Ballet
Canadian capers
Robin Young
The National Ballet of Canada are a strong company built in the tradition of our own Royal Ballet but, as befits a group from North America, rather bigger. They have one superlative dancer, Karen Kain, and many good ones. Miss Kain, however, seems even more pre-eminent now than she did when the company were last here two years ago.
Their versions of the classics, even if we are in danger of being surfeited with Giselles and Coppehas, are happier than the North American additions to their repertoire might have one suppose. John Neumeier's Don Juan starts and ends with dreary processionals to a
requiem mass, and what comes between is an unconvincing and wearisomely lenghty exposition of a slight legend, tricked out with charades and a psychological explanation voice by Ralph Richardson. Even Rudolf Nureyev, who does not need to keep flicking his hair back to prove that he is an egotistical narcissist, could not bring a lot of interest to the often untidy choreography, and Mary Jago, unlike Victoria Tennant and Karen Kain, seemed unworthy of his partnering.
Kettentanz, by Gerald Arpino of the City Centre Joffrey Ballet, is a less demanding work — an unremittingly cheerful chain of dances to a series of gallops, polkas and waltzes by Johann Strauss, with a particularly attractive solo (by Nadia Potts) to Johann Mayer's Schnofler Tanz. It was all carried off with ingratiating pace and vigour.
In more serious vein, the Canadians brought yet another of Peter Wright's stabs at Giselle, nicely set by Desmond Heeley, and beautifully. performed by Karen Kain. She is not really suited to the coquettish attitudes of Act I, but she dances Act II with the commitment of a spirit possessed and the strength of her dancing amply redeems the remaining weakness of her acting. Her Albrecht, Frank Augustyn, is an elegant and stylish dancer and, within the dramatic non sequiturs surrounding his role, Hazaros Surmeyan gave an unusually intelligent reading of Hilariqn. (But would he really make a show of helping Giselle's mother carry away an empty bucket and leave her to lug the full one home unaided, or leave the stage when a prince in peasant's clothering tells him to, or bounce when he hits a lake?).
Whatever suspension of disbelief is required by the classics is easier to achieve than the suspension of all critical sensibilities often required by what is too loosely called "contemporary dance". Ballet Rambert are at the Roundhouse (if there is something worse than Ballet Rambert at the Sadler's Wells it could well be Ballet Rambert at the Roundhouse) where they invert Norman Morrice's unpleasant Blind-Sight (nasty as it seems, though, it undoubtedly has impact), trot through an innocuous novelty by Robert North called Running Figures, grovel through a piece by Christopher Bruce, and introduce some high camp by Lindsay Kemp called Parades Gone By.
A claque of Kempites in the gallery purported to find the whole send-up of pre-war Hollywood — even down to John Chesworth's Dracula and barely recognisable personations of Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers uproariously amusing. When the time inevitably arrived, however, for the Busby Berkeley parody it was noticeable that the syncopation of the feet and the loud applause were both on the recorded soundtrack, and not in the theatre. The show might conceivably be more enjoyable when its air of excessively self-congratulatory amateurishness has been dispelled.
Previous page
