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Reviews

London Report

The legacy of Ninette DeValois, both Royal Ballets in performance; Cohabitants; Richard Alston; English National Ballet

by Jane Simpson
copyright © 2001 by Jane Simpson
Spring 2001

Overshadowing everything else this winter was the news of the death of Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet. Although she retired from the directorship of the company before most of the present dancers were born, we were always aware of her presence and her continuing influence; and her death leaves us to reflect with the profoundest gratitude on the foresight and determination with which she built the great organisation which this year celebrates its 70th anniversary.

At the time of her death both her Royal Ballets were performing one of the company’s homegrown classics, Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal Gardée. Although it was originally created for the Covent Garden company, the touring company were dancing it within two or three years of its première, and it’s always been interesting to compare the two productions. Their differences of style and approach used to provide a neat illustration of the contrasting characters of the two companies, and I was looking forward to finding out if this was still the case. I saw the Birmingham RB during the first week of its tour, at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford, where the smaller stage requires a slightly cut-down version of the sets. There are no cuts in the number of dancers, though, with the result that some of the choreography looks a bit squashed, especially in the last scene. A few minor production details may also be due to limited space, but the changes in some of the costumes—noticeably for Colas and for the Cockerel – looked as if they might owe more to cost restrictions. The principal difference, though, is in the immediacy of the dancers’ involvement in their roles, especially the corps de ballet who seem to be enjoying perfectly happy lives, and romances, of their own as well as participating in Lise’s story. Their dancing may not have the polish you expect from the London company, but it has a vivacity and spirit that easily compensate.

The two principals were both making their debuts. Lise was Nao Sakuma, a rising soloist who made her mark last year in the ballerina role of Ashton’s Scenes de Ballet. She’s an intriguing dancer, much more mature than her looks imply, and her Lise had a twenty-first century slant that I’ve not seen from anyone before: too much of that might spoil the balance of the ballet, but at this level it adds just enough of an edge to the role to make it enjoyably individual. She’s very strong tech-nically, too. Both here and in Scenes de Ballet she reminded me occasionally of Nadia Nerina, and she could have a very interesting future. Her Colas, Chi Cao, was not quite so successful: rather serious, he looks as if he’d be more suitably cast in tragedy than comedy. I’d seen a much more famous name in the role a couple of days earlier, but I was still impressed by Cao’s technique. I also liked BRB’s Alain, Toby Norman-Wright. He’s taller than most dancers who are given this role, so the ‘cute’ school of characterisation isn’t an option for him (thank goodness). Instead he emphasises his physical gawkiness—a real hobbledehoy struggling with adolescent awkwardness. It was, I have to report, a night for connoisseurs of things that can go wrong in this prop-filled ballet, but all three coped very well with what could have been disaster.

The same ballet, back at Covent Garden. John Lanchbery was in the pit to conduct his own arrange-ment of the music, with the irrepressible cheerfulness remembered from when the ballet was new, and this company too seemed to be enjoying their dancing. The first cast I saw had Jane Burn as Lise. I’ve not seen her in a big leading role before and I was very pleasantly surprised. She has a sharp sense of humour that rarely gets a chance to be seen, and came over as a much more interesting character than I’d have thought from seeing her in the classical solos which are her normal fare. Her Colas, Johan Persson, is a bit of a puzzle. He looks the part, and his dazzling smile is more appropriate here than it was in Swan Lake; he goes through all the right motions but his acting somehow doesn’t convince. His dancing, too, is uneven, with some steps as cleanly done as I’ve ever seen, whilst others seem to fade out, unfinished.

A later cast saw the return of Ethan Stiefel to continue the partnership with Sarah Wildor which was so successful in Coppélia last season. Both the costume and the role suit him very well, and he was clearly determined on success, both in and out of the character. By the end of the evening he was dancing brilliantly, and his characterisation fitted in perfectly with the rest of the company—there was no sense at all of a visitor from another continent. Maybe, for Wildor’s Lise, he was a bit too extrovert and over-confident: he’s now proved he can more than do the role, and he might perhaps relax a bit more. Wildor wasn’t in quite such wonderful form as when she first appeared as Lise (with Bruce Sansom) a couple of years ago, but I still found her enchanting. Every time I see this ballet, though, the overwhelming impression it leaves is of Ashton’s genius: it is without doubt one of the masterpieces of twentieth century dance.

