BALLET
Festival Ballet. (Royal Festival Hall.) Dancers of Bali. (Winter Garden Theatre.) THE Festival Ballet's strength lies in its male dancers, and so in a recent programme the high lights were two variations danced by men—John Gilpin in The Black Swan and Oleg Briansky in the Don Quixote pas-de-deux. Both were clean, sure and even brilliant performances such as make a somewhat dull evening suddenly come to life. But how ineffectual is Vision of Marguerite. Belinda Wright has no more than the opportunity to look gentle and charming ; John Gilpin is miscast as Faust, for which role he has not the necessary dramatic power ; while Oleg. Briansky, who should be able to dominate the ballet through the character of Mephisto, gives the impression that he cannot be bothered to extend himself.
In fact throughout the evening, and with the exception of the varia- tion already mentioned, Briansky seemed entirely uninterested ; and even in his " double " work in Swan Lake and The Black Swan gave his partners little of the support and help they have the right to expect. This particular failure is all the more strange from a member of a company directed by Anton Dolin, for his partnering is famed, and should by now have set an example to all the men working with him. Briansky has been endowed by nature with such a fine body, and is developing so splendid a technique, that it would be a very great pity were he to rest on his laurels instead of reaching for the heights which seem to be within his power of attainment.
On Monday night the same company introduced Michael Charnley's Symphony For Fun. This young choreographer's work has previously been seen at the valuable Ballet Workshop, where, even despite the restrictions imposed upon it by the smallness of the Mercury Theatre, his talent was easily discernible. Now Charnley has shown that he is able to compose a ballet for a full company with as much success as for a tiny one. His innate sense of theatre, his timing, exits and entrances, his ability to keep the movement flowing and his spontaneous touches of humour, never overdone, all suggest the work of a much more experienced choreographer. Chamley expresses himself in the modern idiom with ingenuity and invention, and if he himself is by far the best exponent of his very personal idiom, he is, in the Festival Theatre, well enough served by the male members of the company ; the girls, with the possible exception of Anita Landa, do not seem really to feel the mood, nor have their bodies that particular-mixture of strength and flexibility which this kind of dancing requires. The ballet is set to the infectious music of Don Gillis' Symphony Number Five and a Half, and is danced in an economically effective set designed by Tom Lingwood.
At the Winter Garden Theatre a company of dancers and musicians from Bali are giving a ten-day season prior to their presentation in New York. Western eyes are bound to be bewildered by so highly a specialised form of dancing, yet it is well worth a visit, for apart from its ethnological value it is full of subtle, quiet beauty which makes itself felt upon reflection rather than through sudden impact in the theatre. As one might expect, the dances of Bali are deeply rooted in nature, so that their age-old conventions—not unrelated to those of Indian dancing—spring from and reflect the physical characteristics of their island home. Thus the dancers' strong and mobile feet firmly holding the earth are a signal of their attachment to it ; the posture of their bodies on ever-bending knees symbolic of the lean of palm:trees; and their perpetually swaying torsos evocative of the swell of the ocean. But one of the most curious features of Balinese dancing is the deliber- ate denial of the sensuality which is its impelling force. Remarking upon the fact that all the female dancers are still in their teens, I learnt, with great interest, that the art is forbidden to maturer women on account of the passions their performances might arouse. Thus one is presented with the strange spectacle of beautiful children, with faces unaware as choir boys', performing with skill and precision movements and dances which only their innocence makes permissible.
LILLIAN BROWSE.
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