Two Against Fate
IT isn't often that ballet can show itself in advance of the rest of the theatre as a mirror of contemporary real life; but with its newest new creation of this season the Festival Ballet Company shows that the English Stage Com- pany at the Royal Court Theatre has no monopoly of criers-out against Fate. Les Deux errants, with choreography by Wolf- gang Brunner, uses a familiar scenario ('. . . in their meeting, two lost souls find understanding together') which has done good service for two generations of ballet makers.
In this context what you say is less important than how you say it, and Mr. Brun- ner manages to get a toe-hold on the rungs of the choreographic ladder by giving some effective design to the dance movements, and some suggestion of human sensibility to his two principal dancers. The action consists of the meeting of the two lost souls, their alternate acceptance and rejection of each other, then their resolving of mutual differences and frustrations. The idiom used was—perhaps inevitably—classically academic, but relieved by some small inventions of gesture and rhythmic oddities in the dance imagery.
Fate, or Life, or perhaps just The Difficulty of Being Human, was represented by a grouP of dancers who, from time to time, detached themselves from the ddcor—of which they formed part, being dressed over-all in a black- and-white camouflage effect which they shared with the scenery—and encouraged or discour- aged the lovers' meetings. The rather spiritless score by Bill Russo did not prevent Belinda Wright and Michael Hogan dancing and acting this slight fable with full sincerity and technical smoothness.
The outstanding feature of the other programmes so far seen is the dancing of John Gilpin, which, all the time, blends technical perfection with absolutely faultless execution. Together with Belinda Wright he proves that no other regularly partnered pair of dancers in any company can show such a high consistency of effortless and thrilling dancing. When performing together they are more of the air than the earth, their turning and flying have something of the staccato thrill of the hovering of humming-birds. Every programme ought to show them in a pas de deux; which would thrill confirmed dance addicts and also reveal to more casual customers that the word 'magic' still has mean- ing in one form of contemporary Theatre.
A. V. COTON
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