The summer bunch ARTS
CLEMENT CRISP
All unwittingly, and with a nice disregard for the digestions of its aficionados, British ballet has been putting on a festival in London during the past two weeks. On the South Bank Festi- val Ballet has been deploying Tchaikovsky over its letter-box stage, while Ballet Rambert has set up the headquarters of the avant-garde at the Jeannetta Cochrane—surely the least attractive theatre in the metropolis—and, back at the Opera House, the Royal Ballet's touring section has been having a final ornithological fling before the holidays, with pigeons and swans galore. Mercifully wra has already fled from Sadler's Wells, and the only other perfor- mance was the unscheduled appearance of Harlequin Ballet's dancers trying to cajole mes with a demonstration outside the House of Commons, in an appeal for the restitution of their Arts Council grant that was—to my mind—wisely disregarded.
Pausing only to register a mini-protest at the obstinacy of managements who seem to delight in playing against each other, I must admit that the resultant dance-feast has made for a revealing display of the companies' aims and ideals. The first obvious point is that, of all the novelties on offer, only two works have been by resident choreographers—Ash- ton's six-month-old Sinfonietta for Covent Garden, and Morrice's Hazard (shown this week) for Rambert. Elsewhere, importations from America, revivals and a couple of ex- humations have made up the bill of fare; the London air has seemed heavy with nostalgia and formaldehyde. The Royal Ballet acquired MacMillan's Concerto from their man in Berlin, Festival Ballet bagged Balanchine's Night Shadow, Taras's Designs with Strings and Ron Sequoio's Winds Bride from America, and summoned up the Maryinski ghost of Paquita; while Rambert also went trans- atlantic with Anna Sokolow's Deserts and two fine pieces by Glen Tetley, and revived, if this is the word, Nijinski's Afternoon of a Faun. As an example of lease-lend or international cross-pollination this may be admitable, but it also highlights the dreadful shortage of choreo- graphic talent in this country.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the most secure and rewarding performances have been those on view at the Opera House, where the touring section showed itself to be constantly im- proving and constantly delightful; its diirector John Field's recent and richly deserved am is only the tip of an iceberg of admiration for the tremendous qualities that have shaped and developed the company. If his troupe has a fault, it is in the comparative weakness of his male dancers when contrasted with his galaxy of gorgeously talented girls; it is a problem that affects every company except the Danes and the Russians, and Field at least can boast, in David Wall, the best young male dancer in the country, and fine dance actors in Richard Fardey, Ronald Emblen and Johaar Mosaval.
But the real problem this summer, as for many summers past, is Festival Ballet. Home- less, eager to please (some would say too eager by half), with an excellent rosai of dancers, Festival has survivechange decay, and still come up smiling—and dancing the classics. Cursed in the past with the most bizarre col- lection of novelties outside a seaside gift shop (remember Bonaparte a Nice and Vita Eterna or rather, try and forget them), it now seems determined to learn from such mistakes and present only proven successes—a play-safe policy that should have been extended to the inexplicable Winds Bride, which lacked both an apostrophe and a point.
Festival's function in our ballet scene—and the time has long since passed when a com- pany can exist without a clear function, since this is what earns official subvention—seems unashamedly middlebrow, and none the worse for that. It offers glamorous stars (John Gilpin has only to walk on stage for an audience to perk up visibly), a reliance on Tchaikovsky that has now become almost a mania (Swan Lake and Nutcracker already in the repertory, Sleeping Beauty due later this month), and a solid worth among its artists that is certainly not best served by this pussy-footing through the glorious past. This season's acquisition of a luscious production of Night Shadow, and the youthful Designs with Strings, along with the return of Lifar's grand Noir et Blanc, and Graduation Ball and Etudes, make for an almost Ballets Russes repertory that points to a more rewarding future. But if Festival is not to wither away, the repertory will have to be- come more adventurous still; eventually, though it takes some believing, audiences must tire of fairies and remote ineffectual swans.
Festival might note that ballet companies can change their spots, as Rambert success- fully proved a year ago. Rambert's new identity, which was in fact theirs prewar, is that of the most adventurous troupe we have, in- dined more to the American ideal of a modern company than to anything in this country, and the season's new works underline this. There are two excellent pieces by the American choreo- grapher, Glen Tetley—his Pierrot Lunaire, which I noticed at its Richmond premiere some months ago, and Ricercare, a slighter but no less potent duet, full of twists and turns, both emotional and physical. More massive, and duller, is the other American import, Anna Sokolow's Deserts, expressionist in manner, monotonous in realisation. It is a study in lone- liness, and like her Rooms, which we. saw with the Alvin Ailey group, it is interesting in its statement of the theme, but repetitious in its development. Rambert also takes a lingering, and necessary, glance back at earlier avant-garde days, to Tudor's marvellous creations of the 'thirties--now somewhat dulled in impact by over-sentimental perfor- mance--and to that still earlier breakthrough represented by Nijinski's Afternoon of a Faun; this, though scrupulously done, must be accounted a lost cause—the work's physical presence does not survive. One curious feature of the season, though, is that Norman Morrice, Rambert's greatest asset, is-represented by only one work, Hazard, which I shall hope to dis- cuss next week. Better fifty steps by Morrice than a life cycle elf Japan—in this case Inochi, a well-dressed little dullard that has cqme into the repertory from the Rambert experi- mental evenings in March this year.
With such a profusion of activity it would be rank defeatism not to feel that some sort .rof progress has been made since last summer; certainly the companies look healthier now than they did then. But the wind of change that started a couple of years ago, fanned by the Arts Council's increasingly positive approach ..to the problems of financing and encouraging the lyric theatre, will need to blow still harder; the eventual appearance of the report by the Council's Inquiry into Opera and Ballet should be the occasion for some necessary freshening squalls. Then we might be able to put on a real festival of British ballet.
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