Tamara Rojo – British Ballet Now & Then

Romeo and Juliet On Screen Now & Then

The year 2025 marks the 60^th anniversary of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.

At the premiere in 1965, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev famously received forty-three curtain calls (“The Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet”). Since then the work has been staged regularly, filling the Royal Opera House. Moreover, despite the abundance of balletic Romeo and Juliets performed across the globe, as Emma Byrne of the Evening Standard points out, MacMillan’s adaptation is often considered to be the “definitive” ballet version of Shakespeare’s play.

From 1966 to the present day MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet has also been screened in the cinema, on television, and since the 1980s reproduced on VHS tapes, then DVDs, and now on streaming services. This is the topic of our discussion below, originally written in 2022, and now updated, and enhanced with original artwork by Victoria Trentacoste of thinkcreatewrite.com.

Romeo and Juliet on Screen Now

Given the importance of this year’s anniversary in the history of MacMillan’s ballet, the announcement that a performance would be live-steamed in cinemas once again came as no surprise. In contrast, when a 2007 recording of Romeo and Juliet starring the celebrated dance partnership of Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta arrived in cinemas the following year, it caused quite a stir, as well as a debate about the advantages of watching ballet in cinemas (Wilkinson). Since then cinema screenings in the arts have become a regular occurrence, not only from the Royal Opera House but from, amongst other venues, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Palais Garnier in Paris, and the National Theatre here in London. And no fewer than four live performances of MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet have been screened in cinemas since 2008, featuring the following principals: Lauren Cuthbertson and Federico Bonelli (2012); Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball (2019); Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Marcelino Sambé (2022); Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov (2025). Apart from this year’s offering (which will presumably be released in due course), all of these recordings have been made commercially available either on DVD or on Royal Ballet and Opera Stream, and all have been directed for the screen by Ross MacGibbon, former dancer with the Royal Ballet, and now a renowned filmmaker specialising in dance and theatre.

In preparation for our original Romeo and Juliet post in 2022 we studied all of the recordings available on DVD. However, for the purposes of our discussion below we focussed on only one of these recordings. We found it quite tricky to choose, but we decided that the ballet partnership of Rojo and Acosta made a neat parallel with the Fonteyn and Nureyev partnership featured in the Romeo and Juliet on Screen Then section of this post.

By the time of filming Rojo and Acosta were an established partnership in both the 19^th century classics, particularly Giselle (Perrot/Coralli, 1841) La Bayadère (Petipa, 1877) and Swan Lake (Petipa/Ivanov, 1895), and in MacMillan’s Manon (1974), as well as Romeo and Juliet. Described as taking the Royal Ballet “by storm” when they joined the company (Acosta in 1998, Rojo in 2000) (Guiheen), over time they became known on stage as the “Brangelina of ballet” (Tan). This suggests that although they indubitably did not cause the sensation of Fonteyn and Nureyev (has any couple in the history of British ballet?), they were unquestionably a ballet partnership of glamour, and a force to be reckoned with. Further, they had received outstanding notices for their performances. John Percival, for example, claimed that Rojo “must be the best Royal Ballet Juliet for a quarter century or more, since Gelsey Kirkland’s guest seasons”, adding that Acosta was “on equally fine form”, while according to Sarah Crompton, their performances “absolutely gleam[ed] with greatness” (qtd. in “Reviews 2004-2007”). In contrast, with the exception of Bonelli, all of the other protagonists filmed in Romeo are home grown, so to speak, all having had at least some training at the Royal Ballet School; neither were their partnerships celebrated to the same extent. However, by the 2012 Bonelli-Cuthbertson performance, cinema screenings of ballet were well established, and consequently perhaps no longer needed the draw of an international star partnership.

By now you must be asking yourselves about still the most publicised screening of the ballet in recent years, that is, Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words … which we have of course not forgotten. For their 2019 Beyond Words former Royal Ballet dancers Michael Nunn and William Trevitt held auditions, resulting in the cast being led by two more home-grown talents: Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell. Undoubtedly the reason for the additional publicity was that Nunn and Trevitt produced and directed an adaptation of the ballet filmed on location. Their choice of location was the Renaissance backlot of the Korda Studios in Hungary. Constructed for the TV series The Borgias, the backlot is a magnificent and atmospheric set of buildings, courtyards, piazzas, alleys and interiors depicting historical Italy.

Filming the ballet on location was of course not an original idea. As early as 1955, Lev Arnshtam directed the seminal Romeo and Juliet by Leonid Lavrovsky (1940) on location in the Yalta Film Studio. Perhaps more important for our discussion, however, is the film of Shakespeare’s play directed by Franco Zeffirelli. We know that MacMillan had been inspired by Zeffirelli’s 1960 Old Vic staging. Further, the naturalism emphasised by Zeffirelli in his direction lent itself well to an on-location filming, including the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, the streets of the medieval town of Gubbio, and the Basilica of St Peter in Tuscania. Therefore, this way of breathing fresh life into MacMillan’s choreography and bringing the ballet to potential new audiences seemed to us entirely compatible with the choreographer’s own vision for his work.

In all of the recent live recordings on DVD the familiar rich colour palette of Nicholas Georgiadis’ designs dominates: deep reds, browns and golds, with injections of white, noticeably in the costumes of the two Lovers. In contrast to this, Beyond Words is altogether brighter and livelier in its initial visual impact, opening as it does on the sun beaming down on a courtyard scene of hens and a dog, a busy servant, and a small child running off on some errand. Juliet’s room is no longer a minimally furnished vast stage space, but a chamber embellished with pale light drapes that let the sunshine in, and filled with various furnishings, including a chest, cushions, a settle, chairs and candles.

MacMillan’s ballet began life in 1964 when he was commissioned to create a short work for Canadian television. This work in fact became the Balcony pas de deux, which MacMillan created on his muses Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable. This duet was the beginning of the full ballet that premiered the following year in London. Given its place both within the narrative and as the culmination of Act I, it is of course one the ballet’s main climaxes; but for us, the fact that the rest of the work emerged from this pas de deux gives it a special significance.

At the start of the scene Tamara Rojo’s Juliet emerges from the darkness of the balcony, the whiteness of her skin and dress gleaming softly through the night air, and we think of Romeo’s wistful words …

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East and Juliet is the sun!

(11.2.2-3)

She looks down at the hand that Romeo touched when they first met in the Ballroom, brings her hands together and holds them to her cheek. Again, we hear the voice of Romeo:

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

Oh that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

(11.2.23-25).

Given that MacMillan, Seymour and Gable worked with Shakespeare’s text, it seems reasonable to assume that these gestures were integral to the original choreography, but even if not, we know that Rojo studied Shakespeare’s text in her preparation for dancing the ballet, thereby rendering her approach to creating her own version of Juliet faithful to the spirit of the work (“Tamara Rojo on being Juliet”). We also find that the resonances with Shakespeare’s soul-stirring verse, and the reference to their first meeting lend a palpable air of longing to the opening of the scene.

At the end of the scene Juliet returns to the balcony, only to kneel down immediately and reach for Romeo, who is straining up towards her. But despite their burning passion, their hands don’t quite meet—a reminder perhaps that the distance imposed upon them is simply too great; or maybe it is an expression of unfulfilled desire; or perhaps both. Whatever our feelings about this moment, it is also a foreshadowing of the tomb scene where Rojo’s Juliet lacks the strength to keep hold of Romeo’s hand as she draws her last breath.

In an interview after the Beyond Words premiere, Hayward talked about how important the set was to her understanding and portrayal of Juliet. At the start of the Balcony Scene music we see the Nurse (Romany Pajdak) brushing Juliet’s hair. Juliet seems preoccupied, restless. As she approaches her balcony, we watch her from behind, almost as if we are following her into another world. But the scene is softly aglow with the light of the moon, so there is no sense of Juliet lighting up the darkness; neither are there any noticeable gestures referring to Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo or to Shakespeare’s text. But what we are given here is a sense of being physically present in Verona, as we watch the Lovers through the foliage of the garden. And at the end of the scene not only do their hands touch, but they are able to hold one another’s forearms before letting go again. Although the scene is to us rather less poetic than the stage version, it recreates the sense of realism that MacMillan was so eager to effect in a work—a realism to which we have perhaps become too accustomed to fully appreciate.

At the end of the film our minds return to this moment of joy: looking through the grille enclosing the crypt, we witness Juliet’s failed attempt to reach Romeo’s hand. In close-up shot all we can see in the final moments are her hands dangling over the tomb, almost as if they were disembodied. It is well known that MacMillan wanted no sentimentality to be portrayed in this scene: “… the death scene was crucial to Kenneth. His lovers were not reunited in death. They did not die in each other’s arms” wrote Seymour (186). As far as MacMillan was concerned, the death of Romeo and Juliet was a complete waste of young life (qtd. in Seymour 186), and this ending seems to us a fitting indictment on all those involved in precipitating the death of the teenagers.

Another memory that Seymour writes about is the now iconic scene where Juliet sits alone and still on her bed in desperation until she resolves to visit Friar Laurence for help with her predicament. Sixty years after the premiere, this is still a suspenseful moment of high emotion in a live performance, a moment when we invariably reach for our opera glasses to experience more intensely Juliet finding a glimmer of hope through her despair. As if mimicking our opera glasses, in both the recordings we’re analysing the camera moves in close, so that we can witness the expressivity of Rojo and Hayward in their near stillness, watch the quickening of their breath, the agitation in Hayward’s face, and the transformation from Rojo’s dark mien to the return of light to her face. And sixty years after the premiere, this must surely still constitute a challenge for the ballerina to project her interpretation of Juliet’s emotions through the most economical of means. Rojo herself states, “The hardest thing is the moment when you sit in bed and you have no movement at all to express your feelings” (“Tamara Rojo on being Juliet”).

Romeo and Juliet on Screen Then

For commercial recordings of Romeo and Juliet from earlier years there is no problem of choice: as far as we are aware, there are only two. These are the film version made just one year after the creation of the work, starring Fonteyn and Nureyev, and the 1984 recording for BBC television featuring Wayne Eagling and a 21-year-old Alessandra Ferri.

We found comparing the two in terms of visual impact very interesting. Although recorded in Pinewood Studios, the film version attempts to simulate a theatre experience with the opening and closing of the curtains at the start and end of each act, and curtain calls at the end. Given that it was produced and directed by the film maker Paul Czinner, we would guess that the budget was quite substantial. In contrast, the quality of the television film is rather poor, far from the high definition to which we have now become accustomed. Although a sense of opulence is still conveyed with some imagination on the part of the viewer, the television production values are of the time, and we must confess that to us it is rather drab looking. This MacMillan may of course have appreciated in a way, given his love for realism in the theatre.

On the other hand, from the start the Czinner film blazes with colour like a Renaissance painting, with bright blues and highly pigmented reds, striking yellows and dazzling golds and greens vying for attention. For us these original sets and costumes provide an ideal frame for the kind of vibrancy that MacMillan had so admired in Zeffirelli’s Old Vic production of the play in 1960 and wished for his own ballet. In fact he told Georgiadis, who often attended rehearsals, that he wanted a Verona “where young horny aristocrats roamed the town full of romantic, adventurous spirits” (qtd. Seymour 181).

Just as there is such a dramatic contrast between the look of the two recordings, there are some equally alerting contrasts in the particular moments that we have discussed above in the Now section of this post.

When booking tickets at the Royal Opera House, we have always preferred to sit on the left side of the auditorium for this ballet, to ensure that we can watch Juliet on her balcony. There seems to be a substantial amount of freedom from performer to performer with regard to how she uses the opening music of this scene, and very likely ballerinas won’t even perform exactly the same movements from one performance to the next; so this is another moment when the opera glasses come out. Ferri appears with an air of blissful restlessness, looking up at the moon, down to her hands, over the balcony and up to the moon again. Leaning her elbows on the balustrade, the most telling moment is when she holds her hands to her cheek, swaying her body gently from side to side with an ecstatic smile on her face. But Fonteyn’s use of this moment of freedom to explore Juliet’s feelings we find almost disconcerting. As in the 2007 and 1984 productions, she emerges from darkness to light up like Romeo’s “bright angel” (Shakespeare 11.2 26, p. 37), after which she gestures slowly upwards with her right arm towards the moon. Although we know the moon to be significant to Shakespeare’s scene, in our opinion the gesture does not reveal much about Juliet’s thoughts and emotions. This was contrary to the intentions of MacMillan, Seymour and Gable who had “tried to find steps and gestures to express the characters’ state of mind” (Parry 279).

The scandal of the world premiere of Romeo and Juliet being given to Fonteyn and Nureyev in favour of Seymour and Gable, who had contributed so much to the rehearsal process, is well documented. Not only was Seymour cast as the fifth Juliet, but it was she who taught the role of Juliet to the other four ballerinas: “Margot … wanted to create her own Juliet”, she recalls (188). This is particularly noticeable in some movements near the start of the Balcony Scene that are reminiscent of “The Kingdom of the Shades” from Marius Petipa’s 1877 La Bayadère, which Nureyev had staged in 1963: supported pirouettes ending in arabesque accentuate Fonteyn’s classical line, and were presumably chosen by her for this reason. At the close of the scene Nureyev remains downstage right in a lunge, elegantly gesturing towards Juliet on the balcony as she reciprocates by unfolding her arm in his direction. This approach does accentuate the irreconcilable distance that the family feud has imposed upon the Lovers; but the poses strike us as symbolic, rather than reflecting the naturalism and urgent emotion that MacMillan was after. As Seymour put it during a coaching session on the Balcony Scene:

He wanted you to be a real pimply teenager, both of you, who bump noses when they first try to kiss and do all that sort of thing. They didn’t do it beautifully … it was a little awkward, and a little wonderful, and a little gawky and a little this and a little that. So try not to deal with it as if you’re some kind of ballerina.

(“Romeo and Juliet Masterclass”)

Another noticeable discrepancy that jars somewhat is Fonteyn’s choice of movement when her Juliet is trying to find a solution to her approaching marriage to Paris. Rather than sitting on the bed facing directly downstage, she kneels by the bed facing downstage left and mimics crying before raising her head and slowly moving her gaze to downstage right, almost as if watching herself rushing to Friar Laurence. Perhaps this worked at the time, but when the viewer is accustomed to the drama of being confronted with Juliet’s stillness face-on, it breaks the intensity of the moment.

Seymour recalls what a daring decision it was to reduce movement to a minimum at this climactic point in the narrative, and what a challenge it presented for her, but that MacMillan was convinced that she was capable of holding the audience (185-86). And his belief in Seymour was justified: audiences and journalists alike were struck by the audaciousness of the sequence, Seymour claiming that it “had a singularly terrifying effect on the scalp of balletgoers” (193).

Presumably it was a combination of Fonteyn’s celebrity status and the challenge presented by the innovative choreographic and dramatic ideas conjured up by MacMillan, Gable, and Seymour that persuaded the other Juliets to adopt Fonteyn’s approach to interpreting the choreography and character, resulting in MacMillan’s fear that his vision of the ballet would not be realised onstage (189). However, as the recording of Ferri’s 1984 performance testifies, MacMillan’s fears were ultimately unfounded. The Balcony Scene ends with Romeo and Juliet straining towards one another in their burning desire to touch one another’s hands just one more time before they part. Ferri’s Juliet sits on the bed facing the audience as Colin Nears’ camera zooms out, thereby emphasising her aloneness in the vast stage space that represents her room. And Ferri, who became such a long-standing interpreter of the role, showed no reluctance in the death scene to allow the weight of her body to hang in a precarious backbend over the sepulchre with no thought to elegance, unable to keep hold of Romeo’s hand. Fonteyn’s Juliet, on the other hand, dies holding onto Romeo’s arm and with her body carefully arranged so we can still see her face, and with little sense of the precariousness that might disrupt the ballerina image.

Ironically perhaps, the Czinner recording states overtly that the purpose of the film is twofold: to preserve the performance for a wider audience and as a record for posterity. For us, however, the importance of the film lies not so much in its preservation of the dancing of the two undisputed ballet stars of the era, but the way in which the reluctance of the performers to engage fully with MacMillan’s vision highlights the radical nature of MacMillan’s choreography seen both in performance and in the later films.

Concluding thoughts

Having grown up at a time when the only way to engage with ballet choreographies apart from seeing them live was through written materials, photos, LPs and the occasional television broadcast, we feel immensely privileged to have access to all of these recordings of MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.

The films offer us an insight into the radical nature of the choreography, and ways in which the politics of power can have an impact on the nature of a choreographic work. We can also re-evaluate the work after a long period of familiarity and find new ways of appreciating it through the imaginative work of directors and new casts that bring the work to life again.

References

Byrne, Emma. “Romeo and Juliet review: an inspired choice for the Royal Ballet’s return”. Evening Standard, 6 Oct. 2021, www.standard.co.uk/culture/dance/romeo-and-juliet-review-royal-opera-house-b959020.html.

Guiheen, Julia. “Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta in “Romeo and Juliet” (2007)”. Pointe Magazine, 20 Nov. 2019, pointemagazine.com/tbt-tamara-rojo-carlos-acosta/.

Parry, Jann. Different Drummer: the life of Kenneth MacMillan. Faber & Faber, 2009.

“Reviews 2004-2007”. Tamara Rojo, 7 Mar. 2006, www.tamara-rojo.com/reviews-2004-2007/.

“The Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet: 50 years of star-crossed dancers – in pictures”. The Guardian, 2 Oct. 2015, www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2015/oct/02/royal-ballet-romeo-and-juliet-50-years-of-star-crossed-dancers-in-pictures.

Seymour, Lynn, with Paul Gardner. Lynn: the autobiography of Lynn Seymour. Granada, 1984.

—. “Romeo and Juliet Masterclass: Balcony pas de deux”. Revealing MacMillan, Royal Academy of Dance, 2002.

“Tamara Rojo on being Juliet”. Dance Australia, 26 May 2014, http://www.danceaustralia.com.au/news/tamara-rojo-on-being-juliet.

Tan, Monica. “Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta: the Brangelina of ballet on chemistry, ageing and loss of innocence”. The Guardian, 27 June, 2014, www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2014/jun/27/tamara-rojo-carlos-acosta-brangelina-of-ballet.

Wilkinson, Sarah. “Why Watch Ballet on the Silver Screen?”. The Guardian, 15 Aug. 2008, www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/aug/15/whyshouldipaytoseeprerec.

WATCHING WITH BRITISH BALLET NOW & THEN

Akram Khan’s Giselle Revisited

If Tamara Rojo’s sole achievement during her years as Artistic Director of English National Ballet (2012-2022) had been the commissioning of Akram Khan’s Giselle, she would have made a tremendous contribution to the ballet repertoire. Such are our thoughts both before and after the Sadler’s Wells opening night of the production in September 2024.

English National Ballet dancers © Camilla Greenwell

Of course we have been watching the ballet since its first London run in 2016 and seen most of the casts. Treasured memories include multiple viewings of Tamara Rojo herself with the wonderfully human James Streeter; a particularly intense performance by Alina Cojocaru and Isaac Hernández, where they both seemed to take flight into another dimension; Crystal Costa’s final ENB performance, with the sensitive and expressive Aitor Arietta, and our first viewing of James and his wife Erina Takahashi performing together (last year in Bristol).

Erina Takahashi as Giselle and Ken Saruhashi as Hilarion © Camilla Greenwell

Revisiting the work after a period means seeing it afresh. We know that. But as the now-familiar stage action unfolds, we are surprised when a veil seems to lift from our eyes and we start to notice more clearly underlying patterns that bring an additional layer of emotional resonance to the piece for us.

From the gloom emerges the crowd of refugee Outcasts pressing against the Wall. From the crowd emerges a triangle of outliers: Giselle, a model of defiance and strength of will in the face of the Landlords; Albrecht, her lover, himself a Landlord, but one who spends time with the refugees to see Giselle; and the angry, arrogant, but fearful Hilarion, desirous of Giselle but desperate to improve his lot in life by bargaining with the Landlords. We start to realise that triangles in this work act as an omen. Conveyed through the most potent economy of means—space, eye contact and stillness—this is just the first of several dangerous triangles that mark key points in Khan’s staging.

Once seen and surely never forgotten is the Glove Scene. Bathilde, Albrecht’s fiancée, removes one of her gloves with deliberation and drops it on the floor for Giselle to pick up. Her cruel power game plays out in stillness: Giselle holds her rival’s gaze with confidence and defiance as she calmly returns the glove. But it is not Giselle who has retrieved the glove. No. The other character in this triangle is Hilarion. It is he who has stooped down to pick the glove up from the ground and has attempted in vain to make Giselle bow her head before Bathilde. He has managed to force the other Outcasts to bow down before the Landlords, but Giselle he cannot control.

