BALLET
Noble creatures
CLEMENT CRISP
When Sir Frederick Ashton surveys the Royal Ballet he must see a group of beings whom he, like Viganei's Prometheus, 'civil- ised . . . by giving them arts'. The style of our national company owes much to his artistic fire. What more fitting celebration then, for the Beethoven bicentenary, than a version of Vigano's allegorical ballet for which Beethoven composed the score?
Of that work we know Beethoven's music, but only an approximation of the original scenario; Ashton's version, staged last week at Covent Garden, uses both to make a com- mentary upon the creative act, offering a cunning parallel between Beethoven's Prom- etheus (in essence the composer himself) and the task of the choreographer.
Like Enigma Variations, his sensitive portrait of the artistic process, this new Creatures of Prometheus exists on two levels. At first sight it might be found as engaging and slightly superficial as the Directoire decoration by Ottowerner Meyer. A pro- logue shows Prometheus stealing fire from heaven and animating his two creatures; thereafter he presents them to Apollo: Eros fires their hearts; and the Muses of Comedy and Tragedy, Mars, Bacchus and finally Terpsichore, reveal to them the range of human feeling, culminating in the civilis- ing disciplines of the classic dance. The scenes are of variable interest: the martial sequence (a whey-faced Napoleon leads a rabble of troops and vivandieres into disas- trous battle), Melpomene's grief, and an Apollo all golden curls and elegant costume. seem trapped in the period conventions of the setting and somehow miss the grandeur implicit in the score.
But the ballet is greater than the sum of IS parts; the final effect, characteristically with Ashton, is of nobility. Beneath the surface gloss is some deeper scheme, a larger mes- sage about the ardours of guiding mankind towards the fuller life. It is best seen in the beautifully judged performances of Doreen Wells and David Wall as the creatures. but there are also bouquets to Alfreda Thoro. good as a gay and giddy Thalia, and to Brenda Last, dazzling and funny as that well-known ballet mistress, Terpsichore.
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