tamara Toumanova, who danced them both, is too showy a ballerina for this role. But how good the men are in this company. There is the exemplary partner Dolin, whose knowledge and gracious attentiveness to his danseuse is a pleasure to behold. Then there are John Gilpin, brilliant and sure, and only needing to develop his stage personality to rank high among the dancers of today; Oleg Briansky, slim and tall with precise footwork of the Eglevsky standard, splendid elevation, and beautifully cut entrechats and, finally, Vassilie Trunoff, whose interpretation of Zobeide's favourite augurs well for his performance in Prince Igor.
Natalie Krassovska only danced Symphonic Impressions—in which she inevitably suffered from our remembrances of Markova, her Black Swan being replaced by the Harlequinade pas de deux of Belinda Wright and John Gilpin. Announcing this last-minute change of programme, Dolin introduced Miss Wright as the "new British star," and certainly this attractive young "soubrette " gave a delightful performance, sparkling, assured and technically first-rate. Such an unexpected pleasure brought warm applause from a house which up to then had been rather grudging of its praise. * Ballet Workshop's new programme includes Michael Charnley's excellent No Lips of- Comfort, with June Leighton fitting into her role much more harmoniously than she did last autumn. Michael Holmes' new ballet, Palisade,is a thoughtful piece of work on a some- what outworn theme ; it would be improved by considerable pruning. Michel de Lutry as the Prisoner carries the ballet's weight on his capable shoulders. That he is not able to sustain the drama is, I suspect, as much the choreographer's fault as his own. For Tres Pegspas, by Jack Carter, is a slick pastiche danced by two girls and a man, among whom Angela Bayley was outstanding.
LILLIAN BROWSE.
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