As Albrecht and Hilarion fight—a fight so palpable in its aggression, even though physical contact is limited—the chief Landlord circles slowly around them until his gaze reaches Hilarion’s eyes, a gaze of such force that it brings the confrontation to an abrupt end. Squeezing Albrecht’s jaw in the vice of his grip, the Landlord seals Albrecht’s fate with an angry kiss.

The fates of Giselle herself and Hilarion are sealed at the moment when triangular relationships collide into a deadlock. Giselle has dared to insert herself and her unborn baby into the “neat” triangle of the Landlord, Bathilde and Albrecht, that is, the triangle that will keep power in the hands of the powerful and keep it removed from the powerless. Giselle pulls Albrecht’s hand to her belly, holding it there so he can feel their bond. But feeling instead the glare of the Landlord and Bathilde’s penetrating eyes upon him, Albrecht wrenches his hand away, throwing Giselle to the ground. Then he literally turns his back on Giselle to walk off stage with Bathilde.

Erina Takahashi as Giselle & James Streeter Albrecht © Camilla Greenwell

For us the words of First Soloist Katja Khaniukova, who has been involved in the ballet since its premiere, shine a light on this climax:

I believe that she’s dead from the moment when Albrecht left her, when he decided … when he just turned away … That’s the moment when she died inside.

Erina Takahashi as Giselle © Camilla Greenwell

The ensuing mad scene is the final straw for the Landlords, as it were. Giselle must be got rid of. And it is Hilarion who is tasked with the dirty work.

Our impressions of Act I lead us to conclude that the narrative of Khan’s Giselle can be traced through this series of triangular relationships, based on love, desire, power and control, that escalate to the crisis point of Giselle’s destiny.

In the final triangle of the ballet Giselle seems to regain some of her agency. It is she who cannot or will not pierce Albrecht through the heart with the cane, despite Myrtha’s urgent exhortations to do so. It is she who demands some grace time to relive moments of love with Albrecht. And it is she who pulls the cane from Myrtha’s grasp, thrusts it into herself and then Myrtha to connect them as they disappear back into the gloom. Giselle then holds Albrecht’s gaze for as long as she is able. Erina Takahashi, who has been dancing Giselle since 2016, gives us a sense of Giselle’s state of mind.

So one of the scenes that has a strong impact on me … is at the end of the ballet … the last pas de deux with Albrecht. At the end we are feeling each another and Myrtha takes us separate, but I decide to say to Myrtha “It’s ok, I’m coming with you”. … You have a last look to Albrecht to say goodbye to him, and then go away with Myrtha. That’s a very strong impact for me.

Emma Hawes as Myrtha © Camilla Greenwell

Days after the performance the magnificent score by Vincenzo Lamangna still haunts us. Lamagna’s reworking of the familiar love themes from Adolphe Adam’s original 1841 music have now taken on a life or their own: like a phantom they hover and linger, circle and circle without resolution. At a climactic moment the melody spirals into a dark wailing abyss as the Wilis perform their famous arabesques voyagés. With another woman dead at the hands of the Landlords, the vicious cycle of oppression continues without respite.

Ironically, in order to create such “bewitching” (Mackrell) performances of Outcasts, outliers and misfits, of divisive abuse of power, the Company must work together to produce cohesion in their dancing and storytelling. And in truth, we have never experienced a performance of this ballet where the effort and energy of such cohesion was not pouring from the stage.

We would like to thank our lovely friend Victoria Trentacoste for the beautiful hand-drawn illustrations 🙏

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References

Khaniukova, Katja. “Akram Khan’s Giselle: Katja Khaniukova’s favourite moments | English National Ballet”. YouTube, uploaded by English National Ballet, 23 Oct. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cM8nK0WYxs.

Mackrell, Judith. “Giselle review – Akram Khan’s bewitching ballet is magnificently danced”. The Guardian, 28 Sept. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/28/giselle-review-akram-khan-english-national-ballet.

Takahashi, Erina. “Erina Takahashi on the ending of Akram Khan’s Giselle”. X, uploaded by English National Ballet, 18 Sept. 2024, https://x.com/ENBallet/status/1836358770542190633.

SPOTLIGHT ON ANNABELLE LOPEZ OCHOA

THE MOTH AND THE BUTTERFLY

The ballet A Streetcar Named Desire (2012) begins and ends on a dimly lit stage with Blanche Dubois reaching up towards a lightbulb to the sound of an eerie, unnerving tremolo on the strings. Moth like, her fragile body is torn between desire and caution, her fluttering hands betraying her extreme vulnerability, her sharp withdrawals from the light accentuating her fear.

The ballet Broken Wings (2016) begins with Skeletons sitting on and leaning against a large black box, which represents different spaces in Frida Kahlo’s life through the course of the work. Frida arises from the dark cube, aided by the Skeletons. The ballet ends with her encased in the same construct, but now opened to reveal a vibrant orange, red and yellow butterfly inside, to which Frida forms the centre. After the black box is closed by the Skeletons, a brightly coloured bird emerges and turns continuously as the curtains close, fluttering into eternity, as it were.

Both of these ballets were choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, whom we introduced to our readers in one of our early posts, Female Choreographers Now and Then. Although based in Amsterdam, Lopez Ochoa works for ballet companies across the globe—from Seattle to Cuba, Estonia to Australia. The two works that form the basis of this post, however, were both created for British ballet companies. Former Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet Ashley Page commissioned Streetcar, while Broken Wings was choreographed as part of English National Ballet’s 2016 She Said programme, commissioned by Tamara Rojo, and comprising three new works by female choreographers. In both cases Lopez Ochoa worked with the theatre and film director Nancy Meckler, which highlights for us the centrality of characterisation, narrative and drama in these ballets.

On the face of it, Tennessee Williams’ fictional Blanche and the artist Frida Kahlo have little in common. But we are fascinated by the imagery used by Lopez Ochoa that tempts us to make comparisons that we would otherwise undoubtedly have failed to notice.

Marge Hendrick with Ryoichi Hirano in A Streetcar Named Desire
© Andy Ross

Katja Khaniukova as Frida Kahlo in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings © Laurent Liotardo

Loss

The three protagonists of Williams’ play are Blanche, her sister Stella, and Stanley, Stella’s husband. Set in the New Orleans of 1947, the year in which Williams wrote his play, the action takes place in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Stella’s apartment where Blanche has come to escape her old life. Blanche is trapped by memories of the past, combined with a fantasy world of her own imagination. The story of Blanche’s past and the losses that she has incurred are revealed gradually, bit by bit, as the play progresses. In contrast, Lopez Ochoa’s ballet depicts Blanche’s life chronologically, beginning with her wedding as a young girl, which visibly portrays her as the “tender and trusting” character that Stella describes to Stanley (Williams 81).

Scottish Ballet company in A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo: Andy Ross

But the joyous wedding is followed by a brutal stream of losses occurring one after the other in unremitting succession. First comes the suicide of Blanche’s young homosexual husband, Allan, for which she feels an inescapable, hounding guilt, demonstrated by his haunting blood-stained reappearances through the course of the work. After Stella leaves for New Orleans, their relatives disappear from the tableau of the family photograph, represented by the cast collapsing one after the other with a sickly inevitability. The structure of Blanche’s life as she knows it finally gives way with the loss of Belle Reve, the ancestral home, which without warning, suddenly disintegrates block by block, crashing to a pile on the floor. For Marge Hendrick, one of Scottish Ballet’s Principals who performs Blanche, this approach to communicating the narrative explains the reasons for Blanche’s behaviour (qtd. in O’Brien 15). Hendrick further asserts, “We can see her in her best light at the start, and really see the decline, which is progressive” (1:14-1:23). And for us, this means that we are seeing the narrative through the eyes of Blanche: Lopez Ochoa has given her a “voice”.

Kahlo’s life is also depicted as a chronology in Broken Wings. After her “birth” from the black box, a structure that is central to the narrative and, as noted, symbolises various locations and aspects of Kahlo’s life, she meets her first love, who is with her when she experiences the accident that will change her life forever, causing permanent damage to her spine and pelvis. The severity of her injuries impacts on her ability to bear children, and leads to a series of operations over the course of almost three decades. Like the loss of Belle Reve, Kahlo’s accident is depicted vividly and symbolically. Four of the Skeletons, two moving towards Frida’s front and two towards her back, form a line that travels through her centre, representing the bus handrail that pierced right through her pelvis. The slow motion of the action reflects Kahlo’s own memory of the incident: “It was a strange crash, not violent but dull and slow” (qtd. in Svoboda). The Skeletons place her inside the black box, now transformed into the hospital.

Response to loss

Lopez Ochoa and her collaborator Meckler leave us in no doubt as to the impact of loss and guilt on Blanche in Streetcar. Living a lonely, haunted life alone in a hotel room, she turns to alcohol to escape from her savage memories, and to promiscuity (“intimacies with strangers”, as she describes it in the play) to fill her “empty heart” (Williams 87). In dance critic Sara Veale’s pithy words, we witness Blanche “drowning her sorrows with bottle after bottle and stranger after stranger”. Hendrick sees the sexual encounters, conveyed with a sensual, tactile fluidity, as “the only thing that makes her feel alive” (1:03-1:06). But the garish neon hotel sign accentuates the insalubrious nature of Blanche’s pitiful existence, as well as the impersonal atmosphere of the environment. The scene makes for a drastic contrast to the warmth of the “soft and sprightly” duet for Blanche and Allan back at Belle Reve (Veale). This chapter of Blanche’s life culminates in inappropriate sexual behaviour with a minor, for which she is driven out of town “by a chorus of disapproving, stomping grey people” (Parry). This aggressive crowd is patently devoid of the empathy the creators of the ballet wish us to feel for Blanche.

And so Blanche arrives in New Orleans in the hope of starting a fresh life. Her actions reveal her insecurity: she surreptitiously swigs from a bottle, flirts demurely with Stanley, and takes a bath as if she can cleanse herself of her recent past. But the image that she presents is based on her young affluent life, her upbringing as a Southern belle, and consequently clashes harshly with her new environment. On entering Stella and Stanley’s apartment, she scans the room with visible dismay and swipes the dirt uneasily from her hands. Blanche’s genteel demeanour and the stylish wardrobe she has brought with her belong to the world of her youth, a world to which she retreats to preserve her sense of self-worth and dignity. Towards the end of Act II she wears a deep fuchsia gown, made of heavy silk and covered with rhinestones and diamantes, behind which she can indulge in her memories and in her fantasy world, where she is a gentlewoman of great refinement and respectability, with a host of admirers. Eve Mutso, who created the role of Blanche, comments on the symbolism of the dress: “You can’t see through this dress: it’s a cover; it’s a façade she puts on. And it’s fake” (9:45-9:50).

Guest Principal Ryoichi Hirano & Principal Marge Hendrick in Scottish Ballet’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo by: Andy Ross

Like Blanche, Frida too must begin a fresh life after the accident that creates such a devastating impact on her health. In the hospital interior of Broken Wings’ black cube—white, cold, impersonal— we witness Frida’s despair, the paralysis of her trauma, her physical pain and feelings of hopeless entrapment imposed upon her by the two-dimensionality of her surroundings. But from this clinical environment is born Frida’s life of imagination, as her paintings are brought into three-dimensional life by a group of 11 Male Fridas, sporting billowing full-length ruffled skirts in bright, contrasting colours, inspired by traditional Tehuana dress. Their headdresses include flowers, butterflies, antlers, and the ceremonial resplandor. Through their reference to Kahlo’s self-portraits, such as Self-Portrait with a Monkey (1948), Self-Portrait with a Necklace of Thorns (1940), and Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943), these costumes, designed by Dieuweke van Reij, simultaneously refer to Frida’s iconic dress style and to her phenomenal imagination and talent as an artist. As the Male Fridas swirl and sway with bold lunges and leaps, and expansive leg gestures, they make full use of their skirts, creating a riot of colour and energy, filling the stage with Kahlo’s own peculiar union of masculinity and femininity. Frida now strides purposefully out of the black box, dressed in an orange Tehuana skirt to dance in the same style. She is held aloft by the Male Fridas, dances in unison with them, and boldly leads and directs their movements.

The strength of Frida’s imagination comes to her aid again after she endures a miscarriage, portrayed on stage with a red cord reminiscent of her painting Henry Ford Hospital (1932). Now the cube becomes a blood-bespattered hospital room in which she cowers after her desperate struggle to keep hold of the cord, which is inevitably wrenched from her grasp by one of the Skeletons. But in spite of the pain that engulfs her being, she is distracted by leaves creeping through the gap between the door and frame of the cube, as if they are growing through an open wound, making us think of Roots (1943), in which Kahlo is “stretched out on the ground dressed in her Tehuana costume, with leafy green stems full of sap, emerging from her chest and taking root in the arid, fissured landscape” (Burrus 90). Significantly, this painting, such a rich evocation of rebirth, depicts Kahlo in an orange skirt, the colour of Frida’s skirt in Broken Wings. And indeed the leaves emerge as fantastical creatures, who gradually entice Frida out of the box again.

For both Frida and Blanche fantasy becomes integral to their survival. As an unmarried, unemployed woman with no family apart from her sister, Blanche is both suspect and vulnerable. To survive she needs a husband, so the fantasy she creates about her life is in part to this end, even telling Stanley’s friend Mitch, a prospective spouse, “I don’t want realism … I’ll tell you what I want. Magic!” (Williams 86). Blanche sees Mitch as “a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in” (88). Like the moth, which Williams considered for the title of the play, she avoids the light of reality.

In contrast, the fantasy of Frida’s life is of an entirely different ilk: it is not Kahlo’s way of hiding from the world; rather it is her way of coping with the catastrophes that beleaguer her, making sense of her troubled life through drawing from the treasure trove of her prodigious talent. Kahlo “paint[s] her reality”, as art writer Christina Burrus emphasises by quoting the artist’s own words in the subtitle of her biography of Kahlo: images inspired by bodily and emotional torture share the canvas with symbols of the natural world and the manufactured world. In Broken Wings Frida’s reality is communicated not only through the choreography of suffering, but through her costume based on The Broken Column (1944), in which Kahlo’s damaged body is held together by a brace, and later through the figure of The Deer, who is pierced by an arrow, referring to the 1946 painting The Wounded Deer.

The Presence of death

Just as tragic loss and harsh reality connect Blanche and Frida, so does the constant presence of death.

The Skeletons, present at both the start and end of Broken Wings, make regular appearances throughout the course of the ballet, either actively observing or participating in the action. Ominous though this may sound, and it is ominous, they are often rather comical characters, lounging against the black box in their boredom, playing with a ladder, cavorting with sombreros, mimicking guitar playing; and when they interfere too much, Frida gives them a sharp rap over the knuckles.

This is not only a reflection of Frida’s feisty spirit, but also of her culture. In Mexico death is perceived as a part of everyday life (Burrus 77), and traditions connected to the Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), when people dress up as skeletons and have their faces painted as skulls, are laced with irony and humour (Ward). Having survived polio as a child and escaped the eager clutches of death in her near-fatal accident, Frida seems to have the upper hand over death. At the end of the ballet two of the Skeletons slowly fold the doors of the box shut, and as the brightly plumaged bird bourrées around and around atop the black cube, Kahlo’s own words come to mind: “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away” (qtd. in Almeida).

Reminders of death in Streetcar Named Desire escalate not only through the recurring appearance of Allan in his blood-drenched shirt, but through the lone Mexican Flower Seller from Act I multiplying into a corps de ballet of dark figures carrying flowers for the dead in Act II.

Dance critic Judith Mackrell describes the “horror” of the rape scene in the ballet as “focused not on the act of penetration but on the preceding struggle, during which Blanche is stripped, manhandled and degraded by Stanley to become an abject thing”. That Blanche is stripped is significant: she is robbed of her fuchsia gown, which has enabled her to hide from reality and given her some sense of hope and identity. Now, having been reduced to an “abject thing”, she no longer has the capacity to cope with real life at all. Although Blanche has not experienced a death that takes her physically from this world, this metaphorical death creates the final irreversible rift between herself and the reality of the world around her—a reality that has passed sentence on her but has acquitted her assailant.

Through the vision of Lopez Ochoa, we come to understand how the “tender and trusting” young Blanche becomes the doomed moth of Tennessee Williams’ play.

Equally our eyes are opened to the butterfly that is Frida Kahlo, reborn and transformed in all her glory: vulnerable and ephemeral, but with the capacity for rebirth and transformation through the life of her creations.

Begona Cao as Frida Kahlo and James Streeter as Diego Rivera in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings © Laurent Liotardo

References

Almeida, Laura. “Quotes from Frida Kahlo”. Denver Art Museum, 28 Dec. 2020, https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/blog/quotes-frida-kahlo.

Burrus, Christina. Frida Kahlo ‘I Paint my Reality’. Thames & Hudson, 2008.

Garcia, Peyton. “Inside the Fantastical World of Frida Kahlo”. RED, 8 Apr. 2022, https://red.msudenver.edu/2022/inside-the-fantastical-world-of-frida-kahlo/#:~:text=I%20paint%20my%20own%20reality,of%20Denver’s%20Department%20of%20Art.

Hendrick, Marge. “Scottish Ballet: A Streetcar Named Desire – Becoming Blanche”. YouTube, uploaded by Scottish Ballet, 8 June 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG1aQDZiIFU&t=87s.

Mackrell, Judith. “A Streetcar Named Desire review – erotic and tragic ballet”. The Guardian, 1 Apr. 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/01/streetcar-named-desire-sadlers-wells-scottish-ballet-review.

Mutso, Eve. “Scottish Ballet: A Streetcar Named Desire Uncut”. YouTube, uploaded by Scottish Ballet, 9 Mar. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUT7wJxzxKE&t=592s.

O’Brien, Róisín. “Getting Lost in the Story”. Programme for A Streetcar Named Desire, 2023, pp. 12-16.

Parry, Jann. “Scottish Ballet – A Streetcar Named Desire – London”. DanceTabs, 29 Apr. 2012, https://dancetabs.com/2012/04/scottish-ballet-a-streetcar-named-desire-london/.

Svoboda, Elizabeth. “How a Devastating Accident Changed Frida Kahlo’s Life and Inspired Her Art”. Sky History, 9 Mar. 2022, www.history.com/news/frida-kahlo-bus-accident-art.

Veale, Sara. “Real Magic”. Fjord Review, 2 Apr. 2015, https://fjordreview.com/blogs/all/scottish-ballet-streetcar-named-desire.

Ward, Logan. “Top 10 things to know about the Day of the Dead”. National Geographic, 14 Oct. 2022, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/top-ten-day-of-dead-mexico.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Penguin Modern Classics, 2009.

The 19th Century Canon Now & Then

The 19^th Century Canon Now

Last summer Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) brought their new production of Marius Petipa’s 1869 Don Quixote to London, after it had premiered four months earlier at the Birmingham Hippodrome. With the exception of The Nutcracker, which is pretty much obligatory fare for any major ballet company (as discussed in our very first British Ballet Now & Then post, this was the first work from the 19^th century ballet canon to have been performed by BRB since Carlos Acosta took over as Artistic Director in January 2020. The premiere had originally been planned for the start of Acosta’s inaugural season, but like so many productions had to be postponed due to the Covid pandemic.

Matador Scene featuring Brandon Lawrence as Espada Photo with Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet; photo: Emma Kauldhar

The choice of Don Quixote in favour of any other work from the 19^th century canon was hardly surprising: Acosta himself has been long associated with the role of Basilio. At the age of 17 he won the Prix de Lausanne after dancing Basilio’s Act III variation; he performed the role with the Royal Ballet (RB) in Rudolf Nureyev’s staging mounted by Ross Stretton and then created his own production of the ballet for the Company, now adapted for his own Company.

Like the other 19^th century classics, Don Quixote provides technical challenges for dancers of different ranking, and opportunities for a large cast of performers to engage in different styles: classical, character and mime. Other works in the British ballet repertoire that offer similar opportunities are La Sylphide (Bournonville, 1836), Giselle (Coralli/Perrot, 1841), Coppélia (Saint-Léon, 1870; Petipa, 1884) La Bayadère (Petipa, 1877), The Sleeping Beauty (Petipa, 1890), Swan Lake (Petipa/Ivanov, 1895) Raymonda (Petipa, 1898) and Le Corsaire (Petipa, 1899).

