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Special Preview Section Lincoln
Center Festival Ashton Now and Then by Kathrine
Sorley Walke An apparently long-standing dream of Anthony Dowell's to bring to the stage the ballet created by Frederick Ashton for the 1971 film Tales of Beatrix Potter is now fulfilled. On December 4, 1992, the audience at Covent Garden was treated to a new Christmas attraction, already a moneyspinner in advance bookings as a family entertainment. Everything possible has been done, and (even in this grim period of recession) no expense seems to have been spared—backers, the Jean Sainsbury Royal Opera House Fund, and the loyal and reasonably rich Friends of Covent Garden—to ensure a success. The well-loved curtains parted to show a pallid, sketchy dropcloth of a Lake District kitchen scene—Potter was more tenuous and pastel over her human beings and their Verdananment than with her robust animal images, and scaling up this kind of illustration for a large stage makes little impact. Fortunately, before one had much time to peer at the uninteresting details, this was succeeded by a gigantic brown staircase straight out of "Johnny Townmouse" and what proved to be the most magical moment of the whole production, diminutive Mrs. Tittlemouse and Johnny Townmouse (whose stories, of course, are completely separate) negotiating the treads with a picnic basket. In the film version, of course, director and cameraman were able to capture Potter's pithy charm by all kinds of clever angled shots and close-ups, using delicately reproduced outdoor settings right out of the books. The stage cannot compete. Scenery takes on a pantomime flavor when tiny mice push on enormous stands of hollyhocks for Jemima Puddleduck and a huge mechanical owl for Squirrel Nutkin, and the Two Bad Mice become merely boring when they are misbehaving in a proscenium size doll's house. Masks and costumes work admirably, however, and no one appears to get asphyxiated during the seventy minutes of performance. Where durable delight is concerned, I have doubts. One viewing is fun, but everything, including the relentlessly tinkly music, quickly palls. It is, of course, a tribute to Ashton, an extra ballet to add to his long roster. It seems he himself had considerable doubts about ever transferring it to the theater, and I am sure he was right. Postmortem, he has been overruled, as he was about the revival of Ondine—because the Royal Ballet is adhering to his stated reluctance to allow Sylvia to be revived in favor of an entirely new version by David Bintley. Certainly, Tales of Beatrix Potter could not have been choreographed by anyone other than Ashton. It is not a great work, but it is essentially Fred in its gentle comedy, its jokiness, its sentimental moments, its love of rural England, and its understanding of Edwardian values. There are quotes from his own and from traditional works-Jeremy Fisher, the only virtuoso, opens a dance shouldering his fishing rod much as Colas shoulders his hayrake; the mice weave their way through a tricky ensemble holding each other's tails as if these were Ashton's favorite ribbons; the Berkshire Black pig is helped onto pointe by Pigling Bland as if she were Aurora and he, Prince Florimund; there are plenty of echoes of Cinderella's timid stepsister in Mrs. Tiggywinkle's neat little step dances, of the eccentric friends of Elgar's Enigma Variations in Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin, of Swan Lake in La Puddleduck's exit-and so on. At least this last Ashton (or might we see the Enchanted Dragonfly sequence from The Tales of Hoffmann at some gala?) is being performed remarkably well, mostly by lesser known members of the company-something that is by no means always true of his greater works. A case in point, in October 1992, was the staging of Symphonic Variations by Birmingham Royal Ballet. In spite of having Michael Somes to put it on, the first night performance was a deep disappointment. None of the cast had the right technical capacity for the six very individual, and arduously athletic, roles, and they attempted to compensate for their unsuitability by injecting emotion into their movements. Anyone who has always loved the ballet, and seen it superbly danced in former days, knows that it is a celestial pleasure, a harmonious collaboration of blessed spirits in human form. Smiles and smirks and expressions of "feeling" have no place in its Elysium. Beatrix Potter was presented in a double bill with The Dream, and followed during the Christmas season by Cinderella. A bonanza, surely, for connoisseurs of Ashton's special genius for uniting virtuoso dancing, romantic tenderness, comedy, and clowning-except that most of