Dance
Which way?
Julie Kavanagh
Classical ballet, especially neo-classical
ballet, can be a cold, undemocratic genre, making a mockery of any dancer Who falls short of its physical and technical Ideals. Sleek, lily-stem legs, pure lines, musical exactness, are requirements that by Precluding most, guarantee the exclusivity of the form. A modern dancer in a classical role will always be revealed as such, Whereas it is not so inevitable the other way round. (As the four — admittedly extra ex- trovert — Royal Ballet dancers demonstra- ted when they moonlighted as The Arlene Phillips Dancers at the BAFTA award cere- mony, Stephen Beagley, Gail Taphouse, Sharon McGorian and Douglas Howes.) Classical dancers told to do a second port de bras will automatically take their arms through first position to get there — as they have always been drilled to do — modern dancers will move more naturally, lifting their arms from their sides like birds' wings.
Details as small as this compounded the evident incompatibility between the Ballet Rambert and the rigidly academic work their resident choreographer, Richard Alston, has just made for them: Chicago Brass. A dancer like Diane Walker — marvellously fluent in every other work she performed this season — moved as stiffly as a railway semaphore here, nonplussed like the rest of the cast by the technical precision and production-line uniformity that the ballet demands. The fact that the girls wore flat shoes when the steps cried out for points seemed an added betrayal of their limitations rather than a deliberate design. So haphazard was the Rambert's execution of steps and response to tempo (increased by the Mercury Ensemble's lurching treat- ment of Hindemith's fine score — Konzert- musik Op. 49, written for the brass players of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) that on first viewing, two critics presumed the randomness to be intentional: a modernist's subversion of balletic symmetry. Not an unreasonable thought, but Alston has told me that watching the London premiere, his knuckles were as white as everyone else's.
Dubbed as the choreographer who 'brings out the ballet in Ballet Rambert', Alston seems to have taken upon himself the duties of the young Ashton to reaffirm the primacy of classical dance. Under Alston's influence, the Rambert now do classical classes only (Lynn Seymour is cur- rently a guest teacher) whereas before, two of their five weekly classes were modern. However, the question Chicago Brass leads one to ask is whether this direction is Ballet Rambert's or Alston's own. When he said in a recent interview that modern dance was 'finished', he was largely speaking for himself: he no longer sees himself as a leader of contemporary styles but is drawn more and more to classical methods. One feels that Chicago Brass was made as a per- sonal exercise without regard for the capabilities of the company that created it. That Alston may be growing away from Rambert Seems almost too neatly confirmed by the news that he has begun to select dancers from the Royal Ballet for his first work for them, to be premiered in the autumn. Will he — again following Ashton — defect permanently to 'the other side'? There is much that Alston and the Royal Ballet can learn from each other, and even if this turns out to be an isolated venture, it will be fascinating to see the result of a less extreme collision of styles. In Apollo Distraught we again see Alston working out a personal classicism, using the antique subject as a metaphor for the debate. References to Balanchine's Apollo abound. This time, neo-classical style is fus- ed — very successfully — with free-flowing contemporary movement. Alston's Apollo is a woman, Perhaps because she represents Isadora Duncan or Martha Graham, the matriarchs of modern dance. Other works shown this season provided interesting ex- tensions of the classical/modern theme: Paul Taylor's Airs combined an unschool- ed, almost primal, rhythmic drive with some loosely balletic movements; Merce Cunningham's Fielding Sixes incorporated motifs from Irish jigs and utilised elements from the Bournonville training the Rambert have recently been given, namely the straight carriage and exaggerated curves of the arms. Duncan was represented in Ashton's Five Brczhms Waltzes in the man- ner of Isadora Duncan (now re-christened Bronze Horses following an Evening Stan- dard stenographer's wonderful blunder). Earthy Lucy Burge, coached by Lynn Seymour, was altogether splendid in the role. Preceding this was Nijinsky's L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune, which in its time 'quite shocked' even the progressive Marie Rambert, restaged and danced still haun- tingly by Christopher Bruce.
Providing a complete contrast, but also in a polemical vein, was Ashton's Capriol Suite. Inspired by Arbeau's classical dialogue on dance, Ashton, in his first in- dependent venture as a choreographer, ar- ranged a series of 16th-century English dances to music by Peter Warlock. The dances illustrate the favourite Elizabethan court country dialectic and are delightfully embellished with several now familiar Fred Steps. With Christopher Bruce's two works, Ghost Dances and Requiem confir- ming the Rambert's theatrical strength, we were shown the kind of versatility Marie Rambert aspired to when in her autobiography, Quicksilver, she hoped that dance would eventually become as multi- faceted as music. This season — dedicated to her memory — tellingly defined the capabilities of her company and perhaps also called into question just how versatile their versatility should be.
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