Artists of English National Ballet in La Sylphide, photo: Laurent-Liotardo

Jurgita Dronina and Isaac Hernandez in La Sylphide, photo: Laurent Liotardo

Apart from the fact that these works were all created during the 1800s, when ballet as an art form became more recognisably what we understand as ballet today, with its focus on the female dancer, themes inspired by Romanticism, and development of pointe work and ballets blancs, they are all connected by the fact that they were originally choreographed in France or Russia and “travelled” to this country via various routes (as we will discuss further in the Then section of this post). Although we are sure that you are all familiar with Don Quixote, La Bayadère, Raymonda and Le Corsaire, these works took a number of decades to become established within the British repertoire, being produced in the UK at different times by different companies from 1962 to 2022, and not always in their entirety.

If you follow this blog, you will already know the history of Raymonda in the UK prior to English National Ballet’s evening-length production, which premiered in January last year. Important details for this particular post is the fact that it was Nureyev, just three years after his defection from the Soviet Union, who first staged Raymonda in this country, initially in a complete production for the Royal Ballet (1964), and then as a one-act ballet based on the final act of the work, in 1966. In this form Raymonda can stand on its own as a divertissement within a mixed bill, and between 1993 and 2014 English National Ballet also performed a single-act Raymonda, firstly in a production by Frederick Franklin (the British-American dancer, teacher, choreographer and director), and then, in 1993 in Nureyev’s staging, as part of the Nureyev Celebration, marking 75 years since Nureyev’s birth and 20 years since his death.

Momoko Hirata as Kitri and Mathias Dingman as Basilio, with Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet in Don Quixote; photo: Johan Persson

Similarly, it was Nureyev who first staged La Bayadère in the UK—not in its entirety, but in that superb example of high classicism, the “Kingdom of the Shades”—and who introduced the Le Corsaire grand pas de deux to the British repertory. In 1985 the “Kingdom of the Shades” entered the repertory of English National Ballet in a production by Natalia Makarova, and in 2013 the same company became the only British ballet company to perform the complete Corsaire.

The three most celebrated ballet defectors from the Soviet Union all had a tremendous impact on dancing in the West, but like Nureyev, Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov also had a substantial influence on the expansion of the 19^th century repertoire, by staging major full-length productions for American Ballet Theatre: La Bayadère (Makarova, 1980) and Don Quixote (Baryshnikov, 1978). Relevant for the development of British ballet is the fact that both of these productions were also mounted on the Royal Ballet. While La Bayadère was the first complete version of the work to be performed in Britain (and remains the only full-length production in the UK), Don Quixote has had a far more varied history in this country, including stagings by Ballet Rambert (1962) and by London Festival (now English National) Ballet (1970), both mounted by Polish ballet master Witold Borkowski, in addition to the two more recent RB productions. It seems that it is only since the RB’s staging of Baryshnikov’s version in 1993 that the work has become more firmly established within the British ballet repertoire.

Although these star dancers from the Soviet Union also mounted new productions of 19^th century works already established within the British ballet repertoire (including Nureyev’s Nutcracker for the Royal Ballet in 1968, and Makarova’s 1988 production of Swan Lake for London Festival Ballet), it is noticeable that they focused their efforts primarily on the 19^th century works that they knew from their experiences at the Vaganova Academy and Mariinsky Ballet but were absent from North American and Western European companies. And the newer 19^th century additions to the British ballet repertoire have indubitably enriched our understanding of ballet as an art form, given dancers new challenges and offered audiences both entertainment and food for thought. Don Quixote belongs to a very small number of comedic ballets, and provides a great variety of character and demi-character roles. Le Corsaire is teeming with opportunities for virtuoso male dancers. And can any scene in the ballet repertoire surpass the transcendence of the “Kingdom of the Shades”?

Artists of English National Ballet in Le Corsaire photo: Laurent-Liotardo

Yet even ballet, with its highly stylised technique, and its penchant for magic and fantasy and reputation for escapism, is not immune from the changing attitudes of our Zeitgest. Although ENB’s production of Le Corsaire is little over a decade old, the last time it was performed (at the start of 2020), it came with a caveat from the Artistic Director, Tamara Rojo:

When English National Ballet commissioned its new production of Le Corsaire, we worked to challenge some of the traditions of this work, and therefore made adaptations to tone [down] the characters. We know that still some elements, such as the attitude towards women and other cultures, now seem unacceptable to our values. However, we present this traditional work with the strength of the assumption that the audience has the knowledge and the critical frame of judgement to view them in the context in which they were created.

As explored in our Raymonda post, in her own 2022 production of Raymonda, Rojo was at pains to address conflicts between current attitudes and those prevalent in Petipa’s original production, by offering a heroine with greater agency over her own life, and a reconceptualisation of Abderakhman the Muslim Saracen to address the traditional othering of this character.

The Royal Ballet last staged La Bayadère in 2018. For the most part, as is usual for works that are already established in the repertoire, reviews highlighted the performances of the principals, and as is usual for works which feature major ballets blancs, commented on the unison of the corps de ballet (Desvignes; Hugill; Jennings; Parry). However, both Robert Hugill and Luke Jennings raised concerns regarding Bayadère‘s promotion of orientalist attitudes manifest in “its inanely capering fakirs, lustful priests and blithe appropriation of Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist religious and cultural motifs” (Jennings).

In recent years BRB, ENB, RB, and Scottish Ballet have all made revisions to the choreography, costumes and/or make-up of the Arabian and Chinese Dances from the Nutcracker productions in order to start confronting such offensive stereotypes. But how does a company approach revising a whole full-evening work?

Scottish Ballet Artist Alice Kawalek and First Artist Kayla-Maree Tarantolo in Chinese Tea Dance. Photo credit: Andy Ross

In the United States, Arts Educator and Co-founder of Final Bow for Yellow Face Phil Chan is producing his own versions of Le Corsaire and La Bayadère to make them more suitable and relevant for American 21^st century audiences by addressing what he perceives to be their inherent racism and misogyny. In his plans, Le Corsaire takes place at a beauty pageant complete with “scheming showgirls, gunslinging beauty queens” (Chan), while La Bayadère will feature Hollywood cow girls and references to Busby Berkeley’ oeuvre, as well as a plot line similar to Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952). These ideas may avoid racial stereotyping, but on paper at least they seem to raise other problematic issues. Neither do we understand how the tragic nature of La Bayadère will translate into this new context. Perhaps the productions themselves will transcend their description on paper …

The 19^th Century Canon Then

In the 1920s and early 1930s, when Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois were taking their first steps to establish ballet as a British art form, there was no canon of 19^th century “classics” as we know it today.

So what exactly was the tradition of ballet in 19^th century Britain?

Well, in the 1840s, during the flourishing era of ballet Romanticism, Her Majesty’s Theatre Haymarket became a centre for the art form, with important works being created there by the pre-eminent French choreographers of the day Jules Perrot (co-creator of Giselle in 1841, with Jean Coralli) and Arthur Saint-Léon (choreographer of Coppélia, 1870). These included Ondine, La Esmeralda and Pas de quatre by Perrot, and La Vivandière by Saint-Léon. However, the situation changed radically in the later decades of the century, when music halls and variety theatres, such as the Empire and the Alhambra on Leicester Square, became regular venues for ballet performances, a situation that continued into the 20^th century. Despite the frequency of performances and popularity of ballet in these theatres, the works created specifically for the music halls were short lived, and even the names of the choreographers, such as Carlo Coppi and Katti Lanner, are not generally well known to today’s ballet-going public. Further, these connections to popular theatre meant that the status of ballet as a serious art form was on thin ice, even though versions of Giselle and Coppélia, now generally considered as works of the highest calibre, were staged at the Empire in the 1880s. And when in 1921 Serge Diaghilev mounted his sumptuous production of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, based on Marius Petipa’s 1890 choreography but titled The Sleeping Princess, it was also produced in a music hall setting: at the Alhambra.

SLEEPING BEAUTY, Deanne Bergsma ( as The Lilac Fairy ) ; The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, London, UK ; January 1969 ; Credit: G.B.L. Wilson / Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

When de Valois set up the Vic-Wells Ballet (later to become the UK’s flagship company the Royal Ballet) in 1931, she had a clear vision of the kind of repertoire she considered necessary for a national British company. It consisted of four categories:

Traditional-classical and romantic works
Modern works of future classic importance
Current works of more topical interest
Works encouraging a strictly national identity in their creation generally

(Bland 57)

With both Ashton and herself at the helm creating new choreographies, it is clear how her last three aims might be fulfilled. But of course, what interests us in this post is the way de Valois obtained the “Traditional-classical and romantic works”.

SWAN LAKE ; Nadia Nerina , Shirley Grahame and Doreen Wells ; Choreographed by Ashton and de Valois ; Designed by Hurry ; Music by Tchaikovsky ; the Royal Ballet New Group, at the Royal Opera House, London, UK ; May 1965 ; Credit : G.B.L. Wilson / Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

What we find fascinating is that political events came to de Valois’ aid: like many other figures from the Russian ballet world, the Mariinsky régisseur Nikolai Sergeyev had fled his home after the 1917 Revolution. With him he took scores of 19^th century works in a dance notation system devised by Vladimir Stepanov. These included The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, as well as Giselle and Coppélia; ballets of which de Valois had some, but limited, knowledge (Walker 129). The distinct advantage of mounting the works from the notation scores was of course that it must have given a sense of gravitas to the productions through an authenticity that most music hall productions were unlikely to match, even if that was indeed an aim. Before Sergeyev started to work for de Valois, he had already staged two works in London: Diaghilev’s The Sleeping Princess, and The Camargo Society’s Giselle. However, the work of staging these ballets for de Valois’ fledgling company created a cornerstone of the British ballet repertoire. Further, this process was solidified by Mona Inglesby, founder of International Ballet in 1941, another highly significant figure who promoted 19^th century works in Britain, and for whom Sergeyev worked from 1946 until his death in 1951. Crucially, the company toured these works the length and breadth of the British Isles: from the suburbs of London through the Midlands to Liverpool and Manchester, up to Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and over to Belfast and Dublin. In fact, although the Company folded in 1953, International Ballet was of such significance in its day that it was chosen to appear at the opening of the Royal Festival Hall in 1951.

LA BAYADERE – Dress rehearsal Royal Opera House – Covent Garden November 1963 SIR FREDERICK ASHTON / RUDOLPH NUREYEV and THE CORPS DE BALLETS Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

De Valois’ and Inglesby’s selection of works seems highly interesting to us, because the ballets they produced constituted only approximately one quarter of the works that could have been staged. La Bayadère, Le Corsaire and Raymonda could have entered the British ballet repertoire decades sooner; we might have enjoyed The Pharaoh’s Daughter (Petipa, 1862) and La Esmeralda (Petipa after Perrot, 1886) or the Petipa and Ivanov version of La Fille mal gardée (1885). Both Inglesby and Pavlova before her had made plans to produce La Bayadère, but had reached the conclusion that it was “too old fashioned” (Inglesby 97; Pritchard “Bits” 1121). While Pavlova did mount a version of Don Quixote, according to historian and expert in British ballet history, Jane Pritchard, this also struck audiences as rather dated after Leonid Massine’s Le Tricorne (1919) (Anna Pavlova 112). La Esmeralda also proved enticing to Inglesby, but was rejected as a project by the Royal Opera House (Inglesby 106-107). On other hand, Giselle, Coppélia, The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake all had two distinct advantages: they had already been introduced to the British public, and they all had superb scores (Tchaikovsky was known to have admired the compositions of both Adolf Adam and Leo Delibes) (Pullinger).

RAYMONDA ( Act III ) ; Donald MacLeary and Svetlana Beriosova ( as Jean de Brienne and Raymonda ) ; The Royal Ballet at The Royal Opera House, London, UK ; March 1969 ; Credit: G.B.L. Wilson / Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

In addition to music hall performances of Coppélia at the Empire Leicester Square from the 1880s into the early 1900s, we were also intrigued to discover that in 1890, the same year that Petipa had choreographed the ballet for the Mariinsky Theatre with Carlotta Brianza as Aurora, one of the other Italian ballerinas who starred with the Russian Imperial Ballet, Pierinna Legnani, had danced the same role in a full production at the Alhambra, but to the choreography of Leon Espinoza with music by Georges Jacobi. Further, in the years immediately leading up to the first London season of the Ballets Russes in 1911, the West End evidently became a veritable hive of ballet activity, with appearances from Lydia Kyasht, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Preobrazhenska, Alexandra Baldina, Ekaterina Geltzer, and of course Anna Pavlova. Included in these performances were shortened versions of works that were to become “the classics”: in 1910 Preobrazhenska staged Swan Lake at the Hippodrome, while Karsavina mounted a truncated production of Giselle at the Coliseum. The following year saw the complete Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty Grand pas de deux and a two-act condensed Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House performed by the Ballets Russes.

And what of the ubiquitous Nutcracker? Well, if you have been following British Ballet Now & Then since the start, you will know that the notion of The Nutcracker as a quasi-obligatory Christmas treat is a phenomenon of the later 20^th century. In fact this ballet was not well known in this country before de Valois’ Vic-Wells Ballet staged it in 1934. However, the Nutcracker Suite, which was in fact presented in concert halls before the ballet premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre, was performed in London as early as 1896.

SADLER’S WELLS BALLET – THE NUTCRACKER 1943 ROBERT HELPMANN / MARGOT FONTEYN Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

Ballets Russes audiences would also have known some excerpts, because Diaghilev himself was a great admirer of the score and interpolated some of the numbers into his productions of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake (Newman 20-21).

But you may be asking yourself how La Sylphide became integral to the 19th century canon. The original work by Filippo Taglioni, created for his daughter Marie Taglioni, the most celebrated of Romantic ballerinas, was hugely popular in its day and was performed at Covent Garden only a few months after the March premiere in Paris, 1832. Marie Taglioni also performed it in Russia, where it continued to be included in the repertoire, and was revived by Petipa in 1892. However, it does not seem to have been amongst the works that were recorded in the Stepanov notation, and sometime during the first half of the last century Filippo Taglioni’s choreography was lost, although the Romantic ballet expert Pierre Lacotte did produce a reconstruction of it for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1972. As you probably are aware, the choreography that has been passed down through the generations is the version by August Bournonville, who saw the original production in Paris, but then created his own in 1836. According to Pritchard (who also happens to be one of our favourite dance historians), Marie Rambert, who established the first ballet company in the UK, loved Romantic ballet (“Marie Rambert” 1177). She had become familiar with Giselle during her time with the Ballets Russes, and in 1946 Giselle became the first long work to enter the repertoire of Ballet Rambert (now Rambert). This production was staged with the help of historian Cyril Beaumont, author of The Ballet Called Giselle, first published in 1944, and still available to purchase today. Beaumont devotes a substantial section of his book to La Sylphide, exploring its influence on Giselle in terms of themes, style, technique and structure. The work he discusses is the original Taglioni La Sylphide, which was of course not available for Rambert to stage. Instead, the Bournonville version was staged in 1960, by Bournonville expert Elsa Marianne von Rosen. In contrast to the full-length Giselle and La Sylphide, only extracts from The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake were performed by Rambert. However, Rambert seems to have produced an appetite for Bournonville’s ballet in Britain: Danish ballet master Hans Brenaa was invited to stage a production for Scottish Ballet in 1973; in 1979 the Danish dancer Peter Schaufuss (later to become Artistic Director) mounted his production for English National Ballet; and eventually the Royal Ballet acquired the work in Johan Kobborg’s 2005 staging. Perhaps one factor that contributed to the growing familiarity with La Sylphide of the British ballet audience was the BBC broadcast of the Act II Pas de deux in 1960 with von Rosen herself, followed by a broadcast of the complete work with Ballet Rambert less than a year later. Another factor was undoubtedly Rudolf Nureyev’s performances with Scottish Ballet at the London Coliseum in 1976, in which he danced James at every performance over the course of two weeks.

Concluding thoughts

A brief glance through Instagram leaves us in no doubt about the popularity of the 19^th century canon across the globe. And the importance of the works to the British ballet repertoire cannot be denied: in the 2022-2023 season, in addition to the The Nutcracker, Birmingham Royal Ballet have performed Swan Lake, English National Ballet both Raymonda and Swan Lake, and the Royal Ballet The Sleeping Beauty.

We perhaps think of the classics as being exempt from politics, but this is a fallacy: neither their content nor their arrival to these shores can be said to be divorced from politics. The word “timeless” is also often associated with the term “classics”, but of course the style of performance varies over space and time and our perception of and relationship with the works changes with the Zeitgeist.

Ballet has traditionally been perceived as an ephemeral art form, being handed down by dancers from generation to generation, with limited means for recording the choreography. But today, with the regular use of Benesh Movement Notation and video to record works in their different productions, perhaps we can feel more secure about the preservation of the 19^th century repertoire.

How would you like to see these works preserved? Would you like to see them performed in a style more compatible with the original style, with original choreography restored, as Alexei Ratmansky has done with his productions of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake? Or would you prefer a more experimental approach, in response to a more contemporary world view, such as that proposed by Phil Chan? We would love to hear your thoughts!

We would like to thank our dear friend and colleague Paul Doyle for his help with this post.

Next time on British Ballet Now and Then … Ballet has a reputation for being very gender specific. However, there is a tradition of subverting gender norms in certain circumstances. The Royal Ballet’s recent run of Cinderella has seen both female and male identifying dancers perform the Step-Sisters, while the last time English National Ballet staged The Sleeping Beauty, the cast included a gender-fluid dancer, as well as both male and female performers in the role of Carabosse. So this will be the focus of our next Now and Then post …

References

Beaumont, Cyril W. The Ballet Called Giselle. Dance Books, 2011.

Bland, Alexander. The Royal Ballet: the first fifty years. Threshold Books, 1981.

Chan, Phil. “On Yellowface and a way forward for Diverse Audiences”. One Dance UK, 2020, https://www.onedanceuk.org/resource/on-yellowface-and-a-way-forward-for-diverse-audiences/.

Desvignes, Alexandra. “Marianela Nuñez shines in a star-studded, polished Bayadère at The Royal Ballet”. Bachtrack, 3 Nov. 2018, https://bachtrack.com/review-bayadere-royal-ballet-nunez-muntagirov-osipova-opera-house-london-november-2018.

Hugill, Robert. “Iconic but flawed: La Bayadère the Royal Ballet”. Planet Hugill, 12 Nov. 2018, https://www.planethugill.com/2018/11/iconic-but-flawed-la-bayadere-royal.html.

Inglesby, Mona, with Kay Hunter. Ballet in the Blitz: the story of a ballet company. Groundnut Publishing, 2008.

Jennings, Luke. “La Bayadère review – moonlit heights from Nuñez and co”. The Guardian, 11 Nov. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/nov/11/la-bayadere-royal-ballet-review-marianela-nunez-natalia-osipova.

Newman, Barbara. The Nutcracker. Aurum Press, 1985.

Parry, Jann. “Royal Ballet – La Bayadère – London”. DanceTabs, 6 Nov. 2018, https://dancetabs.com/2018/11/royal-ballet-la-bayadere-london-2/.

Pritchard, Jane. Anna Pavlova Twentieth Century Ballerina,

—. “Bits of Bayadère in Britain”. Dancing Times, vol. no. , 1989.

—. “Marie Rambert”. International Dictionary of Ballet, edited by Martha Bremser, St. James Press, 1993, pp. 1175-77.

Pullinger, Mark. “A step into the world of Tchaikovsky’s ballets: Swan Lake”. Bachtrack, 23 July 2017, https://bachtrack.com/ballet-focus-tchaikovsky-swan-lake-petipa-july-2017.

Rojo, Tamara. “A Word from Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director”. Le Corsaire programme Jan. 2020, English National Ballet, London.

Walker, Katherine Sorely. Ninette de Valois: idealist without illusions. Dance Books, 1987.

Romeo and Juliet On Screen Now & Then

Like many of you, no doubt, we were perplexed when the BBC announced at the start of this year that the Royal Ballet would be staging a brand-new production of Romeo and Juliet.

For one thing, we had already booked tickets for what we understood to be Kenneth MacMillan’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s 1597 play; for another, why on earth would the Company want to stage a different production? At the premiere in 1965, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev evidently received forty-three curtain calls (“The Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet”). Since then the work has been staged regularly, filling the Royal Opera House (we went to the 531^st ROH performance, with the searing Mayara Magri dancing to a packed house). Plus, despite the abundance of balletic Romeo and Juliets performed across the globe, as Emma Byrne of the Evening Standard points out, this adaptation is often considered to be the “definitive” ballet version of Romeo and Juliet.