Romeo and Juliet has taken up much of the rest of the Royal Ballet’s winter season, with casts ranging from super starry to unknowns. The sets and costumes have been rethought, and altered in quite significant ways—one of the last achievements of Nicholas Georgiadis, who died during the run of the ballet. His new version of the set is more open, and rather less dominating than the original, but it has neither a balcony for Juliet, nor a proper window for her bed-room. Both detract from the drama, but both could be very easily fixed. The last scene is very different, with the dancing space deliberately reduced: that works, but the huge carved figures which tower over the tomb seem quite out of key with the mild, consoling role of religion in the rest of the ballet.

Sylvie Guillem was the opening Juliet, and she brought Nicolas Le Riche as her partner—the first time he’s danced MacMillan’s Romeo. Their success together in Marguerite and Armand had raised hopes for a triumphant evening, but it didn’t altogether come off. I liked Guillem’s first scene very much, and began to think this might be the performance when I finally saw in her the genius which so many others see; but by the end of the act I was back in my usual state of frustration. Her dancing is faultless, her acting is exquisite, and she leaves me totally unmoved. I think it’s her absolute control that does it: for me, there’s no physical excitement, no sense of danger—I’d get exactly the same sensations from watching a film of her perform-ance. On this particular evening, too, there was no electricity at all between her and Le Riche. I believe he had injured his leg at an earlier performance and was still feeling the effects, which may have had something to do with it, and may have accounted too for some apparent problems with the steps. Once or twice—in his duel with Tybalt, for instance— he really came to life and gave a glimpse of what he could be; but too often he had the air of one who could do with at least another couple of rehearsals.

Guillem’s usual partner, Jonathan Cope, appeared later in the run with Sarah Wildor. She is said to enjoy dancing with him, as his height and his partnering skills help her to feel secure; but on every occasion I’ve seen them together I’ve found them badly mismatched. Her acting is so much more spontaneous and naturalistic than his that they seem almost to be speaking different languages: she needs a partner of the class of David Wall or Stephen Jefferies to give her someone with whom she can react properly. Even so she gives a fine, very moving performance. Supporting roles with both casts varied widely. Persson struggled with Mercutio the first time I saw him but was much improved later on; Genesia Rosato was a sparky, young-looking Nurse, and very funny. William Tuckett’s Tybalt is very different from the normal run— quiet, almost soft to start with, he goes on to fight his last duel with Romeo with a ferocity I’ve hardly seen equalled. As often with Tuckett, it looks at the moment like a characterisation still under development – it’s not completely working yet, but if he ever sorts it out properly it could be outstanding. Two new Juliets, Tamara Rojo and Alina Cojocaru, both made hugely successful debuts during the run: with these two and Wildor, the company could be spoilt for choice over the next few years— but finding Romeos to match them looks altogether more difficult.

The one triple bill on view at the Royal Opera House in the last few months was a very strange experience. Opening with a revival of MacMillan’s Triad, one of his more concentrated psychosexual pieces, it continued with a new Ashley Page—another in his current series dominated by aggressive, joyless relationships—and then changed gear completely to finish with The Concert. When Triad was created, in 1972, it was accompanied only by a brief programme note outlining the situation; now we all know that it is based on real incidents in the choreographer’s youth, and Deborah MacMillan has replaced the original non-specific costumes with stylised beachwear. Both of these, for me, push the ballet in the direction of banality, and only Edward Watson in the first cast brought any sense of real understanding to his role. It does worry me that, with so many people on the Royal Ballet staff still being MacMillan’s close collaborators, they can let such indifferent perfor-mances go on: what on earth will happen when they’re gone?

This year’s Ashley Page is called This House Will Burn; it has a com-plex, constantly changing set by Stephen Chambers and a score by Page’s frequent collaborator, Orlando Gough. Page’s ballets polarise critical and audience opinion. Rather than going deeply into the pros and cons of this one, I find myself wondering more and more about the company management’s attitude to Page. Does Dowell really believe him to be a major choreographer, deserving every opportunity that can be found? He’s got a strange way of showing it, if so: only one of the works Page has made for the main stage over the last seventeen years has been taken into the permanent repertory, and only one other has been give the chance of a second season. Many of today’s audience have never seen his earlier works and can make no judgement on how he has developed, and so far as I remember we’ve never seen two of his works in the same programme, let alone a Page triple bill. Meanwhile, the work and money which go into each ‘throwaway’ project hardly bear thinking of.

