Riches in Berlin
BALLET
CLEMENT CRISP
The new ballet season is upon us, with the Royal Ballet opening last week amid the very pretty new paintwork at Covent Garden in its in- escapable Swan Lake, and Western Theatre Ballet offering its Charles Addams poster of Cornwall, Sun into Darkness, at Sadler's Wells. But for any excitement at the season's begin- ning I had to go to Berlin, where Kenneth Mac- Millan has mounted a tremendous Sleeping Beauty at the Deutsche Oper. 'Let Beauty awake' sang Robert Louis Stevenson, and this is just what MacMillan has done; he has taken the Petipa-Tchaikovsky masterpiece, preserved every Petipa step, swept away all the staid, un- thinking ritual of the old Sergeyev production, and woken the dormant beauty to a new exis- tence. MacMillan is determined to make his Berlin troupe into a fine ballet company, and to this end he must stage the classics: they are the foundations essential for any proper de- velopment, in that they give both dancers and audience the necessary knowledge of the academic tradition and style. But the preserva- tion of the steps is one thing, the perpetuation of the deadly old stagings quite another, and so MacMillan's changes are all in the produc- tion (with the excision of later choreographic accretions: ballet-lovers will be delighted to hear that those three pestilential Ivans are no longer with us).
The result is gorgeous, full of happy inven- tion, and the ballet has never looked better. The great innovation is in pushing the historical period forward some 150 years so that the ballet's span is now 1770-1890; and in giving it a clearly Russian location MacMillan shows that he has sensed all the underlying Russian- ness of the score. The prologue and first act become festivities at the court of Catherine the Great, the last act a grand ball at the Winter Palace; the effect is stunningly beautiful.
MacMillan and his designer, Barry Kay, have performed marvels in this transposition: Kay's sets—a cunning use of a permanent structure of colonnades and the grandest of staircases— glow in gold and cream*, his stupendous cos- tumes, encrusted with jewels and embroidery, complement this scheme in muted colours that reflect back gold on gold. The ballet looks vastly opulent, imperially fantastic, with glimpses of a chapel in which the infant Aurora is chris- tened by orthodox priests (we also see her married at the very end—the ballet is cleirrly a biography), peacock fans hanging high on walls, and a great banquet awaiting the guests in the final scene.
MacMillan's achievement has been to give the work a much stronger shape and sense of direction than heretofore. This is a real court, packed with real aristocrats—the Berlin supers have a tremendous time, and the stage is big enough to use them properly—and into it the fairies appear as brilliantly magical beings. Vergie Derman is a radiantly beautiful, un- rivalled Lilac Fairy; Gerhard Bohner, attended by two impossibly smallmidgets, is a tearingly evil Carabosse. To the jaded eyes of a London critic the production comes as a revelation: all the steps are as they should be, but set off with such intelligence and such feeling for their dramatic function that they take on new signi- ficance. Probably MacMillan's most daringly poetic effect is to set the Vision scene in winter; we see the hunting party through frosted branches, arriving in great sleighs and wrapped in furs. It is mysterious, as transitory as the short winter day itself, and the Panorama and journey to Aurora's castle develop smoothly and naturally from it, thanks to a use of the Deutsche Oper's revolving stage which would delight Busby Berkely fans.
The last act no longer seems a divertissement tacked on to the preceding action, but its proper culmination. The court is in full, magnificent fig. Elderly countesses receive admirers, the Preobrajensky guard pour down the staircase for the polonaise and mazurka; most of the fairy-tale bores have been jettisoned—Mac- Millan replacing them with a glittering pas de sept that is skilful pastiche Petipa, and very ex- citing—and after the grand pas de deux Aurora and her Prince are married on stage while the bells of the Kremlin ring out above the last triumphant chords from the orchestra.
Aurora is Lynn Seymour, giving an interpre- tation of remarkable beauty. The young prin- cess of Act I glows with the joy of life; the vision of Act 2 is so irresistibly feminine and alluring that it is a surprise that every man in the audience didn't rush on stage to follow her; the last act has that ecstatic bigness of imagery which is Seymour's special gift. A bout of ill- health has somewhat curtailed her stamina, but nothing can detract from the lyricism of her manner or the heart-touching magnificence of her extensions, and she makes more sense of the role than almost any other ballerina.
But the production is the thing, and it looks all the more remarkable in its accidental juxta- position with the Royal Ballet's concept of a new look for a classic—its four year old
Swan Lake, which opened the new Opera House season. This is wearing badly and seems more than ever inferior to the alternative, 'original' version still preserved by the touring section, though on the first night it was super- latively danced by the company. Perhaps the Royal Ballet might lure its man in Berlin to work his magic on Swan Lake—it should certainly invite him to refurbish its Sleeping Beauty.
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