From 1966 to the present day (Valentine’s Day this year, to be precise) MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet has also been screened in the cinema, on television, and since the 1980s reproduced on VHS tapes, and then DVDs. And this is the topic of our discussion below …

Romeo and Juliet on Screen Now

Unlike the news that the Royal Ballet would be staging a new production of Romeo and Juliet, the announcement that a special screening of the ballet would be live-steamed in cinemas on 14^th February this year came as no surprise: we have become accustomed to live cinema screenings and encore screenings, and Romeo and Juliet seems to be a favourite for this purpose.

When the 2007 recording starring the celebrated dance partnership of Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta arrived in cinemas in 2008, it caused quite a stir, as well as a debate about the advantages of watching ballet in cinemas (Wilkinson). Since then cinema screenings in the arts have become a regular occurrence, not only from the Royal Opera House, but notably from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and from the National Theatre here in London. And no fewer than three live performances of Romeo and Juliet have been screened in cinemas since 2008, featuring the following principals: Lauren Cuthbertson and Federico Bonelli (2012); Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball (2019); Marcelino Sambé and Anna Rose O’Sullivan (2022). Apart from this year’s offering (which will presumably be released in due course), all of these recordings have been made commercially available as DVDs, and all have been directed for the screen by Ross MacGibbon, former dancer with the Royal Ballet, and now a renowned filmmaker, specialising in dance and theatre.

In preparation for this post we studied all of the recordings available on DVD. However, for the purposes of our discussion below we will focus on only one of these recordings. We found it quite tricky to choose, but we decided that the ballet partnership of Rojo and Acosta made a neat parallel with the Fonteyn and Nureyev partnership featured in the Romeo and Juliet on Screen Then section of this post.

By the time of filming, Rojo and Acosta were an established partnership in both the 19^th century classics, particularly Giselle (Perrot/Coralli, 1841) La Bayadère (Petipa, 1877) and Swan Lake (Petipa/Ivanov, 1895), and in MacMillan’s Manon (1974), as well as Romeo and Juliet. Described as taking the Royal Ballet “by storm” when they joined the company (Acosta in 1998, Rojo in 2000) (Guiheen), over time they became known on stage as the “Brangelina of ballet” (Tan). This suggests that although they indubitably did not cause the sensation of Fonteyn and Nureyev (has any couple in the history of British ballet?), they were unquestionably a ballet partnership of glamour, and a force to be reckoned with. Further, they had received outstanding notices for their performances. John Percival, for example claimed that Rojo “must be the best Royal Ballet Juliet for a quarter century or more, since Gelsey Kirkland’s guest seasons”, adding that Acosta was “on equally fine form”, while according to Sarah Crompton, their performances “absolutely gleam[ed] with greatness” (qtd. In “Reviews 2004-2007”). In contrast, with the exception of Bonelli, all of the other protagonists filmed in Romeo are home grown, so to speak, all having had at least some training at the Royal Ballet School; neither were their partnerships celebrated to the same extent. However, by the 2012 Bonelli-Cuthbertson performance, cinema screenings of ballet were well established, and consequently perhaps no longer needed the draw of an international star partnership.

By now you must be asking yourselves about surely the most publicised screening of the ballet in recent years, that is, Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words … which we have of course not forgotten. For their 2019 Beyond Words former Royal Ballet dancers Michael Nunn and William Trevitt held auditions, resulting in the cast being led by two more home-grown talents: Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell. Undoubtedly the reason for the additional publicity was that Nunn and Trevitt produced and directed an adaption of the ballet filmed on location. Their choice of location was the Renaissance backlot of the Korda Studios in Hungary. Constructed for the TV series The Borgias, the backlot is a magnificent and atmospheric set of buildings, courtyards, piazzas, alleys and interiors depicting historical Italy.

Filming the ballet on location was of course not an original idea. As early as 1955, Lev Arnshtam directed the seminal Romeo and Juliet by Leonid Lavrovsky (1940) on location in the Yalta Film Studio. Perhaps more important than this, however, is the film of Shakespeare’s play directed by Franco Zeffirelli. We know that MacMillan had been inspired by Zeffirelli’s 1960 Old Vic staging. Further, the naturalism emphasised by Zeffirelli in his direction leant itself well to an on-location filming, including the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, the streets of the medieval town of Gubbio, and the Basilica of St Peter in Tuscania. Therefore, this way of breathing fresh life into MacMillan’s choreography and bringing the ballet to potential new audiences seemed to us entirely compatible with the choreographer’s own vision for his work.

In all of the recent live recordings the familiar rich colour palette of Nicholas Georgiadis’ designs dominates: deep reds, browns and golds, with injections of white, noticeably in the costumes of the two Lovers. In contrast to this, Beyond Words is altogether brighter and livelier in its initial visual impact, opening as it does on the sun beaming down on a courtyard scene of hens and a dog, a busy servant, and a small child running off on some errand. Juliet’s room is no longer a minimally furnished vast stage space, but a chamber embellished with pale light drapes that let the sunshine in, and filled with various furnishings, including a chest, cushions, a settle, chairs and candles.

MacMillan’s ballet began life in 1964 when he was commissioned to create a short work for Canadian television. This work in fact became the Balcony pas de deux, which MacMillan created on his muses Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable. This duet was the beginning of the full ballet that premiered the following year in London. Given its place both within the narrative and as the culmination of Act I, it is of course one of the ballet’s main climaxes; but for us, the fact that the rest of the work emerged from this pas de deux gives it a special significance.

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East and Juliet is the sun!

(11.2.2-3)

She looks down at the hand that Romeo touched when they first met in the Ballroom, brings her hands together and holds them to her cheek. Again, we hear the voice of Romeo:

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

Oh that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

(11.2.23-25)

In an interview after the Beyond Words premiere, Hayward talked about how important the set was to her understanding and portrayal of Juliet. At the start of the Balcony Scene music we see the Nurse (Romany Pajdak) brushing Juliet’s hair. Juliet seems preoccupied, restless. As she approaches her balcony, we watch her from behind, almost as if we are following her into another world. But the scene is softly aglow with the light of the moon, so there is no sense of Juliet lighting up the darkness; neither are there any noticeable gestures referring to Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo or to Shakespeare’s text. But what we are given here is a sense of being physically present in Verona, as we watch the Lovers through the foliage of the garden. And at the end of the scene not only do their hands touch, but they are able to hold one another’s forearms before letting go again. Although the scene is to us rather less poetic than the stage version, it recreates the sense of realism that MacMillan was so eager to effect in the work—a realism to which we have perhaps become too accustomed to fully appreciate.

At the end of the ballet our minds return to this moment of joy: looking through the grille enclosing the crypt, we witness Juliet’s failed attempt to reach Romeo’s hand. In close-up shot all we can see in the final moments are her hands dangling over the tomb, almost as if they were disembodied. It is well known that MacMillan wanted no sentimentality to be portrayed in this scene: “… the death scene was crucial to Kenneth. His lovers were not reunited in death. They did not die in each other’s arms” wrote Seymour (186). As far as MacMillan was concerned the death of Romeo and Juliet was a complete waste of young life (qtd. in Seymour 186), and this ending seems to us a fitting indictment on all those involved in precipitating the death of the teenagers.

Another memory that Seymour writes about is the now iconic scene where Juliet sits alone and still on her bed in desperation until she resolves to visit Friar Laurence for help with her predicament. Fifty-seven years after the premiere, this is still a suspenseful moment of high emotion in a live performance, a moment when we invariably reach for our opera glasses to experience more intensely Juliet finding a glimmer of hope through her despair. As if mimicking our opera glasses, in both the recordings we’re analysing the camera moves in close, so that we can witness the expressivity of Rojo and Hayward in their near stillness, watch the quickening of their breath, the agitation in Hayward’s face, and the transformation from Rojo’s dark mien to the return of light to her face. Fifty-seven years after the premiere, this must surely still constitute a challenge for the ballerina to project her interpretation of Juliet’s emotions through the most economical of means. Rojo herself states, “The hardest thing is the moment when you sit in bed and you have no movement at all to express your feelings” (“Tamara Rojo on being Juliet”).

Romeo and Juliet on Screen Then

For commercial recordings of Romeo and Juliet from earlier years there is no problem of choice: as far as we are aware, there are only two. These are the film versions made just one year after the creation of the work, starring Fonteyn and Nureyev, and the 1984 recording for BBC television featuring Wayne Eagling and a 21-year-old Alessandra Ferri.

We found comparing the two in terms of visual impact very interesting. Although filmed in Pinewood Studios, there is an attempt to simulate a theatre experience with the opening and closing of the curtains at the start and end of each act, and curtain calls at the end. The film was produced and directed by the film-maker Paul Czinner, and we would guess that the budget was quite substantial. In contrast, the quality of the television film is rather poor, far from the high definition to which we have now become accustomed. Although a sense of opulence is still conveyed with some imagination on the part of the viewer, the television production values are of the time, and we must confess that to us it is rather drab looking. This MacMillan may of course have appreciated in a way, given his love for realism in the theatre.

When booking tickets at the Royal Opera House, we have always preferred to sit on the left side of the auditorium for this ballet, to ensure that we can watch Juliet on her balcony. There seems to be a substantial amount of freedom from performer to performer with regard to how she uses the opening music of this scene, and very likely ballerinas won’t even perform exactly the same movements from one performance to the next; so this is another moment when the opera glasses come out. Ferri appears with an air of blissful restlessness, looking up at the moon, down to her hands, over the balcony and up to the moon again. Leaning her elbows on the balustrade, the most telling moment is when she holds her hands to her cheek, swaying her body gently from side to side with an ecstatic smile on her face. But Fonteyn’s use of this moment of freedom to explore Juliet’s feelings we find almost disconcerting. As in the 2012 and 1984 productions, she emerges from darkness to light up like Romeo’s “bright angel” (Shakespeare 11.2 26, p. 37), after which she gestures slowly upwards with her right arm towards the moon. Although we know the moon to be significant to Shakespeare’s scene, in our opinion the gesture does not reveal much about Juliet’s thoughts and emotions. This was contrary to the intentions of MacMillan, Seymour and Gable who had “tried to find steps and gestures to express the characters’ state of mind” (Parry 279).

(“Romeo and Juliet Masterclass”)

Presumably it was a combination of Fonteyn’s celebrity status and the challenge presented by the innovative choreographic and dramatic ideas conjured up by MacMillan, Gable, and Seymour that persuaded the other Juliets to adopt Fonteyn’s approach to interpreting the choreography and character, resulting in MacMillan’s fear that his vision of the ballet would not be realised onstage (189). However, as the recording of Ferri’s 1984 performance testifies, MacMillan’s fears were ultimately unfounded. The Balcony Scene ends with the Romeo and Juliet straining towards one another in their burning desire to touch one another’s hands just one more time before they part. Ferri’s Juliet sits on the bed facing the audience as Colin Nears’ camera zooms out, thereby emphasising her aloneness in the vast stage space that represents her room. And Ferri, who became such a long-standing interpreter of the role, showed no reluctance in the death scene to allow the weight of her body to hang in a precarious backbend over the sepulchre with no thought to elegance, unable to keep hold of Romeo’s hand. Fonteyn’s Juliet, on the other hand, dies holding onto Romeo’s arm and with her body carefully arranged so we can still see her face, and with little sense of the precariousness that might disrupt the ballerina image.

Ironically perhaps, the Czinner recording states overtly that the purpose of the film is twofold: to preserve the performance for a wider audience and as a record for posterity. For us, however, the importance of the film is not so much in its preservation of the dancing of the two undisputed ballet stars of the era, but the way in which the reluctance of the performers to engage fully with MacMillan’s vision highlight the radical nature of MacMillan’s choreography seen both in performance and in the later films.

Concluding thoughts

References

Guiheen, Julia. “Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta in “Romeo and Juliet” (2007)”. Pointe Magazine, 20 Nov. 2019, pointemagazine.com/tbt-tamara-rojo-carlos-acosta/.

Parry, Jann. Different Drummer: the life of Kenneth MacMillan. Faber & Faber, 2009.

“Reviews 2004-2007”. Tamara Rojo, 7 Mar. 2006, www.tamara-rojo.com/reviews-2004-2007/.

Seymour, Lynn, with Paul Gardner. Lynn: the autobiography of Lynn Seymour. Granada, 1984.

—. “Romeo and Juliet Masterclass: Balcony pas de deux”. Revealing MacMillan, Royal Academy of Dance, 2002.

“Tamara Rojo on being Juliet”. Dance Australia, 26 May 2014, http://www.danceaustralia.com.au/news/tamara-rojo-on-being-juliet.

Wilkinson, Sarah. “Why Watch Ballet on the Silver Screen?”. The Guardian, 15 Aug. 2008, www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/aug/15/whyshouldipaytoseeprerec.

ENGLISH NATIONAL BALLET’S EMERGING DANCER 2022: IN CONVERSATION

At British Ballet Now & Then we have been writing posts on English National Ballet’s annual Emerging Dancer Competition since 2018. To us it seems a really important event. So often we have enjoyed watching the contestants participate in the competition and then seen them develop into versatile artists. Winners that come to mind are Aitor Arieta, Dani Mccormick and Julia Conway. But even participants who do not win any prize seem to gain from the experience. One dancer who fits this description and shines in so many roles is Emily Suzuki. Two years ago in Emerging Dancer she performed the Satanella pas de deux with pristine classical technique, as well as Stina Quagebeur’s moving choreography Hollow. And she has an extraordinary ability to transform herself to dance with utmost conviction in a whole plethora of works in contrasting styles: The Chosen One in Pina Bausch’s visceral Rite of Spring (1975), the gentle Marie in Creature, (Khan, 2021), the enigmatic aura of William Forsythe’s 2016 Blake Works “The Colour in Anything” and the irrepressible exuberance of the “Ratchuli” in Raymonda (Petipa, 1898/Rojo, 2022). This year Emily, like Aitor, Dani and Julia, were promoted, and Emily also won Emerging Dancer at the National Dance Awards.

With the importance of the event in mind, BBNT would like to congratulate all of this year’s six finalists: Matthew Astley, Ashley Coupal, Noam Durand, Chloe Keneally, Eric Snyder and Angela Wood. This year’s winner of the Emerging Dancer Award was Eric Snyder, with Emilia Cadorin as the winner of the Corps de Ballet Award, and Precious Adams winning the People’s Choice Award.

The programme consisted of three 19^th century grands pas de deux (Coppélia, Sleeping Beauty, Paquita) and three duets created specifically for the competition: NEFES by Ceyda Tanc, Cha Cha and Tiara by Rentaro Nakaaki, and Interlude on the Jubilee Line by Hamish Longley.

Lauren: I am ashamed to say that I have not watched Emerging Dancer before …. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this first experience!

Rosie: Well that’s great to hear. Usually I watch this event in the theatre, or at least on the livestream, but this year I wasn’t able to do this, so I cheated by checking out who the winner was. On Instagram there was a short clip of Eric Snyder performing the Prince’s variation from The Sleeping Beauty, and I could immediately see why he had taken the Prize. Then when I watched the full version it simply reinforced those qualities that I had noted in the extract. No matter how virtuosic and demanding, every phrase is completed with extraordinary elegance, as if had been no effort, and presented like a gift to the audience with lovely relaxed hands and arms—this is very important to me as a viewer.

Chloe Keneally and Eric Snyder performing The Sleeping Beauty in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Lauren: And to me, especially for this kind of purely classical role. What I was also thinking about was that Eric’s style seemed very “English” with his clear lines and understated presentation. Yet he’s from Arizona, though he did study at English National Ballet School before joining the Company in 2020.

Rosie: Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and it’s so interesting. We’ve written before about how versatile ENB dancers are in their ability to embody different styles. I also noted the detail in his movement and phrasing and his ease of movement in Cha Cha and Tiara, although it was such a completely different style of moving.

Chloe Keneally performing Rentaro Nakaaki’s Cha Cha and Tiara in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Lauren: This was a really fun piece! Chloe Keneally starting the piece, dancing with no music, was extremely engaging and held my attention. I like that the mood of the piece changed once the music started. When Eric came on stage it made me smile. This was such a charismatic performance with excellent use of facial expressions. I think it was his performance in this piece which ultimately won him the competition.

Rosie: I’d already noted Eric in performance, as well as Noam Durand (in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Laid in Earth), Matthew Astley (for example in Stina Quagebeur’s Take Five Blues) and Angela Wood (particularly in Blake Works). However, I wasn’t familiar with Chloe (even though she was Winner of the BBC Young Dancer Competition in 2019), or Ashley Coupal, so this was especially exciting for me.

Lauren: Chloe and Eric Sleeping Beauty’s pas de deux was my favourite partnering. Not only were they both very spirited dancers, but they also had great chemistry. I was really pleased to see that in her review Vera Liber describes them as a “superlative couple”.

Rosie: Sleeping Beauty was a good choice for Chloe too, I feel. She does have a lovely classical line: no exaggeration—carefully placed arabesques and developpés that create a line through the whole body rather than emphasising the height of the leg (which is something I don’t like in this ballet). And I noted a gentle lilt in her torso as she danced. I think the importance of these qualities for Aurora can’t be overemphasised.

Lauren: Yes, Chloe had a really nice demeanour. I particularly loved her arms—like we were saying before, good port de bras is really important to me, perhaps even my favourite thing about a dancer and something I look for. The feeling in her arms continued right to the ends of her fingertips.

Matthew Astley performing Paquita in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Rosie: Yes, I agree with you about the placement and energy of Chloe’s port de bras. And it did mean that she and Eric complemented one another well. Nevertheless … the couple that for me seemed to have the best rapport were Ashley Coupal and Noam Durand. This struck me immediately in the Coppélia pas de deux. This may have been because of the nature of Coppélia: it’s less formal than Sleeping Beauty, or even Paquita, even though it depends on the same kind of technique. I thought the relationship between them was noticeable in obvious ways—such as taking the time for warm smiles and eye contact, the way they visibly paid attention to one another—but also in the ways in which Noam complemented Ashley’s line so well in the adage; and it’s a really challenging adage with its sustained pointework and promenades—they made it look easy.

Ashley Coupal performing Coppélia in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Lauren: I think line is super important for you, isn’t it? I preferred their performance in the new piece NEFES. They really demonstrated a strong connection here (and I don’t think this was just because they were wearing identical costumes!). There was all the unison, canon, mirroring, both of them dancing with the same dynamics, so a very different kind of working together from classical supported adage.

Noam Durand and Ashley Coupal performing Ceyda Tanc’s NEFES in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Rosie: I found the sensing between them to be almost tangible. They also looked quite different in this work, which I loved. Ashley in particular looked almost unrecognisable (in a good way) because of the way she adapted her style. Very impressive. I’m looking forward to seeing her in future … But let’s talk about the final couple: Angela Wood and Matthew Astley. I think that Angela possesses the kind of breadth and grandeur that Paquita requires. This was also noted by Jim Pritchard in his write-up.

Angela Wood and Matthew Astley performing Paquita in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Lauren: Yes, I agree. For me Angela has an authoritative stage presence that is impressive and captivating. She was particularly good at movements that required sharp dynamics. However, perhaps there could be more contrast for those movements which would have benefited from a softer quality—this would have given more light and shade to her performance.

Rosie: In contrast to Angela, Matthew seemed very buoyant—perhaps accentuated by the sense of ease and ballon in his jumps—he looks at home in the air, although I did also note his use of épaulement and use of the back in his variation. Matthew’s buoyant spirit seemed ideally suited to Interlude on the Jubilee Line, but here I enjoyed seeing a different side to Angela’s dancing: she engaged fully in the playfulness and quirkiness of the choreography.

Lauren: Interlude on the Jubilee Line was a highlight for me. I enjoyed the interviews with the choreographers where they spoke about the inspiration or story behind their choreography, but I didn’t need to hear the explanation for this piece, and as a London commuter myself, I really liked the concept of imaging a relationship growing between two people who initially meet on a station platform. I felt the style of this work really suited Angela. As such, I preferred her performance of this to her classical work. I enjoyed Angela and Matthew’s partnership in this—they had great eye contact throughout the piece.

Rosie: I also thought they both gave the piece a touch of tenderness to reflect the hesitancy of the two characters who have just met … But the highlight of the evening for me was probably Ivana Bueno in Le Corsaire. She was the winner in 2020, and we commented then on how much she had developed as a dancer since she joined the Company. I can give no higher praise than to say she reminds me a bit of Tamara Rojo in this role with the general lusciousness of her dancing, her soft port de bras and seamless, silky turns; they both also convey a sense of enjoyment through their dancing in this role. Ivana was dancing with Victor Prigent who won the People’s Choice Award the same year… I’ve noticed him since then. He has a warm aura, and I particularly liked him in Creature as Creature’s friend. It’s a really important role, because there are not many sympathetic roles in that work.