these aspects were badly flawed. In common with almost all Ashton's ballets, The Dream had initially a perfect cast. No one has danced Titania and Oberon as did Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell. This year I saw two performances. Lesley Collier and Bruce Sansom, conscientiously doing everything correctly, never managed to establish the enchantment, but Nicola Roberts and Sergiu Pobereznic, both making debuts, were a different story. Roberts is, belatedly, being given the chance of some leading roles and she is a ballerina after Ashton's own heart—sensitive, musical, and spirited. Pobereznic's interpretation was exactly on the right lines. A little more technical ease and he may well rank as the best Oberon since Dowell—his arms and hands are excellent, his acting just about right. Two good new portraits of Bottom emerged, from Peter Abeggien and Iain Webb, but there all compliments must stop. There is no longer anything fresh or particularly amusing in the superbly planned comedy of the lovers. There is certainly no justification for having Lysander and Demetrius played by very mature gentlemen—on the first night, they were Stephen Wicks (looking like a Regency Romance roué rather than a hopeful young lover) and Ashley Page (equally improbable, in a buttercup yellow wig.) It is one of the Royal Ballet's ongoing weaknesses these days to be "loyal" to long service artists, very much at the expense of the roles to which they are assigned. Puck, too, has got out of hand. Tetsuya Kumakawa, as a clever purveyor of turns and leaps, has had an easy run all the way from Upper School as some dancers do, and is apparently thought of as a replacement for Wayne Sleep, but he has none of the necessary acting judgment. Acting, like make-up, has for some time become clumsy and over exaggerated in the company. Unless dancers have some personal and innate sensitivity for mime and for the pictorial representation of character, they often follow poor advice from those who are supposed to be able to help them. Ashton's ballets frequently suffer from this and a young man like Kumakawa (who, incidentally, was cast as Oberon as well as Puck) ends up trying to impose some inexpert individual ideas on the parts he plays. In Cinderella, there is now a deep divide between the standard of dancing and the approach to comedy. On the night I saw Nina Ananiashvili (a guest artist) as a completely delightful Cinderella—she is perhaps the only one of the Russians who seems at home with the subtlety and musicality of Ashton's unique style—partnered excellently by Stuart Cassidy as her Prince, the general dance level was in every way encouraging. Not so the acting. Here we had grotesque and insufferably coarse contributions from David Bintley and Wicks as the Ashton and Helpmann Sisters respectively, and a study of the Jester (by Kumakawa) that bore no relation to the astringent and ironic character created by Alexander Grant. All this imbalance is deeply ingrained now in the Ashton repertoire as seen at Covent Garden. In the actual dancing itself, one may often regret lost nuances and enlightening moments, but notation and video seems at least to ensure that most of the technical choreography is retained. It is in the interpretation of roles that there is constant pain for anyone with a long memory. The last time round, A Wedding Bouquet was hard to endure—every delicate stroke of wit was labored and enlarged to second rate vaudeville proportions. In Enigma Variations the remarkable verity of the portraits had been blurred by overemphasis—I hope some readers will remember, as I do, the fine brush strokes of Beriosova's Lady, of Sibley's Dorabella, of Vyvyan Lorrayne and Robert Mead as Ysobel and Arnold, of Georgina Parkinson as Winifred Norbury. In A Month in the Country, all kinds of trouble has set in, mostly due to insensitive casting. Trying out every type of artist as Natalia Petrovna has resulted in a mishmash of personal styles and notions, many of which linger and blur the basic truth. It is rare for the dancer of Beliaev to be equally at home with the distinctly varied pas de deux in which he is involved. Age, too, is a problem in this ballet. Beliaev is often given to unconvincing older dancers; there are ewes dressed as lambs playing Vera, and sturdy adults trying to be childish as Kolia. Outside the Royal Ballet companies, there are occasional pleasures to be had. English National Ballet, thanks to Peter Schaufuss's regard for his mother's memory, have the Ashton Romeo and Juliet in the repertoire, and last summer it was looking strong and attractive. Simple, direct, musical, Shakespearean, it was extremely well-danced—especially by the glorious guest artist team of