There was more new choreography in the Royal Ballet’s useful Clore Studio, in a double-bill entitled Cohabitants, featuring works by Tom Sapsford and Cathy Marston (they used to share a flat—hence the title). Both of them have made works for the Dance Bites tours in the last few years, and both know the company well. Sapsford’s work, Last Night at the Empire was inspired by the old Music Halls; it’s an amusing, light piece, and gives the dancers the chance to show off some talents that don’t get seen (or heard) on the main Opera House stage, but it doesn’t really give much idea of whether or not Sapsford has a real talent. Marston, on the other hand, looks a very likely prospect indeed. Traces is clearly the work of an intelligent choreographer with something to say and the skill to say it. Original but unforced, the movement she invents gives intelligible form to the emotions of her characters - and she’s musical, too. She had the benefit of working with some of the best young dancers in the company—she was at the Royal Ballet School herself and her contemporaries included the ever-interesting Edward Watson, who she uses very cleverly, keeping him in reserve till almost the end. A very promising work, which I look forward to seeing again.

New work from a choreographer far more experienced than either of these was on view when Richard Alston brought his own company to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in March. Alston’s Cunningham-based style has won him a loyal following and a high reputation, especially for the musicality of his work, and his London seasons are always popular. For the last few years, though, I’ve found his work less and less rewarding. An evening of his choreography feels like an evening at a harpsichord recital—eminently civilised, with the work laid out with exquisite clarity, and with a minimum of dynamic or emotional colouring to obscure the structure: intellectually pleasing to a degree, but you go home feeling so glad that somebody eventually invented the piano. On this occasion he was using music of unmissable strength and passion, and acknowledged in his programme notes that this was what had attracted him to these scores—but so little of that came over in what we saw on stage. His choreography, and the dancers he chooses, seem simply too introverted to make the effect he wants. His new work, Fever, is set to madrigals by Monteverdi which ooze, luxuriate in, sensuality: Alston’s dances just never seem to let go enough. It’s a pity, because he has a technically fine company, with one or two potentially outstanding dancers; but I’m left with the feeling that I’d rather see them in someone else’s choreography, and Alston working with a company who are not quite so much of his own stamp.

The pleasantest surprise of the year so far came from English National Ballet. Their new production of Swan Lake had been publicised as a rehash of Derek Deane’s ‘in the round’ version, but instead it turned out to be almost entirely new, and a very great improvement. There are a few episodes which betray its origin—Odette’s muffed entrance, surrounded by a group of swans—and Act lV still has Deane’s over-busy choreography; otherwise, the whole production was pleasingly reminiscent of the ‘old’ Royal Ballet version, the one that Deane himself danced in twenty years ago. To help this impression along he’s restored three of Ashton’s contributions (the Act l Waltz, the Neapolitan dance, and the pas de quatre), and if he would just add the Ashton Act lV as well this would be a production that could be seen often with pleasure.

The company’s swans have to compete with memories of the perfection of the Kirov corps de ballet last summer, but even by that standard they looked quite good. Of the two leads, Thomas Edur makes a fine Siegfried, with acting and dancing both of the highest level. He’s a more mature Prince than we often see—which is not a polite way of saying that he’s too old for the role, but that he’s a grown up rather than a boy. When his mother tells him that it’s time he was married, rather than getting into a state about it he pats her on the arm in a way which implies ‘Yes, mother, but let’s not go through all that again just now’. His Odette/Odile is of course Agnes Oaks, who misses the heart of the role by some way. Her Odette passes muster more or less, but her Odile looks as if she was aiming for a ‘naughty but nice’ effect and hit it, spot on. ENB’s real problem is at soloist level—so many dancers look fine in ensembles but go to pieces when faced with a challenging solo. But the production as a whole is a very welcome addition to the repertory, and can only help the company grow.