Victor Prigent and Ivana Bueno performing Le Corsaire in Emerging Dancer 2022 (c) Laurent Liotardo

Lauren: Obviously the Emerging Dancer Competition is primarily about the dancers, but as a first-time viewer, it struck me that it also provides a forum for Company members to explore other talents. This year, for example Rentaro Nakaaki (who I notice himself competed as a dancer in 2019) choreographed Cha Cha and Tiara for Chloe and Eric, while Fabian Reimair composed the score for NEFES. I’m looking forward to seeing next year’s competition to see how it compares. And I’m glad I was able to take part in this conversation and contribute to making a record of Emerging Dancer 2022, as it will be the last competition under Tamara Rojo’s directorship, and we have noticed such a tremendous development in the Company since she took over ten years ago.

Epilogue

As we were completing this post, the news was announced that Tamara Rojo had received an outstanding achievement award for her “ten transformational years as artistic director of the English National Ballet” (Al-Hassan). BBNT would like to congratulate Tamara and thank her for everything she has done for ballet as both dancer and artistic director since she moved to the UK twenty-five years ago.

References

Al-Hassan, Aliya. “Tamara Rojo and James Graham Triumph In Sky Arts South Bank Awards”. Broadway World, 11 July 2022, www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Tamara-Rojo-and-James-Graham-Triumph-In-Sky-Arts-South-Bank-Awards-20220711.

Liber, Vera. “ENB Emerging Dancer Award 2022”. British Theatre Guide, May 2022, www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/enb-emerging-da-mulryan-centre-20919.

Pritchard, Jim. “How Erik Snyder became the English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer 2022”. Seen and Heard International, 25 May 2022, seenandheard-international.com/2022/05/how-erik-snyder-became-the-english-national-ballets-emerging-dancer-2022/.

Spotlight on Tamara Rojo’s Raymonda (2022)

Despite its sumptuous score by Alexander Glazunov, and Marius Petipa’s glorious choreography, the 1898 Raymonda is one of the 19^th century classics that has rarely been performed in its entirety by British ballet companies. Although there is a tradition of staging excerpts from the ballet, generally from the final act wedding celebrations of the eponymous Raymonda, English National Ballet’s announcement of a new full-length production of the ballet came as a surprise to us.

Perhaps one of the reasons this ballet has up until now not joined the list of beloved 19^th century classics in this country is the vagaries of its plot, which has been described as “foolish” (Anderson 64), “senseless” (Tomalonis, “The Mysteries”), “boring” (Sulcas), and “Devoid of suspense and romantic drama, … a mere pretext for a cornucopia of dancing” (Khadarina, “Mariinsky Ballet”). While ballets such as Giselle (Coralli/Perrot, 1841), The Sleeping Beauty (Petipa, 1890) and Swan Lake (Petipa/Ivanov, 1895) can be perceived as divorced from contemporary life, their narratives and choreography are nonetheless replete with symbolic meanings with their tales of betrayal, remorse and revenge to forgiveness, redemption and renewal. Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of English National Ballet, who commissioned Akram Khan’s 2016 reimagining of Giselle, says “The beauty of these classics, whether it’s Giselle or Swan Lake, is that the core theme is timeless, that even though it was specific to that time, it is still relevant today” (01:35-01:53). Evidently the same claim cannot be made in the case of Raymonda.

Tamara Rojo leads a Raymonda rehearsal © Laurent Liotardo

Devised by Countess Lydia Pashkova, a society columnist and novelist, the libretto of Raymonda is a tale of mediaeval romance set in Provence at the time of the Fifth Crusade. The valiant French knight Jean de Brienne, who is betrothed to the Countess Raymonda, slays Abderrakhman, the Saracen rival for Raymonda’s love. From this slight pretext, Pashkova and Petipa created a ballet of three acts made up of multiple tableaux, and famously culminating in the Hungarian style nuptials of Raymonda and Jean de Brienne.

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL BALLET TOUR ; Raymonda ; Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev ; at the New Victoria Cinema, London, UK ; December 1965 ; Credit : G.B.L. Wilson / Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL http://www.arenapal.com

Although, as far as we can tell, the character of Raymonda herself is not based on a real historical, both Raymonda’s fiancé, the French Knight Jean de Brienne, and King Andrei II of Hungary, who attends the wedding, are based on historical leaders of the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221). However, as critic Alexandra Tomalonis points out, it’s not entirely clear what either of these Crusaders or Abderrakhman are doing in Provence, so far from the action in the Middle East (“The Mysteries”). The list of characters attached to the original libretto identifies Raymonda as the “Countess de Doris”, and the action of Acts I and II takes place inside and around the Countess’ castle, before moving to her Fiancé’s castle for the Act III wedding (Pashkova). No parents are listed, but Raymonda does have an Aunt, the Canoness Sybille, and the House of Doris is protected by a mysterious “White Lady”, despite the fact that the name Raymonda itself means “wise protector” (“Raymonda Origin and Meaning”). While some of this is quite confusing, we find it interesting that the House of Doris is indisputably depicted as a matriarchal establishment led by women very aware of their responsibilities.

Where Raymonda’s Aunt and the White Lady are concerned, this notion of responsibility is clearly evident from the start of the ballet. In the opening scene the Canoness Sybille reprimands Raymonda’s attendants for their indolence, warning them against punishment from the White Lady if they do not heed her words and consequently fail in their duties. In the second scene the White Lady reveals the impending danger of Abderrakhman’s arrival to Raymonda in a vision. Of course, far more interesting to us is how the concepts of duty and responsibility manifest themselves in the person of Raymonda herself.

But in a sense, herein lies the problem. Choosing a life partner is the stuff of 19^th century ballet. Raymonda’s predecessors Giselle (Giselle, 1841), Kitri (Don Quixote, 1869), Nikiya (La Bayadère, 1877) and Aurora (The Sleeping Beauty, 1890) all follow the dictates of their heart. Admittedly the results are sometimes disastrous, but at least they have made their own choice. But who chose Jean de Brienne for Raymonda? He is described as her “beloved” (Pashkova 401), and Raymonda is “delighted” at the thought of him (397, 399). On the other hand, she rejects Abderrakhman “indignantly” (399) and “contemptuously” (400), implying a more intense emotion towards the Saracen, despite, or perhaps because of, his “flaming passion” (Khadarina, “Mariinsky Ballet”), “sensual presence” (Smith) and “seductive power” (“Alexander Glazunov”). Does Raymonda seriously feel no attraction towards him? It seems to us, the lady doth protest too much.

Maria Kochetkova and Jeffrey Cirio in rehearsal for Raymonda © Laurent Liotardo

As we were doing our research on Raymonda, watching performances and re-reading the libretto, we were reminded of dance historian Sally Banes’ discussion of Mikhail Fokine’s The Firebird, a ballet which premiered twelve years after Raymonda, under the aegis of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The way in which Banes interprets the contrast between the two female protagonists of The Firebird strikes a chord with us in connection with the two male protagonists of Raymonda.

Here is a tale based on Russian folklore in which the hero Prince Ivan forms relationships with two vastly different female characters: the Princess, or Tsarevna, and the Firebird herself. While Ivan is attracted to both characters, they represent two opposing images of womanhood. Banes describes the Princess in The Firebird as “demure” (97), “nice” (98), “virginal” (98), and “a ‘true’ Russian maiden, an ideal of racial purity and national superiority” (99). In stark contrast, she describes the Firebird as the polar opposite: “oriental, sexual, seductive, both powerful and submissive, she is everything desirable the ‘nice’ Russian Tsarevna cannot be” (98). To us the Firebird seems to fit the mould of the Muslim Abderrakhman, who can be perceived as submissive as well as “oriental, sexual, seductive, … powerful”. In the original libretto, for example, he suffers “despair” at Raymonda’s rejection of his gifts to her (398); he is unable to focus on the stage entertainment, so “lost in dreams of Raymonda” is he (398). Dance writer Oksana Khadarina goes further in her review of Konstantin Zverev’s performance of Abderrakhman, who in his “agonizing heartbreak … was as pitiful as he was poignant, inspiring both empathy and regret” (“Elegance & Exuberance”). An opposing image of manhood is portrayed in the figure of Jean de Brienne. Olga Makarova has described him as “refined and classical”, and it is perhaps the restraint suggested by these words that has caused the phrase “milquetoast lad” to be used as a description of Raymonda’s fiancé (Dix). Would Banes have referred to him as “nice”, like the “‘nice’ Russian Tsarevna” from The Firebird, we wonder? It goes without saying that both Prince Ivan and Raymonda favour the safe option for their marriage partners, that is, the racially pure but bland over the “dangerously attractive” (Sulcas).

So we return to our idea of Raymonda’s sense of duty and responsibility being a problem for us. The patent inevitability of Raymonda’s union with the safe option seems to rob her of personal agency over her own destiny: the lack, or denial, of any attraction towards the incandescent Abderrakhman smacks of docility, even submissiveness. This lack of agency is exacerbated at the climax of the narrative. At this point, far from Raymonda being given a choice (even the choice to marry the partner who has presumably been selected for her), King Andrei insists that the two rivals fight a duel. Khadarina hits the nail on the head: “The winner (Jean de Brienne) gets the fair lady” (“Elegance and Exuberance”). Raymonda may be a countess, but to all intents and purposes, where finding a life partner is concerned, she is reduced to a mere trophy.

RAYMONDA Act lll ; Galina Samsova ; Choreographed by Petipa / Nureyev ; Music by Glazunov ; Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet ; London, UK ; 1984 ; Credit: G.B.L. Wilson / Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL http://www.arenapal.com

Despite all these concerns regarding Raymonda’s lack of agency, we cannot but agree with critic Tomalonis’ assessment of the ballet, after she has analysed the anomalies of the libretto in some detail:

Another way to look at it is that “Raymonda” can be seen as a great gift to us: it’s living dance history. “Raymonda” received its premiere two months before Petipa’s 80th birthday, and everything he knew about ballet and its history is contained in it. (“The Mysteries”)

And here we find another striking connection with Banes’ writing. In her consideration of female agency Banes shifts the focus away from the narrative and “marriage plot” as she calls it, and onto the stage action. Let’s look at what she has to say:

The issue of looking at plot in relation to performance has enormous consequences for interpreting representations of women in choreography. The plot may verbally describe the female character as weak or passive, while the physical prowess of the dancer performing the role may saturate it with agency. Thus, even dances with misogynist narratives or patriarchal themes tend to depict women as active and vital. (8-9)

The opportunity to “saturate” the choreography with agency is particularly noticeable in Raymonda. In his “great gift to us” (Tomalonis, “The Mysteries”), Petipa gave an even greater gift to the creator of the eponymous role, Pierina Legnani, that is, no fewer than five solo variations, suggesting a range of moods, and a complexity and boldness of character belied by the narrative. So now we’re going to outline these dances to give a sense of the richness and variety of Raymonda’s dances and the way in which they provide a platform for a ballerina to display her “physical prowess”. For this outline we’ve used the recording of Sergei Vikharev’s 2011 reconstruction of the ballet for La Scala with Olesya Novikova in the ballerina role, in an attempt to reflect as accurately as possible the original choreography.

The variations start with a pizzicato solo involving lots of pointe work—piqués, hops and brushes—mirroring the delicacy and playfulness of the music. The Scarf Solo (named Fantaisie in the original libretto, and also known as the Harp, Shawl or Veil Solo Variation) is more expansive, incorporating bolder movements, and far-reach leg gestures such as arabesques and developpés, highlighted through the fine articulation of contrasting smaller, subtler movements. The “Dream Scene” solo is characterised by grand legato movements, such as grands ronds de jambe, and a series of renversés travelling across the stage, followed by a closing section of unexpected speed and vivacity. Undisguised virtuosity marks the penultimate solo with its pirouettes, fouettés, piqués turns en dehors and en dedans, and chaînés, with a magnificent highlight of entrechats quatres sur pointe. The final, and most famous, variation oozes virtuosity of a different order, in the sophisticated use of the upper body: the lush épaulement, curves and tilts of the torso, and the fluid rotation of the arms as they carve their way through the various pathways of the kinesphere.

Throughout these dances Raymonda commands the stage, exerting a level of agency denied her by the libretto that bears her name. And now we turn to a third aspect of Banes’ discussion (8-11), one with which we are very familiar, that we wrote about in our first Giselle post, in fact. This is the importance of each individual ballerina’s shaping of the choreography, for example, in terms of rhythm, use of space, line, articulation and dynamics.

To illustrate this idea we have selected a few examples that you can check out online. Two of the Raymondas who caught our eye particularly in the Scarf Variation were Maria Alexandrova and Olga Smirnova of the Bolshoi Ballet. When reviewing Smirnova’s debut, critic Janet Ward marvelled at the “breathtaking” harmony of her movement, created through a combination of “musicality, exquisite line, elegant bearing, supple back, and beautiful arms”. This harmony was unmistakable to us in her performance to Glazunov’s harp music, in her accentuation of classical line in her developpés, arabesques and attitudes, and her use of the veil to complement the purity of her lines. On the other hand, Alexandrova seems to be more playful in her approach to the choreography: she gains visible pleasure from swaying and bending her body, rippling and waving her arms to give life to the scarf, sweeping it close to her face and holding it high with her left hand as she bourrées. Therefore, even through this one single dance, ballerinas are able to make a distinctive impression, telling us something about how they perceive Raymonda as a character.

We have given you examples of Bolshoi ballerinas above because the complete Raymonda hasn’t been performed by a British company since 1964, whereas this Moscow Company has a strong tradition of performing the complete ballet. Happily, however, there is footage available of two exceptionally influential ballerinas in the realm of British ballet dancing the Act III variation. They are Sylvie Guillem, and Tamara Rojo. As in the case of Alexandrova and Smirnova, their individual shaping of the choreography reveals different facets of Raymonda’s persona: while Guillem accentuates Raymonda’s sway over the audience through her expansive use of the kinesphere and impactive phrasing, Rojo creates a sense of mystery and suspense with mesmerising gestures that trace their way through the space more gradually, and keep us guessing when she may deign to bring her movement to a close.

If any of you are still in doubt about the potential power of Raymonda’s choreography, just take a look at the coda to the Grand Pas. Here the ballerina demonstrates her authority through a succession of commanding retirés passés en arrière: tempi, rate of acceleration, rhythm and dynamics vary enormously from dancer to dancer, as do the accompanying port de bras, despite the apparent simplicity of the vocabulary. The radiant energy with which two of our favourite Raymondas, Altynai Asylumuratova and Maria Alexandrova, take charge of the choreography and fashion it to their desire brings to mind the determination, resilience, vision and zest for life that we associate with some of the most celebrated queens of the 12^th and 13^th centuries, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), Berenguela of Castile (1179-1246) and Tamar of Georgia (1166-1213). For us, therefore, despite the ballet’s perplexing scenario, Petipa, Glazunov and the ballerinas bringing flesh to the “skeleton” they created (Banes 9) transform Raymonda herself into a person of prowess in body, mind and spirit.

In 2002 Tomalonis asked the question “Can this story be saved?”. Well, it looks like saved is exactly what it’s going to be.

Prior to the planned premiere in the autumn of last year, Tamara Rojo, who is mounting the new production, had been conducting research in preparation for her production of Raymonda for no less than four years. She had researched not only the ballet itself, but also, in a flight of creative imagination, the life of Florence Nightingale, who has inspired the reimagining of the titular protagonist.

So what do the fictional 13^th century French countess, and the 19^th century English middle-class founder of modern nursing have in common? Well, perhaps the point is that in order to “save” the narrative, Raymonda needs to be seen through a radical new lens. There is no doubt that Florence Nightingale was a woman of high intelligence, extraordinary vision and resilience, willing to take risks in her fierce determination to pursue her vocation; “safe option” was undoubtedly not a phrase in her vocabulary.

Rojo has reconceived Raymonda as a young woman who makes the decision to leave her home in England to become a nurse at the frontline of the Crimean war. Not only is the background of war maintained in this way, but the context facilitates the creation of two contrasting love interests: the English soldier John and the Ottoman Commander Abdur. This Raymonda is described as a “heroine in command of her own destiny” (“Tamara Rojo’s Raymonda”). It is her decision to leave home, to become a nurse, and to become a nurse in a danger zone: we assume that she will also make her own decisions when it comes to affairs of the heart …

Tamara Rojo leads a Raymonda rehearsal with Isaac Hernandez © Laurent Liotardo

We began this post with a conundrum: a ballet with a sumptuous score, glorious choreography, and a highly problematic plot. Rojo recognises this conundrum only too well:

Raymonda is a beautiful ballet – extraordinary music, exquisite and intricate choreography – with a female lead who I felt deserved more of a voice, more agency in her own story (“Tamara Rojo’s New”).

Raymonda by English National Ballet © Jason Bell, Creative Direction by Charlotte Wilkinson Studio

We are looking forward to Raymonda finally joining the canon of beloved 19^th century classics in this country, with a new identity through which the Raymonda of the narrative and the Raymonda of the choreography are reconciled.

References

“Alexander Glazunov ‘Raymonda’ (Ballet in three acts)”. UVisitRussia, https://www.uvisitrussia.com/theaters/theater/mariinsky/mar_raymonda/2015-05-09/19:01/.

Alexandrova, Maria. “Maria Alexandrova – Raymonda”. YouTube, uploaded by BalletForever, 23 Jan. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1adEbQrdGE&t=691s.

Anderson, Zoë. The Ballet Lover’s Companion. Yale UP, 2015.

Asylmuratova, Altynai. “Раймонда фрагменты – Алтынай Асылмуратова”. YouTube, uploaded by Stanislav Belyaevsky & Anastasia Dunets, 19 July 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=AweKN-R9-Dc.

Banes, Sally. Dancing Women: female bodies on stage. Routledge, 1998.

Dix, Laurel. “Raymonda an Exercise in Elegance”. SeattleDances, 9 Aug. 2012, http://seattledances.com/2012/08/raymonda-an-exercise-in-elegance/.

Guillem, Sylvie. “Sylvie Guillem Raymonda”. YouTube, uploaded by braga144 b, 17 Mar. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHZTTYmuCNk.

Khadarina, Oksana. “Elegance & Exuberance”. Fjord Review, 2 June 2020, fjordreview.com/mariinsky-ballet-raymonda/.

—. “Mariinsky Ballet – Raymonda – Washington”. DanceTabs, 28 Feb. 2016, dancetabs.com/2016/02/mariinsky-ballet-raymonda-washington/.

Makarova, Olga. “Alexander Glazunov ‘Raymonda’ (Ballet in three acts)”. Ballet and Opera, 2018, https://www.balletandopera.com/classical_ballet/mar_raymonda/info/.

Pashkova, Lydia Alexandrovna. “Libretto of Raymonda”. A Century of Russian Ballet, edited by Roland John Wiley, Dance Books, 2007, pp. 393-401.

Raymonda. Choreographed by Marius Petipa, reconstructed by Sergei Vikharev, performance by Olesya Novikova, and La Scala Ballet. 1999, Arthaus Musik, 2001.

“Raymonda Origin and Meaning”. NameBerry, 2021, https://nameberry.com/babyname/Raymonda.

Rojo, Tamara. “Tamara Rojo and Akram Khan on this reimagined Giselle”. English National Ballet, 2017, www.ballet.org.uk/production/akram-khan-giselle/.

—. “Raymonda:Tamara Rojo”. YouTube, uploaded by Kabaiivansko2, 8 July 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQxlfxqOtIU.

“Tamara Rojo’s new Raymonda and ENB in 2020-2021”. Seen and Heard International, 30 Jan. 2020, seenandheard-international.com/2020/01/new-tamara-rojos-new-raymonda-and-enb-in-2020-2021/.

“Tamara Rojo’s Raymonda shortlisted for the FEDORA VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Prize for Ballet 2021”. English National Ballet, 2 Feb. 2021, www.ballet.org.uk/blog-detail/tamara-rojos-raymonda-fedora-prize-2021/.

Smirnova, Olga. “Olga Smirnova – Raymonda Act I”. YouTube, uploaded by BalletForever, 9 Jan. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAPL7bO1J1E&t=260s.

Sulcas, Roslyn. “Saracens, Hungarians and Knights who just happen to be in Provence”. New York Times, 2 Dec. 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/dance/03raym.html.

Tomalonis, Alexandra. “Can this story be saved?”. Ballet Alert!, 6 Mar. 2002, balletalert.invisionzone.com/topic/1903-can-this-story-be-saved/.

—. “The Mysteries of ‘Raymonda’”. Danceviewtimes, 9 Mar. 2016, www.danceviewtimes.com/2016/03/the-mysteries-of-raymonda.html.

