B allet A fter Cranko KA ' i ehael Church

When the master dies, much is revealed through the behaviour of the dikiples. Will

113,ved„t,-uP forces, hidden animosities erupt ? the corporate enterprise gradually fruitfulgri d t halt ? Or will the death mark a

beginning? The Stuttgart Ballet, beginning? The Stuttgart Ballet,

are.lust finishing a fortnight's season at the Coliseum,

are a splendid exemplification

of this third alternative. John Cranko's sudTed,deuth three years ago, followed by Glen left ri etleY's interregnum as artistic director, has the Brazilian dancer Marcia Haydee now e d °I1Iniand of a company who are devot; —3' c°Minuing to fashion themselves in the Mage their creator made for them. tu W,hen, tiny against the backdrop of a huge nutlet's disc, Hayclee teeters forward on P°int in

leY's the silent first few moments of Tet

vvk oguntaries, one senses the majesty of a "at is to come. The piece was conceived as sovalediction to Cranko : set to Poulenc's p aring Concerto for Organ, Strings and anercussion, it expresses loss, gratitude, and not unbounded confidence. Restrained but the t understated, the choreography allows dtie,dancers some discreet virtuosity—Hay s daring spin through the air into Cra

gun's arms, girls being shuffled over men's backs somewhat in the way that crack drill platoons used to manipulate their rifles—but this is essentially a work more concerned with stillness than with movement. At times the dancers' upswept limbs reminded me of da Vinci's designs for those flying machines which would never fly ; Cragun's attitudes, against Rouben Ter-Arutunian's chilly, cerebral designs, recalled the same painter's ubiquitous drawing of the Vitruvian man.

Cranko's own Romeo and Juliet, with which the company opened the season, should have come as an absolute revelation to Londoners used to the MacMillan version. The full-scale story ballet is a genre I have learnt to dread : choreographers almost invariably try to cram in too many characters, too much ostentatiously researched historical detail, and rely too heavily on the explicitly communicative power of le langage des gestes. Triumphantly avoiding these pitfalls, Cranko's version is a miracle of clarity in which all's to one thing wrought—the central drama.

To begin at the periphery, this is a ballet designed with an absolutely sure touch. There is nothing finicky about Jurgen Rose's sets: each scene change makes its point with vivid simplicity. Spring tints for the airy, insubstantial garden in which Juliet receives her ball dress; solid-looking grey stone and heavy crimson fabrics for the following scene, in which Romeo and his friends sneak in to the ball; then, inside, three Montagues in red cleave the stately turning ranks of guests in gold and black, while Juliet appears, diaphanous in white and saffron. Her balcony is in this production a novel conception. Using the same raised platform, running across the back of the stage, which gives such flexibility to the street scenes, the designer has Juliet emerge, like some rare wild animal, from a velvet curtained canopy half-way along this platform. Overhead there is the merest suggestion of leaves, like those in an Indian miniature, picked out against the blue night. Friar Laurence, on the other hand, dwells like a contented St Francis in a charming Rousseauesque jungle.

The peripheral choreography is shaped with corresponding precision. It is no mean achievement to have a stage full of realistically brawling people, the air thick with oranges, and to start and stop the whole thing as smoothly as is done in this production. The economical way in which Cranko's dancers move in the ballroom scene puts one in mind of Busby Berkeley : blocks and rows of movement which sometimes, as when the bewildered multitude is lured hither and thither by the beckoning Montagues, recall slowmotion film. And, bent broadswords apart, I have seldom seen such convincing fights, all lifelike thrusts and Latin fury. Tybalt (Marcis Lesins) was as dreadful in his death as Mercutio (Barry Ingham) was affecting in his. There was some enjoyable business involving the nurse but here again enough was seen to be enough and we were spared any Dame Edith Evans-type inflation of this minor role.

All this means, of course, that important moments can be highlighted with maximum effect. The extraordinary lift in Juliet's scene at the chapel is a case in point : suddenly she is off the ground and seemingly stuck onto the friar like an angel in a mediaeval icon, while he edges two-dimensionally across the stage with his hands out, as though revealing the stigmata. Though already powerfully evoked by Prokofiev's score, the gothic horror of the bridesmaids' dance round Juliet's sleeping form is increased through its controlled succinctness.

I did not see Haydoe and Cragun dance the leading roles, but I doubt very much if they could have brought to them the joint rapture evinced by Birgit Keil and Vladimir Klos. As Shakespeare said of a different pair of lovers, they changed eyes, and it seemed as though an invisible thread ran through the ballroom, constantly drawing them together; Keil's demeanour alternated between distraction and tender absorption as she switched from one partner to another. Seemingly discovering the extent of his love even as he declared it, Klos danced the balcony scene with manly grace (and great musicality); in their last duet, with its moving succession of spreadeagled lifts, they were like tired love birds dancing in crossed stars. From the final setting—sinister moon, candles, black-cowled cortege, eerie light— this pair created a marvellously poised scene of grief, violence and despair.

Of one of the other two works presented before this article went to press, the less said the better. Created for Fonteyn and now danced by Haydee, Poeme de l'Extase has wonderful Klimt-inspired designs and a wonderfully silly plot. It concerns a famous diva who humiliates a young admirer by flaunting her past loves, but it seems to me that she must have had a pretty funny past lite with the collective castrated butterfly which now revisits her. The best choreography is for the colossal silk curtain which comes billowing down.

Initials RBME, Cranko's own tribute to four of the dancers he had most lovingly nurtured, is an uneven work with moments of rare beauty. Against the background of Roland Keller's exhilarating performance of Brahms's second piano concerto we were presented with Cragun's masculine assur ance, Keil's serene elegance, Haydee's precision and authority and, since Egon Mad sen was injured, Carl Morrow's sunny vig our—not to mention a first-rate supporting corps. I shall not easily forget the exquisitely prolonged sequence in which Hayclee, borne and kept aloft by Heinz Clauss, slowly unfurled in airborne convolutions, more as if floating than in defiance of gravity.