THE
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4374 Ballet - Nutcracker, Fille Mal Garde, Matthew Bourne, David Nixon
In the 1950s, when programming was in short supply, the BBC showed performances of almost all the great ballets; and I watched them avidly. I even wanted to be a ballet dancer, though fortunately - where I have at least two left feet - I soon gave up that ambition.
In the 1960s, however, we only saw Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker’ (which I must have seen half a dozen times more since) at the Festival Hall and the ‘Fille Mal Gardee’, with Frederick Ashton doing his famous clog dance at Covent Garden.
Even when we came back to theatre at the end of the 1970s we still didn’t see much ballet; the only programme I have on record was of ‘Swan Lake’ at Covent garden – with Lesley Collier dancing Odette/Odile – though I can’t actually remember it; but I must have seen it also half a dozen times since!
Needless to say, my first love is Tchaikovsky, even though he only actually wrote three ballets. Of these, ‘Swan Lake’ is the test piece for most companies. We saw it danced by the Kirov, with Julianna Lopatkina in one of her first leads. She was breathtaking. We have also seen ‘Sleeping Beauty’ a number of times, but never in a top performance. Above all, I have loved every performance of ‘The Nutcracker’, as choreographed by Marius Petipa.
In terms of modern versions, Mathew Bourne is marvelous; choreographing a new form of ballet crossed with drama. We went to his post-performance lecture, after seeing his ground-breaking ‘Play Without Words’, and his philosophy about ballet is fascinating. We have seen all of his other ballets, ‘Swan Lake’ twice, ‘Car Man’ and ‘Nutcracker’ – all of which, especially the last, were ravishing (and most of which I saw twice, since his chorography is so intense it is difficult to take in on one performance).
In terms of the modern dance companies, I enjoy the Northern Ballet Theatre (NBT) most of all, since they use modern dance to tell a story. We have seen, their choreographer, David Nixon's ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Madame Butterfly’ and ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’ (in which the scenery, which included a full size train leaving a station), as well as a modern version of ‘Swan Lake’ set in 1930s America, his own Dracula which the critics found strange but was superb when you had already heard his explanation of it, and a superb performance of Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliette’. His ‘Cinderella’, which was danced by a lesser company, I didn’t enjoy as much.
For pure modern dance we have also enjoyed the Netherland Dance Theatre, The Harlem Dance Theatre and the Ballet Rambert.
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