Ward, Janet. “Olga Smirnova Debuts in Raymonda at the Bolshoi Ballet”. Bachtrack, 15 Feb. 2016, bachtrack.com/review-raymonda-smirnova-bolshoi-ballet-new-stage-moscow-february-2016.

English National Ballet Now & Then

Introductory thoughts

English National Ballet dancers take a bow at the end of Etudes part of the 70th Anniversary Gala (C) Piers Allardyce

If you are a regular reader of British Ballet Now & Then, you will know that what we offer here is a personal perspective on British ballet based on our own experiences of watching various British ballet companies over the years, and in some cases over a number of decades. Inevitably, therefore, readers will notice lacunae in our discussion of English National Ballet (ENB) now & then (and please feel free to object!), but part of what makes this particular post so personal to us is the selection of directors, dancers, and repertoire that are alive in our memories and consequently form the foundation of our tribute to the Company in its 70^th anniversary year.

For our Now section we are focussing on the period from 2012, that is, the period of Tamara Rojo’s directorship, as the steady realisation of her vision for the Company has already had a significant impact on both ENB itself and on ballet as an art form in Britain.

ENB Now

It comes as no surprise to us that as a director Rojo has a very clear vision for her company. After all, as a ballerina she has always expressed exceptional vision, demonstrated in the distinctive way in which she shapes her articulation of choreography and character. This is evident in recordings of her work portraying a gamut of complex characters, from Marius Petipa’s Nikiya (La Bayadère, 1877), Kenneth MacMillan’s Juliet (1965) and Manon (1974) to Ashton’s Isadora (1976) and Akram Khan’s Giselle (2016). Rojo’s distinctiveness, the intensity of her commitment to performance and dramatic cogency in her repertoire, has been commented on by critics including Zoë Anderson, Sarah Crompton, Luke Jennings (“Step into the Past), and Judith Mackrell (“Giselle”). These qualities seem to us to be integral to what dance writer Graham Watts describes as being “possessed of an exceptional independence of spirit and a remarkable enquiry into [her] art”.

As expressed in their 2017-2018 Annual Review, ENB aims to “develop the art form of ballet by commissioning new choreography, design and musical composition as well as cherishing the classical repertoire” (5). So let’s have a look at how ENB’s choice of repertoire reflects these aims …

Rojo’s very first season as Artistic Director opened with Kenneth MacMillan’s production of The Sleeping Beauty, which had been in repertoire since 2005. The Sleeping Beauty is widely perceived as the pinnacle of classical ballet (Dodge; “The Sleeping Beauty Live”; Speer), and indeed, when we witnessed its revival in 2018 with Jurgita Dronina in the title role, it did indeed look “cherished”, as also attested by the critics (Anderson; Gilbert; Jennings “English National Ballet”). Something that is very noticeable about the 19^thcentury repertoire when performed by this company is the attention paid to stylistic detail, with the result that each work makes a quite different visual impact, as we have written about previously. In our view this makes for extremely satisfying watching: not only is there a visible distinction between Romantic and classical styles, but even within those eras, there is clear differentiation between the specific articulation of the choreographies. For example, dance writer Judith Mackrell highlights some of the key features of Bournonville’s style in Isaac Hernández’ “beautifully filleted beats and bounding jetés” as James in La Sylphide, and in the way in which Daniel Kraus as Gurn “joyously embod[ies] the mobile twists and turns of Bournonville’s épaulement” (“Song of the Earth). In contrast, Giselle is distinguished by the careful schooling of the corps de ballet in the 19^th century French style “as is apparent in their softly rounded arms and restrained line” (Jennings “Giselle Review”), while performances of the Russian Imperial Sleeping Beauty “evince …an absolute commitment to classical style and stage manners …You can see the concentration on the placement of arms and shoulders, on the expressiveness of wrists and hands, on the line of the neck and precise direction of gaze” (Jennings “English National Ballet”).

ENBS students peform La Sylphide as part of ENB’s 70th Gala (c) Bill Cooper

Like The Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire was choreographed by Marius Petipa for the Russian Imperial court. But unlike The Sleeping Beauty, which holds a special place in British ballet history, the complete Le Corsaire is a recent addition to the British repertoire, having been staged for the first time in this country by English National Ballet in 2013. And unlike The Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire requires the kind of extravagant bravura in both classical and character dancing that is not generally associated with English style ballet. Yet the Company has risen to this challenge with great spirit and self-assurance. This was noted in reviews (Byrne; Gilbert; Winship), as well as in our own “In Conversation” post. Emma Byrne’s headline description “A swaggering, bravura spectacle” already conveys a strong sense of the dancers’ bold commitment to the style, as does Jenny Gilbert’s rendition of Jeffrey Cirio’s Ali, who “wins the biggest cheers of the night for his aerial fireworks, explosive energy following through to the tips of his fingers”. We found it fascinating to discover as part of our research that ENB President Beryl Grey had discussed her thoughts on the Russian tradition of performing as part of her “Desert Island Discs”. These thoughts were based on her first-hand experiences of dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet (more of Beryl Grey in the “Then” section of this post):

The dancers, they lived every single small role up to the biggest role … And I think you have in the Russian dancers this tremendous capacity to make believe. And they’re never embarrassed – the ones I worked with anyway were never embarrassed – whereas, in England … in my days one sort of half acted … until the performance … but in Russia every single rehearsal was full out, like a performance, and they actually get into the roles and live them truly. (31:12-32:13)

Let’s turn to Jenny Gilbert once again to reaffirm the achievement of ENB in this ballet, and make a connection between their physical commitment to the style and Grey’s description above:

The plot [of Le Corsaire] is, frankly, ridiculous … It’s the sort of hokum it normally takes a Russian company to bring off, but English National Ballet meets the challenge with a swagger in its revival of Anna-Marie Holmes’s 2013 production.

So while the collection of works itself is of course significant, the understanding of style conveyed through the performance of those works demonstrates a commitment to “cherishing” the choreography rather than simply maintaining the works within the repertoire. Jennings attributes this commitment to Rojo and her teaching staff (“English National Ballet”), as do we ourselves, having had the opportunity to watch her in rehearsal as well as in performance. Further, one of the benefits of the Covid-19 lockdown seems to have been an increased number of opportunities to hear discussions with Rojo on various aspects of her professional life as both director and dancer. From one of these discussions we are given an insight into Rojo’s hunger for knowledge and understanding, and her creative thinking in the face of adversity:

One thing that I thought was a negative when I was young has turned out to be a great positive … I did not come from any consolidated, respected ballet school: I did not come from Paris Opera, from the Bolshoi, from the Mariinsky, from the Royal Ballet School. And I always felt that I did not belong to one particular school and that that was a minus. But in a way that actually was a huge plus, because first of all it gave me this imposter syndrome that meant that I kind of researched like a crazy person every aspect of each style, feeling that I had to do extra work because I wasn’t part of it. (“Tom and Ty Talk 23:12-23:58”)

As for ENB’s aim to develop the art form of ballet, there is ample evidence of this. Amongst the names of choreographers who have created new work for the Company are William Forsythe, Akram Khan, Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa, Russell Maliphant and Yabin Wang, all of whom have demonstrated challenges to traditional ballet in their commissioned works for ENB. This is completely in line with Rojo’s vision for her Company, her belief in ballet as an art form and her dedication to its continuing relevance.

English National Ballet in Playlist (Track 2) as part of the Company’s 70th Gala (c) Bill Cooper

There is no doubt in our minds that the jewel in the crown of ENB’s new repertoire since 2012 is Akram Khan’s Giselle. In an interview with Keke Chele of JoBurg Ballet, Rojo explained her decision to commission Akram Khan to reimagine the canonical Giselle:

I’ve always been fascinated by ballet history, and in my opinion it has been when our artform has been “polluted” (like the traditionalists would say) by other types of dance, whether that was folklore or musics that were not considered proper for ballet, or themes, you know like when Kenneth MacMillan started to introduce Manon, Mayerling, or you know, by different, like cross-fertilisation, is when I think cultures become better and arts become better, and that was my motivation to bring Akram. This is an exceptional artist that I’ve admired for many years, that I’ve seen so many of his shows that had such capacity for story-telling and such strong technique of his own, that was kathak and contemporary, that I knew that he will understand an art form that is equally demanding in technique – the classical technique of ballet – but also that in itself it is a language to tell stories. (“JoBurg Ballet Off Stage” 18:00-19:04 )

English National Ballet in Dust by Akram Khan © Bill Cooper

What we find extraordinary about Rojo is the way in which her insight into ballet history has driven her decisions as Artistic Director. In her intrepid interrogation of ballet and its potential, she seems to have revived the spirit of Serge Diaghilev, the redoubtable impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, whose leadership and exceptional vision engendered such radical but enduring works as Bronislava Nijinka’s Les Noces (1923) and George Balanchine’s Apollo (1927).

Fabian Reimair and Tamara Rojo in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings part of English National Ballet’s 70th Anniversary Gala (c) Laurent Liotardo

ENB Then

We first encountered the Company in the 1970s. Some of the ballets we saw in the late 1970s and early 1980s have made an enduring impression on us. We can still remember the curtain rising on the white opening tableau of Les Sylphides (Fokine, 1909) and the hushed atmosphere as the dancers seemed to float downstage. The great Danish mime artist Niels Bjørn Larsen was unforgettable in his charismatic rendition of Madge in La Sylphide (Bournonville, 1836), as was the verve of the corps de ballet in the reel, and the poignancy of Eva Evdokimova’s Sylphide as her sight fails before her death. And what a thrill was Etudes (Lander, 1948) with its seemingly inexorable build-up to the final climax and its sense of competition between the male dancers, particularly when performed by such brilliant virtuosi as Peter Schaufuss, Patrice Bart and Patrick Armand.

But in addition to the imprint these works made on our memories, within this tiny selection of repertoire we can see two distinct trends in the repertoire of London Festival Ballet: the highlighting of the Romantic heritage, and the connection with Danish ballet tradition – trends that Jane Pritchard, Archive Consultant to ENB, has drawn attention to. This is also borne out by lists of repertoire in programmes from the 1950s and early 1960s. These included Anton Dolin’s production of Giselle (Coralli/Perrot, 1841) and his reconstruction of Pas de Quatre (Perrot, 1844); the final act of Bournonville’s Napoli (1846) and the pas de deux from his 1858 Flower Festival in Genzano; and from 1909 and 1910 Fokine’s evocations of the Romantic era – Les Sylphides and Le Spectre de la rose.

PAVLOVA on TV Alicia Markova and Milorad Miskovitch dancing Giselle – January 1956 Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

As we wrote in our first Giselle post, Alicia Markova, who established the Company in 1950 with Anton Dolin, also performed the eponymous heroine in the first British production of the ballet in 1934, after which she became associated with the ballet through the course of her career. Dolin’s production of the ballet was one of the first complete 19^th century works to be mounted by Festival Ballet, and according to Pritchard, Markova’s initial involvement in the Company was dependent on having a new production of Giselle created specifically for her, thereby placing this work “at the heart of” ENB. Mary Skeaping’s 1971 staging, commissioned by Beryl Grey, was an extremely important production due the intensive historical research Skeaping had undertaken, which in our opinion gives the ballet more dramatic cogency, as well as a vivid sense of Romantic ballet style. This, our favourite production of Giselle, has been performed by the Company with luminaries of the stature of Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia Makarova, and still receives excellent notices (Crompton; Jays; Watts “English National Ballet’s Exceptional”; Watts “Review”).

GISELLE Alicia Markova and Michael Somes Sadler’s Wells Ballet Royal Opera House – Covent Garden London – 1948 Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

The first time Markova performed in Fokine’s Les Sylphides, his tribute to la danse ballonnée, she was only 15 or 16 years old. However, only six years later, and only two months after her debut with the Company in 1932, she mounted the ballet for the Vic-Wells (later Royal Ballet) (Bland 30). Subsequently Markova staged further productions: for American Ballet Theatre (1964), Northern Ballet Theatre (1979), and for our present discussion most importantly her 1976 staging for London Festival Ballet. Although we never saw Markova perform, Rosie has a memory of a photograph of Markova in Les Sylphides from her very first ballet book (which she still possesses), The Girls’ Book of Ballet by A. H. Franks, and was always struck by a quote from Markova about her relationship with the audience: “I do not try to reach out to them; I draw them in to me” (60). In a way Markova continues to draw people to her through recordings of her performances in Giselleand Les Sylphides – recordings originally made in the early 1950s that therefore suggest the importance of these ballets for her career. In fact, the 1951 film of Giselle, with Dolin as Albrecht, is also significant as the oldest surviving recording of English National Ballet.

Therefore, in our minds, through Alicia Markova, Beryl Grey and Mary Skeaping, English National Ballet is undeniably a curator of Romantic style repertoire. As if to emphasise the importance of Romantic themes in the repertoire, Giselle was sometimes performed in a double bill with Le Spectre de la rose, as in the 1976 London Coliseum spring season.

BBC T.V. – LES SYLPHIDES – April 1953 Production and Rehearsals ALICIA MARKOVA / JOHN FIELD Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL Les Sylphides La Sylphide http://www.arenapal.com

In the early years, the Danish tradition was represented by the two dancers Flemming Flindt and Toni Lander, both of whom had trained at the Royal Danish Ballet School before being accepted into the Copenhagen company. Additionally, in 1955 Lander’s husband Harald staged his work Etudes, which was chosen as the climax to the 70^th Anniversary Gala performances, having become a signature ballet for the Company with a total of over 700 performances over the years. Another delicious nugget of information we uncovered was that it was Harald Lander who mounted ENB’s first Coppélia. This was a re-staging of the Danish production first performed in 1896 and “carefully preserved” first by Ballet Master Hans Beck and later by Lander himself (Hall 57).

In the 1970s and 1980s Festival Ballet’s connection with the Romantic and Danish traditions was consolidated and enriched through the dancer and director Peter Schaufuss. Son of two Royal Danish Ballet dancers, and another graduate of the Royal Danish Ballet School, Schaufuss danced with the Company for much of the 1970s and into the early 1980s before becoming Artistic Director. In 1978 he mounted his production of La Sylphide for the first time, with the exquisite and ethereal Eva Evdokimova, renowned for her portrayal of Romantic roles, in the eponymous role, and the supreme Niels Bjørn Larsen as Madge. Ten years later he bestowed another jewel from the Danish tradition on the Company: Bournonville’s three act Napoli (1842).

SLEEPING BEAUTY – ACT II (The Vision) 1946 MARGOT FONTEYN / BERYL GREY Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL http://www.arenapal.com

In our very first British Ballet Now and Then post we explored how The Nutcracker (Ivanov, 1892) became a family Christmas tradition in this country, largely through the work of ENB, who began performing it in its very first season. By the time Grey took over as Artistic Director in 1968, the Company were also performing full-length productions of The Sleeping Beauty (Petipa, 1890) and Swan Lake (Petipa/Ivanov, 1895). London Festival Ballet programme notes from 1976 emphasise Grey’s involvement in new productions of these works for the Company.

SWAN LAKE, Photocall, Bryan Ashbridge and Beryl Grey, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, UK, May 1960, Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL http://www.arenapal.com

It seems that just as Markova had a special relationship with the ballets Giselle and Les Sylphides, Grey had a special relationship with the ballet Swan Lake, not only due to the extraordinary fact that she performed the dual role of Odette/Odile for the first time on her fifteenth birthday, but also because she was the first Western ballerina to dance in Soviet Russia and in Beijing, and danced this ballet on both occasions.

SLEEPING BEAUTY rehearsal March 1959 Sadler’s Wells Ballet – Covent Garden Beryl Grey / Caj Selling with Errol Addison Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

Grey had been a ballerina with the Royal Ballet and performed the Lilac Fairy to Margot Fonteyn’s Aurora at the famous reopening of the Royal Opera House after World War II. Although Ninette de Valois evidently told Grey she would never dance Aurora as she was “far too tall to manage the attitude balances” of the “Rose Adagio”, Grey was determined to prove her wrong, and in fact she performed the role towards the end of that same season, just after her nineteenth birthday (Grey 51, 54). When Grey performed in China, she also took the opportunity to assist in staging The Sleeping Beauty (195). Although Grey first danced Giselle as a sixteen-year-old, and also performed the role in the Soviet Union, she is perhaps more associated with the character of Myrthe, which she danced to Fonteyn’s Giselle. We loved the discovery that Grey performed the Queen of the Wilis when Markova and Dolin danced in Giselle at the Royal Opera House in 1948, bringing these three key figures together on the stage. In the same year Swan Lake was added to the repertoire at Covent Garden. In her autobiography Grey expresses her excitement at the prospect of dancing her favourite role on the Royal Opera House stage (68).

SWAN LAKE – February 1959 Music: Tchaikovsky Royal Ballet – Covent Garden Beryl Grey and Caj Selling Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

No doubt we take it for granted that the London Coliseum is a major venue for English National Ballet. However, it was not until Grey’s tenure as Artistic Director that the Company started to perform regular seasons there. Having first-hand experience of The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and Swan Lake in large-scale productions at the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera House New York and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Grey understood the power of these ballets for the audience, and their importance for the prestige and development of a company. Therefore, negotiating seasons at the Coliseum where spectacular productions could be presented in an appropriately lavish environment seems like a significant step to us.

As performers, Alicia Markova, Beryl Grey and Peter Schaufuss were all international stars, intrepid individuals who went on to shape the repertoire of ENB by incorporating and highlighting specific traditions associated with their prestigious dancing careers, thereby contributing to the Company’s distinctive identity. In addition, as directors, Grey and Schaufuss launched major initiatives to bring a greater stability and sense of permanence to the Company: Grey secured Markova House as the Company’s first permanent home in 1976, while twelve years later Schaufuss, coming from one of the oldest ballet schools in the world, established English National Ballet School.

PAVLOVA on TV. Alicia Markova dancing Giselle – January 1956 Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL

Concluding Thoughts on ENB Now and Then

In 1993 Pritchard wrote: “English National Ballet has never been a notably innovative company determined to challenge its audience” (450). Sixteen years later Sanjoy Roy made a similar comment, but framed it in more specific terms, portraying the decision not to challenge audiences as a pragmatic choice: “Like many other big ballet companies, ENB is cautious about programming too many modern works in case it loses audiences”.

In January 2020 however, at the English National Ballet Gala Celebration, the Company that we witnessed hardly seemed to be “cautious about programming” or unwilling to “challenge its audience”. The celebration garnered glowing reviews attesting to both the strength and vigour of the dancers, and the diversity and richness of the repertoire (Gaisford; Guerreiro; Watts; Weiss). For us the Gala marked not only seventy years of Company history, but also over seven years of Tamara Rojo’s leadership. We not only witnessed a company at the top of its game, but were excited about the inventive and well-laid plans for the future, as ENB entered a new phase of development with brand new purpose-built premises.

As we all know, the year has not gone to plan for any of us. Nonetheless, with its forthcoming digital season, including works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant and Stina Quagebur, it would be difficult to recognise the Company in its current form from the words of Pritchard and Roy. In our opinion it has now evolved into an innovative company that frequently challenges its audiences with unfamiliar movement and music styles, and subject matter, while still “delighting them with the traditional” (English National Ballet 4). And in keeping with the optimism of their new address on Hopewell Square, we believe that ENB will continue to fulfil its vision of “celebrat[ing] the tradition of great classical ballet while embracing change, evolving the art form for future generations and encouraging audiences to deepen their engagement” (5).

Next time on British Ballet Now and Then … This season English National Ballet planned a restaging of Marius Petipa’s 1898 Raymonda based on a retelling of the narrative with Florence Nightingale at its heart. In response to this we will consider how British ballet choreographers and directors have ensured the continuing relevance of ballet as an art form.

References

Anderson, Zoë. “Marguerite and Armand”. Independent, 13 Feb. 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/marguerite-and-armand-the-royal-ballet-sergei-polunin-and-tamara-rojo-royal-opera-house-london-8492773.html. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

Bland, Alexander. The Royal Ballet: the first 50 years. Royal Opera House, 1981.

Brown, Ismene. “Rojo is Queen of the Swans”. The Telegraph, 29 Nov. 2002 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/3586430/Rojo-is-queen-of-the-Swan-Queens.html, . Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

Byrne, Emma. “English National Ballet/Le Corsaire review: A swaggering, bravura spectacle”. Evening Standard, 9 Jan. 2020, English National Ballet/Le Corsaire review: A swaggering, bravura spectacle. Accessed 9 Aug. 2020.

Crompton, Sarah. “Review: Giselle (English National Ballet, London Coliseum)”. WhatsOnStage, http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/reviews/giselle-english-national-ballet-coliseum_42636.html. Accessed 15 Aug. 2020.

