BALLET
IN a programme which began unpromisingly with Street Games—charmingly devised but too trivial to be worthy of its choreographer —and Tancredi and Clorinda, which loses some of its impact in the larger theatre and still seems restricted by the accompanying narrative, Walter Gore presented a highly interesting new work, Cyclasm. This is a ballet which obviously confounded many in the audience ,because they were trying over-hard to read its author's meaning. Cyclasm is essentially contemporary in its conception, a choreographic equivalent of the pictures of Paul Klee. In other words it is non-representational as far as it relates to the world of the conscious, but it evokes sensations of a dream world experienced in those seconds of complete relaxation as one is about to lose oneself in sleep. For the strange bird-creatures who people this other planet, Gore has invented most original movements: wing-like fluttering of the arms coupled with a shuffling progress of the feet. They are dressed in weird and telling costumes designed by Leonard Rosoman on a stage which is bare except for its back-cloth. But lying on the ground, their multi-coloured legs raised with curious effect, the dancers sometimes form their own decor, as Paula Hinton, with her beautiful leaps, flashes through and around them. Into this assembly are introduced two red- clad figures who seem to be regarded with suspicion and even with hostility. They, like whole creation, must be taken as one chooses. Cyclasm's ability to stimulate rests upon the imaginative freedom it allows each individual member of the audience. LILLIAN BROWSE.
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