Trinidad Sevillano and Patrick Armand. Sevillano always seems to me a natural Ashton ballerina in her understanding of step phrasing and her eloquent use of port de bras, and it is sad that she has never had the chance to appear in other great Ashton leads. ENB also offered some admirable characterizations from the Capulets and the Nurse. London City Ballet recently acquired Les Patineurs and at Sadler's Wells last Christmas, it was a joy to see it performed with great consideration and fluency on the stage for which it was created in 1937. Jack Wyngaard was a very acceptable Blue Skater, the blue girls' virtuosity was well sustained, and the white pas de deux had the right kind of romantic smoothness. The casting of works at Covent Garden has for many years been full of mystery to the local balletgoer. It is, of course, quite impossible to work out why certain dancers are given certain roles, and often allowed to persist in them to the detriment of the work as a whole. No doubt clear reasons, of one kind or another, exist and anyway, it is the directorship's prerogative to do exactly what it likes over this. All the same, it is up to the caring ballet lover to protest when long-term damage seems to be done. The way Ashton ballets are cast, and performed, in the 1990s, is bound to wipe out memories of their early excellence and diminish their worth. What the public sees now, it presumes to be the best and truest rendering. Reluctantly, one is forced to the conclusion that if we are no longer producing, or properly coaching, the right kind of dancers for the Ashton repertoire, it would be almost better not to stage it at all. A few years ago, Peter Schaufuss unfortunately persuaded Ashton to allow English national Ballet to revive Apparitions. As we all know, there are a good many debatable issues in all restorations of old ballets—and Apparitions, like many works from the past, belonged to a time when the concept of ballet was totally different. For that reason alone, it was unwise (as Ashton really knew) to take a risk on it—but my point here is that setting aside all question of theme or style or contemporary taste, the production and the quality of performance completely distorted a ballet that, in its time, was an exquisite and moving experience. Apparitions hardly matters—no one will ever think of it any more—but Ashton ballets that should, still, be relevant and important can easily run downhill into oblivion if they are not properly conserved. Who is to labor in this vineyard? It is customary, I find, for people to talk about certain legatees of Ashton's "owning" certain ballets. The Will (wills can easily be consulted in Great Britain), of which the Midland Bank Trust Company Ltd. was executor and trustee, is specific. Clause 4 reads: "I bequeath all royalties and profits to be received after my death from my copyrights of the following ballets to the persons named hereafter." In this way, Fonteyn was to benefit from Ondine and Daphnis and Chloe; Michael Somes from Symphonic Variations and Cinderella; Anthony Dowell from The Dream and A Month in the Country; Alexander Grant from La Fille mal gardée and Facade; Brian Shaw from Les Patineurs and Les Rendezvous; Antony Dyson from Monotones I and II and Enigma Variations. The copyrights themselves, in these ballets and all the rest of his choreographic output, and any decision connected with them, presumably remain with the Estate, where the overall heir was Ashton's nephew, Anthony Russell-Roberts. This is rather different from Balanchine's case, where a Trust has been established which insists that performances are presented "by arrangement with the George Balanchine Trust" and "produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style and Balanchine Technique Service standards established and provided by the Trust." Even if that cannot be completely watertight arrangement, it is undoubtedly a good effort on the right lines. Testimonial wishes are each man's personal affair, but where ballet is concerned there is always a problem, because lawyers and executors have little experience in the field. The copyright position is (as always in the arts!) immensely complicated, and the majority of people shy away from having anything to do with it. It is surely reasonable and practical, therefore, in looking to the future, to press for the constitution of a comparable Ashton Trust to do what it can towards safeguarding the future control and decision making concerning the whole body of this superb and historic heritage—the ballet world's rich legacy from the much loved and sadly missed Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton. www.danceviewtimes.com |
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