—. “Radiant Rojo Brings Fairytale Alive”. The Telegraph, 13 Nov. 2006, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/3656529/Radiant-Rojo-brings-fairytale-alive.html. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

“Desert Island Discs: Dame Beryl Grey”. BBC Radio 4, 10 Mar. 2002, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0094805. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.

Dodge, Laura. “Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty – a lavish production of a magical fairy tale. bachtrack, 20 Oct. 2013, https://bachtrack.com/review-oct-2013-birmingham-royal-ballet-sleeping-beautny-sadlers-wells. Accessed 7 Aug. 2020.

English National Ballet. Annual Review 2017-2018. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

Franks, A. H., The Girls’ Book of Ballet. Burke, 1960.

Gaisford, Sue. “English National Ballet 70th Anniversary Gala, Coliseum review – a fine celebration. The Arts Desk, 22 Jan. 2020, https://theartsdesk.com/dance/english-national-ballet-70th-anniversary-gala-coliseum-review-fine-celebration. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

“Giselle recording with Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin”. YouTube, uploaded by English National Ballet, 16 Jan. 2017, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HnNXvF0Kn0&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 18 Sept. 2020.

Gilbert, Jenny. The I newspaper, 9 Jan. 2020, https://inews.co.uk/culture/arts/le-corsaire-london-coliseum-review-this-flamboyant-ballet-is-a-tonic-for-the-january-blues-english-national-tickets-383518. Accessed 9 ug. 2020.

Grey, Beryl. For the Love of Dance. Oberon, 2017.

Guerreiro, Teresa. “ENB’s anniversary gala review”. CutlureWhisper, 18 Jan. 2020, http://www.culturewhisper.com/r/dance/english_national_ballet_anniversary_galas_coliseum/14791 Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

Hall, George A. London’s Festival Ballet Annual 1956-57. Gray’s Inn Press, 1957.

Jays, David. “Giselle review – Alina Cojocaru is sublime in signature role”. The Guardian, 12 Jan. 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jan/12/giselle-coliseum-london-english-national-ballet-review-alina-cojocaru. Accessed 15 Aug. 2020.

Jennings, Luke. “English National Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty review – a way with the fairies”, The Guardian, June 2018, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jun/10/english-national-ballet-sleeping-beauty-review-alina-cojacaru. Accessed 7 Aug., 2020.

—. “Giselle Review – Xander Parish Steals the Show”. The Guardian, 22 Jan. 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jan/22/giselle-review-english-national-ballet-coliseum-xander-parish-laurretta-summerscales. Accessed 7 Sept. 2020.

—. “Step into the Past”. The Guardian, 12 Mar. 2006, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/mar/12/dance. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

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Pritchard, Jane. “English National Ballet”. The International Dictionary of Ballet, edited by Martha Bremser, St James Press, 1993, pp. 450-5.

Mackrell, Judith. “Giselle”. The Guardian, 15 Jan. 2004, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2004/jan/15/dance. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

—. “Giselle- a Romantic Ballet”. English National Ballet, Programme, Belfast, 2017.

—. “Song of the Earth/La Sylphide review – Rojo powers a demanding double bill”. The Guardian, 10 Jan. 2018, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jan/10/song-earth-sylphide-review-coliseum-london-english-national-ballet-rojo. Accessed 7 Sept. 2020.

Roy, Sanjoy. “Step-by-step guide to dance: English National Ballet”. The Guardian, 16 Jun. 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/jun/16/guide-dance-english-national-ballet. Accessed 16 Sept. 2020.

“THE SLEEPING BEAUTY LIVE from the Royal Ballet”. YouTube, uploaded by More2Screen, 8 Nov. 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuncvxSDIiY&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 7 Aug. 2020.

Speer, Dean. “Pacific Northwest Ballet: the pinnacle”. CriticalDance, 2 Feb. 2019, https://criticaldance.org/pacific-northwest-ballet-pinnacle/. Accessed 7 Aug. 2020.

“‘Les Sylphides’ Part 1”. YouTube, uploaded by John Hall, 31 Aug. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKyGBbYNXs. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

“‘Les Sylphides’ Part 2”. YouTube, uploaded by John Hall, 31 Aug. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AelTZYoc2_U&t=44s. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

“Tom and Ty Talk: ‘Ballet is honest’ with Tamara Rojo”. Tom and Ty Talk, 19 June 2020, https://pod.co/tom-and-ty-talk. Accessed 19 July 2020.

Watts, Graham. “English National Ballet’s Exceptional Giselle”. Backtrack, 14 Jan. 2017, https://bachtrack.com/review-giselle-skeaping-cojocaru-english-national-ballet-coliseum-london-january-2017. Accessed 15 Aug. 2020.

—. “Review – English National Ballet – Giselle – London Coliseum”. Londondance, 23 Jan. 2017, http://londondance.com/articles/reviews/english-national-ballet-giselle-london-coliseum-1/. Accessed 15 Aug. 2020.

—. “Review: Royal Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – Royal Opera House”. Londondance, 24 Feb. 2014, http://londondance.com/articles/reviews/royal-ballet-sleeping-beauty-2014/. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

—. “A roller-coaster of diverse dance as English National Ballet celebrates its 70th anniversary”. Bachtrack, 19 Jan. 2020, https://bachtrack.com/review-english-national-ballet-70-anniversary-gala-coliseum-london-january-2020. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

Weiss, Deborah. “English National Ballet – 70th Anniversary Gala – London”. DanceTabs, 20 Jan. 2020, https://dancetabs.com/2020/01/englishnational-ballet-70th-anniversary-gala-london/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

Winship, Lyndsey. “English National Ballet: Le Corsaire review – firecracker dancing”. The Guardian, 9 Jan. 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jan/09/english-national-ballet-le-corsaire-review-firecracker-dancing. Accessed 9 Aug. 2020.

Ballet at War Now & Then

Art does help you process; it does help you see your own situation from a different point of view; it does help you either process that situation or actually distract from that situation, which is equally valid. Fantasy is again another of those human necessities, and to be able to disappear in an alternative reality is, I think, now certainly needed.

(Tamara Rojo “The Art of Empathy” 13:25-14:22)

Ballet at War Now

Early 2020 was truly auspicious for British ballet. It began with Northern Ballet’s 50^th Anniversary Celebration Gala, featuring dancers from a range of British ballet companies: Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Scottish Ballet. There were glorious performances of Le Corsaire by English National Ballet, followed by three performances of their 70th Anniversary Gala, highlighting the range of works in their repertoire over the years and the strength of the Company in terms of both technique and character. Cathy Marston’s The Cellist, her first work for the main stage at the Royal Opera House, premiered in February. And then there was the promise of other major new works: Kenneth Tindall’s Geisha for Northern Ballet, and most excitingly Akram Khan’s much anticipated Creature for English National Ballet – their third collaboration.

With the announcement of COVID-19 as a global pandemic this promise was largely unfulfilled: although Geisha received its world premiere in Leeds to substantial acclaim (Brown, M.; Roy; Hutera), the tour was cancelled, along with all performances in April and May of Red Riding Hood; and to our utter dismay, Creature was postponed weeks before the premiere. Since we wrote our spotlight post on British ballet in lockdown, further cancellations and postponements have ensued, including both English National Ballet’s and the Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake and Scottish Ballet’s The Scandal at Mayerling, all of which are vital to the finances of the respective companies.

It goes without saying that the primary purpose of any ballet company is to produce and perform live performances, and that these performances require daily training and rehearsals for the dancers and musicians, as well as work behind the scenes from a whole host of people of different skill sets, including set and lighting designers, wardrobe and technical staff, and physiotherapists, to say nothing of teachers, coaches and directors. For all of these people, whose communities are sometimes referred to as a “family” (Weiss; Wulff 89), the current loss of this purpose must seem like a bereavement. Further, for dancers and musicians in particular, who perform in groups as well as individuals and rely on the extreme skill of their bodies to fulfil their profession, being cut off from their working environment with the space and facilities they require must feel far more disorienting, and constitute a far greater breach to their professional identity, than for those of us who are locked out of our offices.

Understandably perhaps, the language of war pervades the discourse of the pandemic. Journalists have highlighted vocabulary used to describe our relationship with the virus: Dominic Raab looked “shell-shocked” before chairing the “war cabinet” (Hyde); the virus is a “cruel enemy” that must be defeated in battle (Freedman). The death toll is constantly updated in the news, and people are anxious about their loved ones, and lose them without being able to bid them a real farewell. In addition, there is a sense of dislocation as we relocate our work to our homes; this sense of dislocation must be especially acute for dancers who have to practise, sometimes alone, in limited and limiting spaces at home. And then there is time. Literary scholar Beryl Pong describes wartime life as having “peculiar temporalities”: it is “a period when one feels that time has stopped, but also when it simply cannot pass by quickly enough” (93). So we experience dislocation in both time and space, the two elements that choreographer Merce Cunningham regarded to be the only essentials to dance other than the moving body (qtd. in Preston-Dunlop). This dislocation, the attendant physical restrictions and mental pain are in our opinion most movingly expressed in the film Where We Are. Organised by Alexander Campbell of the Royal Ballet with choreography by Hannah Rudd of Rambert, the film features Campbell’s colleague Francesca Hayward, freelancer Hannah Sveaas, and Jeffrey Cirio of English National Ballet. The movements are predominantly performed in the near space of the dancers’ kinesphere, arms folding over their bodies, hands across their mouths and necks, sometimes with tense fluttering gestures; all indicating both the restrictions and the anxiety experienced by the performers in their current situation.

But despite the poignant message expressed by Where We Are, the film also symbolises hope. It is not only that Cirio utters the words “I’m so hopeful”, but the film is one of the many activities undertaken by the dancers of this country that are witness to their resourcefulness and creativity. In our last post we outlined some of these activities, from the practical, such as classes targeted at a wide range of demographic groups, to the highly entertaining films made by Sean Bates and Mlindi Kulashe of Northern Ballet. Since we wrote that post, there have been many many other delightful offerings. One favourite is English National Ballet’s Isabelle Brouwers’ Instagram video post in which she cooks a highly nutritious meal, while simultaneously explaining to us how to access the nutrients for optimising dancers’ performance and magic them up into a delicious meal. This video was made after Brouwers gained a diploma in Sports Nutrition with distinction (Bellabrouwers). Another favourite is completely different in nature, though equally upbeat: a compilation by no fewer than ten Royal Ballet dancers performing the “Fred Step”, Frederick Ashton’s signature movement phrase, in a variety of guises and locations (Frederick Ashton Foundation).

Dancers’ projects are highly visible – they are ideal fare for social media, and their ventures also make for engaging feature articles in newspapers, magazines and news websites, garnering such catchy headlines as “How should everyone keep fit during lockdown? Just put on some music and move!” (Monahan), “These Ballet Dancers are Keeping Limber under Lockdown” (Rosado), “Dancing in the streets: Royal Ballet stars rock to new Rolling Stones song” (Wiegand). For us, however, it was noticeable that later in May and well into June the focus of articles shifted towards the vexed question of reopening theatres and the arduous process of preparing dancers for a return to the stage (Craine; Crompton “What will it take?”; Mendes; Sanderson). This development seemed to be a response to two events: the first steps to the easing of lockdown with the opening of “non-essential shops”, and the establishment of a government Cultural Renewal Task Force, which notably included the presence of Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of English National Ballet. The resultant growing concern about the future of the arts resulted in a series of petitions and an escalating flurry of anxious activity on social media leading up to a cautious sense of relief triggered by the announcement of a £1.57 billion rescue package for the arts, culture and heritage industries from the Treasury.

This situation calls for a different kind of creativity from company and theatre directors, one that is less visible, less immediately engaging and eye-catching than videos of performances (including cooking!). Yet this kind of problem-solving creativity and resourcefulness is vital for the future of ballet in this country, and is crucially a long-term endeavour. Someone who has brought greater visibility to this kind of creativity is Tamara Rojo, who is an avid theatre goer, as well as being passionate about the development of ballet as an art form and the part that her own company is playing in this. In June, she participated in three events in which the repercussions of lockdown for the performing arts were included in discussion (“The Art of Empathy”; “The Future of Live Performance”, “Tom and Ty Talk”). All of the conversations could be described as “equally sobering and optimistic” and “bittersweet” (@uk_aspen). These oxymoronic phrases capture the predicament faced by artistic directors, who must be realistic in balancing the books as well as idealistic in holding on to their vision for their art form. At this time, in the face of the plummeting UK economy and the uncertainty regarding the nature of the virus, artistic directors are confronted with a predicament of far greater proportions than is usually the case: depleted income, dancers who require months to return to full physical and mental preparedness for performance, and the likelihood of low box-office takings when theatres reopen, due to new social distancing regulations. Exacerbating matters is the status of the arts in the UK, implied in Sarah Crompton’s statement: “with so many demands on the Exchequer, the needs of culture may seem low on the list” (“What will it take?”).

Happily, ballet audiences have all benefited from creative solutions already. Initially companies shared previously recorded performances online. More recently, the Royal Opera House “re-opened” with Live from Covent Garden, a concert series of ballet and opera streamed live from the Opera House, but minus the audience. Members of the Royal Ballet danced Morgen, a new creation by Wayne McGregor, Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits (1978), and pas deux from Concerto (MacMillan, 1966) and Within the Golden Hour (Wheeldon, 2008). Of necessity, these were small-scale performances danced by couples living together or individuals dancing alone. Similarly, wife and husband Erina Takahashi and James Streeter of English National Ballet performed the “White Swan pas de deux” at Grange Park Opera House.

Ballet companies do, of course, offer a lot of digital content on their websites in order to both inform and entice their audiences. These include short dance films made specifically for the camera in a variety of settings, such as Ballet Black’s Mute, performed in the Thames Estuary as part of Mark Donne’s Listening with Frontiersman (2016), Scottish Ballet’s Frontiers (2019), filmed in outdoor locations around Glasgow, and the ambitious Ego from Northern Ballet, which moves from the home of the characters to the London tube, to Lytham St. Anne’s seafront. But since the middle of March, of course, the only way for companies to share content has been online.

We have no doubt all experienced how life under lockdown has expanded our use of technology, and the potential advantages of this, for example, in terms of the possibility for some of us to work from home for a portion of the week, and the positive impact a continuation of this practice may have on productivity, the environment and personal finance (Bayley; Courtney). Similarly, Rojo believes that digital performances and events will, in the future, run in parallel with traditional live shows as part of the core business, rather than digital content on company websites and social media platforms being used predominantly as marketing tools (“The Art of Empathy”). In our opinion, this is the kind of creative thinking that could bring a boost to ballet as an art form by attracting new audiences, making it more accessible and inclusive, while generating new channels of revenue for companies.

Let’s finish this section with a war analogy from LBC’s radio presenter Nick Abbot. He likens life in lockdown to being in a bunker: while we’re in the bunker we’re safe, but we are uncertain of what will meet us when we emerge, and what the repercussions will be of occurrences that have taken place while we have been sheltered in our bunker. But we do know that as well as performing in theatres, albeit theatres bereft of audiences, dancers are starting to take class again in their company studios that have been made safe for them; and we have a date for the opening of indoor theatres with socially distanced audiences. So step by step dancers are emerging from their bunkers, and Rojo is confident that we, their audiences, will follow suit once theatres have also been made safe (“The Art of Empathy”). As far as we are concerned that will definitely be the case, as our thoughts are perfectly encapsulated by Crompton’s eloquent description of the current “absence” of live theatre performances as “an aching hole where something rich and vibrant used to live” (“What will it take?”).

Ballet at War Then

To lovers of ballet, the story of how the infant British ballet flourished against all the odds during the course of World War II is now a familiar and triumphant episode in the history of the art form in this country (Brown, I.; “Dancing in the Blitz; Mackrell”). In fact, we have written twice about this phenomenon in previous posts :“The Sleeping Beauty Now & Then”; “British Ballerinas Now & Then”.

Given the current international standing of British ballet, it is easy to forget that ballet as an established art form with a national company and school and distinctive style of choreography and performance with internationally celebrated dancers does not have a long history in this country, in contrast to the case of France, Russia or Denmark. As you are doubtless aware, the contemporary dance company Rambert started life as a ballet company named after its founder Marie Rambert, and in fact this was the first ballet company to be established here. However, by the outbreak of war, Ballet Rambert was still only in its second decade, and Ninette de Valois’ Company, later to become the Royal Ballet, had been founded only eight years previously.

As in the current crisis, the War instigated debates regarding the function and value of the arts, and whether male dancers would serve their country more effectively by joining the armed forces, or in their highly skilled profession, which would allow them to bring the kind of benefits to their audiences that we experience through art, ranging from joy, solace and escapism, to emotional resonance and intellectual stimulation (Eliot 91). Considering the early stage of British ballet’s development at the time, the advent of war could have been catastrophic for the art form. Companies still needed to shape an identity through repertoire and the development of a distinctive style; and they needed to build a loyal following. Even during the Phoney War, conscription, along with the day-to-day problems of rationing, blackouts and restrictions on public transport, all impacted on those involved in ballet, with potentially long-term devastating effects.

At the start of the War, theatres were closed, causing problems with performing opportunities. However, in the pithy words of Alexander Bland, “It soon became apparent to the authorities that a total cessation of normal recreation was more damaging to Londoners than a few bombs” (65). Evidently, access to the arts, including ballet, was perceived as a necessity to the psychological wellbeing of the capital’s residents, and consequently a useful means of boosting the morale of the population, whether or not they were already familiar with ballet as a performance art. Despite this, availability of suitable performance spaces continued to be a problem in London due to the repurposing of important venues: the Royal Opera House became a Mecca Dance Hall, and Sadler’s Wells (home of the Vic-Wells/Sadler’s Wells Ballet) was used as a centre for air raid-victims (Eliot 34).

Two institutions were set up to promote and support the arts: CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts) and ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association). Although these organisations were privately run, both were supported by the government, indicating the value attributed to the arts at this time (Eliot 33). In addition to addressing concerns about the mental health of both civilians and members of the armed forces, these organisations proved invaluable in ensuring work for artists in their different fields (34-35). Over the years of the War ballet companies toured the provinces as well as larger cities, staging shows in an array of different venues in addition to theatres, including local halls, military bases, munitions sites, factories, and aircraft hangars, thereby bringing ballet to new audiences. In fact, Ballet Rambert were performing for the Codebreakers of Bletchley Park as Germany surrendered in 1945 (Simpson). There was also lunchtime ballet and teatime ballet, resulting in an increase in the usual number of performances (Eliot 52-3). This combination of diversity of location and frequency of performance made ballet central to people’s everyday lives (58).

The necessity and stringencies of touring, catering for new audiences, and producing performances with severely depleted numbers of male dances required imagination and resourcefulness from the various staff members of ballet companies. Adapting the repertoire to such an assortment of unusual spaces must have called for constant thinking outside the box. An orchestra was a luxury, so Constant Lambert, Music Director of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, and Hilda Gaunt, Rehearsal Pianist, accompanied the dancers on two pianos. Absent male dancers were replaced by young inexperienced colleagues (Eliot 52), although sometimes they were able to participate in performances at short notice when they were on leave (90). Repertoire was selected to accommodate the situation, with Les Sylphides (Fokine, 1909) a regular item in the performances of many companies: it was already an audience favourite; it required only one male dancer; and Chopin’s music was originally composed for piano.

For us, the image of Les Sylphides brings to mind the notion of escapism, and as Rojo says this is one function of art that is “now certainly needed” (“The Art of Empathy”). Karen Eliot emphasises the importance of ballet’s ability to divert audiences’ attention away from everyday realities in her comments on the rising popularity of the 19^th century repertoire during the War years:

Unexpectedly, the multi-act 19^th-century classical ballets that had earlier seemed old-fashioned and irrelevant during the war afforded both comfort and fascination to the diverse audiences who crowded theaters to see them …they opened up worlds of fantasy and colour, granting and audiences a few hours of visual sumptuousness that must have countered the gloom. (174)

However, in in addition to discussing art in terms of diversion, Rojo highlights its ability to help us to process situations we find ourselves in and to see them “from a different point of view”. For some people this is perhaps more likely to occur when watching and contemplating a different type of work. Known for the charm, vivacity and even frivolity of his choreographies in the 1930s, Ashton turned to more serious subject matter in the early 1940s in Dante Sonata, The Wise Virgins, The Wanderer and The Quest. In the words of Alexander Bland, “The international crisis seems to have opened up an emotional level in Ashtons’s artistic personality that had not previously been tapped” (59). Rich in symbolism, these allegorical ballets dealt with such themes as the conflicts between light and darkness, good and evil, the weaknesses of human nature, and the workings of the psyche (Vaughan).

In 2007 an exhibition at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms entitled Dancing through the War: The Royal Ballet 1939-1946 showcased the contribution made by the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet towards the War effort. This gave rise to dramatic broadsheet headlines paying tribute to the heroism and fighting spirit of the dancers: “As bombs fell, they danced on” (Crompton) and “Take that, Adolf!” (Mackrell). Seven years later, a BBC 4 documentary on British ballet in the War years was released: “Dancing in the Blitz: how World War II Made British Ballet”. As this title suggests, the focus this time was on the ways in which the conditions of war – or perhaps more accurately, the ways in which the government and those involved in ballet responded to those conditions – stimulated the development of ballet in this country in terms of the dancers’ performance and technical skills, the breadth of repertoire and the size and diversity of the ballet audience. Once again, the company that was the subject of this documentary was the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.

While it is understandable that what was to become Britain’s flagship ballet company would be the principal player in this narrative, we find these accounts problematic. It is not difficult to locate evidence that the Sadler’s Wells Company was one amongst many contributing to both the War effort and the development of the art form in this country. For example, Andrée Howard of Ballet Rambert provided “psychological realism” in her work, giving the audience insights into the “interior world” of her characters (Eliot 154-55). In contrast, Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet toured Britain throughout the War years staging “lavish full-scale ballets and playing in cinemas where theatres weren’t available, taking ballet to the people at a price they could afford” (“Blackout Ballet”). In fact, such was the prestige of International Ballet by 1951 that it was this company that was selected to perform at the opening of the Royal Festival Hall (Brown, I.). And there was an array of other, smaller companies that expanded audiences for ballet in Britain through their commitment, fortitude and imagination, offering them (civilians and those involved in military action alike) much needed comfort and distraction on the one hand, and intellectual inspiration and spiritual resonance on the other. These included Pauline Grant’s Ballet Group, Lydia Kyasht’s Les Ballets Jeunesse Anglaise, the Anglo-Polish Ballet, Les Ballets Trois Arts, the Ballet Guild and the Arts Theatre Ballet (Eliot 38).

Concluding Thoughts

“We are in the business of mass gatherings”. These straightforward and pragmatic words from Gillian Moore, Director of Music of the Southbank Centre (“The Future of Live Performance”) highlight both the long-term quandary imposed on the performing arts by lockdown and social distancing, and the way in which the present “war” differs so radically from the situation experienced by ballet companies during World War II, when gatherings of people from all walks of life in a variety of environments and venues became new captive audiences for ballet. With the emergence of new ballet companies there seems to have been constant work for dancers. We are not as confident about the employment situation faced by today’s freelancers working in ballet in all their various capacities – freelancers who, in our opinion, should be treated as “the crown jewels” of the industry (Thompson).

Let’s finish by drawing on some words by Karen Eliot from her peerless research on British ballet in the Second World War:

Personnel with the companies was fluid as the smaller groups disbanded and reformed under new direction, or as dancers moved from one organization to another. Throughout the period, dancers seem to have gamely carried on, moving through the daily regimen of their lives, making do with few resources, and mixing discipline and adventure. In their various missions, the companies created during the war highlighted ballet’s relevance to new and eager audiences; they demonstrated ballet’s potential to entertain as well as to offer aesthetic stimulus; and they testified to its viability as an art form with a distinct British identity. (38)

As we know, ballet in Britain now has a long-established identity, to which the activity of the War years made a pivotal contribution. However, since the beginning of lockdown, dancers, musicians, choreographers, film makers, amongst other ballet professionals, have engaged in new online endeavours in order to maintain both professional activity and their relationship with their audiences. They have offered us entertainment and aesthetic stimulus through their efforts, sometimes collaborating with colleagues from other companies. We have witnessed their sense of discipline, in particular through the sharing of online classes, and adventure in some of the enterprising videos we have relished. And we hope that new audiences will be attracted by the current hive of online activity in the world of British ballet.

But when those new audiences arrive, let’s not forget that the ballet world is an “ecology” comprising a plethora of establishments large and small, who are dependent on one another as well as on individual freelancers (Rojo “Tom and Ty Talk”). Let’s remember to recognise the contribution of everyone to the development of our art form and how it is helping us through the COVID “war”.

Dedicated to everyone working in British ballet, with heartfelt thanks for their steadfast commitment to the art form that we all love.

Next time on British Ballet Now & Then … Let’s not forget that this year English National Ballet is celebrating their 70^th anniversary, so we’ll be thinking about its directors, repertoire and dancers, and the way the company has evolved over time.

Reference List

Abbot, Nick, and Carol McGiffin. What’s your Problem with Nick and Carol? Letting out gas on a plane. GlobalPlayer, 30 June 2020, http://www.globalplayercom. Accessed 11 July 2020.

Apter, Kelly. “Eve McConnachie: ‘Dance Films can add something to the movement because you can isolate moments and play with time’”. The List, 16 May 2019, https://list.co.uk/news/3595/eve-mcconnachie-dance-films-can-add-something-to-the-movement-because-you-can-isolate-moments-and-play-with-time. Accessed 18 July 2020.

“The Art of Empathy: Renée Fleming and Tamara Rojo on Creativity and Wellbeing”. The Female Quotient, 15 May 2020, https://www.facebook.com/FemaleQuotient/videos/172377800811211/?vh=e. Accessed 12 July 2020.

Bayley, Caroline. “The Highs and Lows of Working from Home”. BBC Radio 4, 2020, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Mky6fvrChwCRd7fWQW8h9l/the-highs-and-lows-of-working-from-home. Accessed 19 July 2020.

Bellabrouwers. “The Quarantine Chronicles/Culinary Edition Pt1/2”. Instagram, uploaded 23 Apr. 2020, http://www.instagram.com/tv/B_VjsqSAme5/?igshid=1k1u993r4nt94. Accessed 5 July 2020.

“Blackout Ballet”. BBC Radio 4, 10 Dec. 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p704k. Accessed 22 July 2020.

Bland, Alexander. The Royal Ballet: the first fifty years. Threshold Books, 1981.

Brown, Mark. “Geisha, Northern Ballet, review: ‘ambitious and accomplished’”. The Guardian, 15 Mar. 2020, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/dance/what-to-see/geisha-northern-ballet-review-ambitious-accomplished/. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Brown, Ismene. “Black-Out Ballet: the invisible woman of British Ballet”. The Arts Desk, 11 Dec. 2012, https://theartsdesk.com/dance/black-out-ballet-invisible-woman-british-ballet. Accessed 23 July 2020.

Courtney, Emily. “The Benefits of Working from Home: why the pandemic isn’t the only reason to work remotely”. FlexJobs, 1 June 2020, http://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/benefits-of-remote-work/. Accessed 19 July 2020.

Craine, Debra. “Tamara Rojo: ‘It’s exciting for the dancers to have a date to work towards’”. The Times, 17 June 2020, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tamara-rojo-its-exciting-for-the-dancers-to-have-a-date-to-work-towards-7d0067cfx. Accessed 17 June 2020.

Crompton, Sarah. “As bombs fell, they danced on”. The Telegraph, 5 Feb. 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/3662992/As-bombs-fell-they-danced-on.html. Accessed 31 May 2020.

—. “What will it take to save British theatre?”. Vogue, 11 June 2000, http://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/uk-theatre-crisis-coronavirus. Accessed 14 June 2020.

“Dancing in the Blitz: how World War 2 Made British Ballet (BBC Documentary)”. YouTube, uploaded 9 May 2019, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5xxPY8er7E. Accessed 22 July 2020.

Edgerton, David. “Why the Coronavirus crisis should not be compared to the Second World War”. New Statesman, 3 Apr. 2020, http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/04/why-coronavirus-crisis-should-not-be-compared-second-world-war. Accessed 30 May 2020.

Eliot, Karen. Albion’s Dance. Oxford, 2016.

Frederick Ashton Foundation. “Fred step film”. YouTube, uploaded 27 May 2020, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbiMm96_H2M&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 5 July 2020.

Freedman, Lawrence. “Coronavirus and the Language of War”. New Statesman, 11 Apr. 2020, http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/04/coronavirus-and-language-war. Accessed 30 May 2020.

“Frontiers”, choreographed by Myles Thatcher. Scottish Ballet, 2019, http://www.scottishballet.co.uk/tv/frontiers. Accessed 18 July 2020.

“The Future of Live Performance”. Aspen Initiative UK,11 June 2020.

Hyde, Marina. “The horror of coronavirus is all too real. Don’t turn it into an imaginary war”. The Guardian, 7 Apr. 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/07/horror-coronavirus-real-imaginary-war-britain. Accessed 23 May 2020.

Hutera, Donald. “Geisha Review – supernaturally charged and unexpectedly touching”. The Times, 16 Mar. 2020, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/geisha-review-supernaturally-charged-and-unexpectedly-touching-g3xgrf557. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Mackrell, Judith. “Take that, Adolf”. The Guardian, 14 Feb. 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/feb/15/dance. Accessed 22 July 2020.

Mendes, Sam. “How we can save our theatres. Financial Times, 5 June 2020, http://www.ft.com/content/643b7228-a3ef-11ea-92e2-cbd9b7e28ee6. Accessed 20 June 2020.

Monahan, Mark. “‘How should everyone keep fit during lockdown? Just put on some music and move!’”. The Telegraph, 30 Apr. 2020, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/dance/what-to-see/should-everyone-keep-fit-lockdown-just-put-music-move/. Accessed 14 June 2020.

Donne, Mark. “PERFORMANCE: Mute”. BalletBlack. Performed by Circa Robinson, 2016, https://balletblack.co.uk/bb-on-film/. Accessed 18 July 2020.

Pong, Beryl. British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime: for the duration. Oxford UP, 2020.

Rosado, Ana. “These Ballet Dancers are Keeping Limber under Lockdown”. 7News, 20 Apr. 2020, https://7news.news/these-ballet-dancers-are-keeping-limber-under-lockdown/. Accessed 14 June 2020.

Roy, Sanjoy. “Northern Ballet: Geisha review – potent fusion of romantic dance and Japanese horror”. The Guardian, 15 Mar. 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/mar/15/northern-ballet-geisha-review-grand-theatre-leeds. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Sanderson, David. “Ballet dancers need three months to get back in step after lockdown”. The Times, 15 June 2020, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ballet-dancers-need-three-months-to-get-back-in-step-after-lockdown-vnrhlw6z7. Accessed 17 June 2020.

Simpson, Edward. “Solving JN-25 at Bletchey Park:1943-5”. The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park, edited byRalph Erskine and Michael Smith, Biteback Publishing, 2011.

Thompson, Tosin. “The real ‘crown jewels’ of the arts? An unprotected freelance workforce”. The Guardian, 22 July 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jul/22/the-real-crown-jewels-of-the-arts-an-unprotected-freelance-workforce. Accessed 25 July 2020.

“Tom and Ty Talk: ‘Ballet is honest’ with Tamara Rojo”. Tom and Ty Talk, 19 June 2020, https://pod.co/tom-and-ty-talk. Accessed 19 July 2020.

@uk_aspen. “It’s not often”. Twitter 11 June 2020, 6:28pm, https://twitter.com/uk_aspen/status/1271132243000471555?s=20.

Vaughan, David. Frederick Ashton and his Ballets. Rev. ed., Dance Books, 1999.

Weiss, Deborah. “English National Ballet – 70^th Anniversary Gala – London”. DanceTabs, 20 Jan. 2020, https://dancetabs.com/2020/01/english-national-ballet-70th-anniversary-gala-london/. Accessed 31 May 2020.

“Wartime Entertainment”. Victoria and Albert Museum, 2016.

“Where We Are: An original film by Alexander Campbell and Anthoula Syndica-Drummond”. YouTube, 11 June 2020, https://youtu.be/gN8mjOLU9Gg. Accessed 20 June 2020.

Wiegand, Chris. “Dancing in the streets: Royal Ballet stars rock to new Rolling Stones song”. The Guardian, 8 June, 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/08/royal-ballet-rolling-stones-mick-jagger-living-in-a-ghost-town. Accessed 14 June 2020.

Wulff, Helena. Ballet Across Borders. Berg, 2001.

Watching with British Ballet Now & Then

MacMillan offerings from English National Ballet and Scottish Ballet, June 2020

Julia and Rosie have been watching some of the ballets being streamed by British ballet companies and have some thoughts on three works by Kenneth MacMillan shown in June: Scottish Ballet’s The Fairy’s Kiss, and English National Ballet’s Song of the Earth and Manon.

There is so much to watch online in lockdown – an overwhelming choice of offerings from companies all over the world. But for our blog we need to focus on British ballet. We notice that there is a cluster of MacMillan ballets available to watch that we are really interested in: we’re not familiar with The Fairy’s Kiss; we love Song of the Earth; and the performance of Manon being streamed is a cast we didn’t get to see live and features Jeffrey Cirio, one of our favourite dancers.

Jeffrey Cirio in Manon © Laurent Liotardo

Before watching The Fairy’s Kiss from our respective homes, we discover that it’s quite an early work, from 1960 (MacMillan started choreographing seven years previously, for the Sadler’s Wells Choreographic Group). We wonder whether we will be able to notice any particular MacMillan characteristic features; it seems likely, as he had already made his renowned The Burrow in 1958, and he created his seminal The Invitation later in 1960, so only months after the premiere of The Fairy’s Kiss (originally known by its French title, Le Baiser de la fée). There’s a connection between the three ballets too, in that they all had major roles for MacMillan’s most important muse, the incomparable Lynn Seymour, originator of Juliet, Anastasia and Mary Vetsera, some of his most significant ballerina creations.

Constance Devernay and Andrew Peasgood of Scottish Ballet in Kenneth MacMillan’s The Fairy’s Kiss. Photo by Andy Ross

So we watch The Fairy’s Kiss and notice how important the establishment of character is through the use of movement style. The three female protagonists are all quite different in their styles, which is crucial to the narrative: the Fairy is a combination of glittering spikiness and sparkling sensuality; the Fiancée is more free flow and buoyant, gentle in her port de bras, while the Gypsy is all voluptuousness with her ample use of the arms and back, and flirtatious in the detail of her footwork. Rosie tells Julia about the webinar she attended when Bethany Kingsley-Garner (who dances the Fiancée) talked about building character through the rehearsal process. She focussed specifically on the role of the Mother, a significant but small role whose past is not explained. Consequently the dancers were encouraged to ask questions about her backstory to give the movements more meaning. This is a clear indication to us that MacMillan thought it vital for his choreography to express situation, narrative, feeling, even for more minor characters.

Dancers of Scottish Ballet in Kenneth MacMillan’s The Fairy’s Kiss. Photo by Andy Ross

But we’re a bit perplexed. Wasn’t MacMillan famous for saying that he was sick of fairy tales? The basis of the narrative is The Ice-Maiden written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1861; so perhaps we can think of it more as a work of Romantic literature, with its melancholy tale of forbidden love, shattered dreams, loss and grief. We discover that Andersen claimed “Most of what I have written is a reflection of myself. Every character is from life. I know and have known them all” (qtd. in Silvey, 25). So these concerns in fact seem to be entirely compatible with MacMillan’s choreographic voice. A bit of research uncovers the fact that between 1955 and 1962 MacMillan created a total of four works to the music of Stravinsky: in addition to The Fairy’s Kiss, there was Danses Concertantes (1955), Agon (1958), and most famously The Rite of Spring (1962). We conclude that some important factors drove MacMillan to tackling The Fairy’s Kiss, uncharacteristic though it may seem.

Tamara Rojo, Joseph Caley and Fernando Carratalá Coloma in Song of the Earth © Laurent Liotardo

Then we watch Song of the Earth. This is a ballet that we know. We decide we think of it as a “plotless” work, for want of a better term: it doesn’t trace a linear narrative, but neither is it completely abstract. The characters are fascinating; in fact, despite their overtly archetypal nature, the Man, Woman and Messenger seem more real to us than the protagonists from The Fairy’s Kiss. We always enjoy discussing dancers’ individual interpretations of their roles. How does this work with this plotless ballet? For sure, The Messenger of Death requires a dancer with charisma. Julia finds Jeffrey Cirio to be quite menacing in the role: the harbinger of death – the abiding inevitable of life, who can arrive unexpectedly at any moment. Rosie also compares him with Carlos Acosta in the same role. Carlos’ interpretation seemed to be more of a reflection of the original title for the character – Der Ewige, meaning The Eternal One. His presence was portentous, but it felt like a constant companion who would continue to accompany The Man and Woman into the next world. We agree that a role of this complexity and depth is a treasure trove for both the performer and the audience.

As we watch Song of the Earth, we realise that we notice things on a recording that we don’t necessarily take in during a performance. Do we perhaps tend to watch recordings in a more analytical way, because we know we can re-watch the same recording to pick up other aspects we’re interested in? Or maybe because of the choices made in the process of filming and editing? Rosie’s attention is drawn to the partner work for the male dancers in the opening section “The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow”. Julia notices another point about partnering. In the third song (“Of Youth”) the main female dancer of the section is supported in a series of playful cartwheels by four male dancers. Julia makes a connection with a supported cartwheel that is repeated from arabesque to arabesque in an adagio manner in one of the duets for the Fairy and the Young Man in The Fairy’s Kiss. The “Of Youth” cartwheels are also clearly an expression of the lyrics about the surface of the pond showing the world in mirror image, so that everything is standing on its head. We recognise MacMillan as a master in the creation of pas de deux, but seeing these works within such a short space of time makes us more alert to how innovative some of his movement ideas for partnering were, and how imaginatively he reworked them to fit the context of the ballet he was in the process of creating.

Thinking ahead to Manon, we acknowledge that MacMillan created some extraordinary female roles. As well as Manon, our list includes Juliet, Anastasia, Lady Capulet, The Chosen One in The Rite of Spring, the Sisters in Winter Dreams. This list covers almost three decades. But thinking back to The Fairy’s Kiss and Song of the Earth, we remember that the Young Man from The Fairy’s Kiss is involved in multiple pas de deux, and both the Man and The Messenger of Death are protagonists. And on consideration, this development of male choreography is also characteristic of MacMillan’s oeuvre. We think of the male protagonists in Romeo and Juliet and Gloria, and his most developed male role, Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling, who has duets with his Wife, and his Mother, as well as with various Mistresses.

James Streeter, Alina Cojocaru, Jane Haworth and Jeffrey Cirio in Manon © Laurent Liotardo

As the curtains open on Manon, named after its female protagonist, it is of course her brother Lescaut who sits alone on the stage in a pool of light surrounded by his cloak. Perhaps because it’s his shenanigans that drive the narrative to disaster? He is the first to dance a solo, and his conniving character is conveyed through the steps themselves as well as through mime, meaning that the dancer has to be very skilful technically as well as being a great actor – like David Wall, the originator of the role. This first solo establishes his personality with those tricky entrechats. Of course Jeffrey Cirio is an exceptional actor-dancer and makes for a real wheeler-dealer Lescaut right from the start, articulating the choreography with fantastic finesse. The entrechats are performed with bent legs. We’re unsure about the correct terminology for the movement. We think maybe Italian entrechats, like Italian assemblés. In trying to find an answer we discover Edmund Fairfax’s Eighteenth-Century Ballet. According to this research, the execution of movements with bent legs was quite prevalent in 18th century ballet in comic and what they called “grotesque” styles, by which we believe they meant dancing with lots of acrobatic elements performed by Commedia dell’arte figures, such as Harlequin and Scaramouche. We don’t know whether these particular entrechats were MacMiIlan’s idea, or if he knew the history of the step and connected it to Manon’s 18th century Paris. We consider whether MacMillan saw Lescaut as a kind of Harlequin with his agility, wiliness and high spirits. It may seem fanciful, but it doesn’t seem beyond the realm of the possible.

Looking back, this particular selection of MacMillan ballets highlights the choreographer’s deep concern with creating complex characters, his innovative approaches to partnering, and his gift of superb roles for male as well as female dancers.

References

Fairfax, Edmund. “The Bent-Legged Jumps of Eighteenth-Century Ballet”. Eighteenth-Century Ballet, 16 Feb. 2016, https://eighteenthcenturyballet.com/2019/02/16/bent-legged-jumps-of-eighteenth-century-ballet/. Accessed 25 June 2020.

Kingsley-Garner, Bethany. “The Fairy’s Kiss Post-Show Conversation”. Arts Alive. Webinar, 18 June 2020.

Silvey, Anita, editor. Children’s Books and their Creators. Houghton Mifflin, 1995.