Some Short, Sharp Shocks
Writing of the recent appearance in Moscow of the English ballerina Beryl Grey, a Soviet critic put a firm finger on one of the basic problems of interpretation : it was his first experience of the English ballet style and its impact, though gentler, was as stimulating as we here found the impact of the style of the Bolshoi Theatre Ballet. Praising the dancer for those qualities which secured her reputation with the Covent Garden company, the critic found that the lack in the interpretation of the double role in Swan Lake was a firmness of style—compared with the Soviet interpreters. By 'firmness of style' he meant a quality for which the nearest parallel is effortless dynamism—as opposed to that plastic elegance which is the hall- mark of our kind of dancing. This absence of what an observer at the fountainhead of classicism regards as an essential component of a ballerina's style, he attributes to the overwhelming influence of Pavlova on English dancers and on English dancing.
His close analysis of the dance qualities of both the living and the dead dancer is strictly fair to both, and a sharp illumination on ballet values in Russia now. The sharper importance of these utterances is their indication of a critical approach which plumbs about one thousand fathoms deeper than a Western critic would go. Obviously, all Western dancing when seen in Russia is going to be weighed by this scale of values. When the Royal Ballet reaches Moscow (any year now) the interactions between English dancing and choreo- graphy, and the Russian's reception of them, will provide a stimulus of a kind that our dancers have not before met on any other visits to foreign parts.
The second and larger, because slightly nearer, cloud is the immediate _revelation of the Sagan ballet-spectacle Le Rendezvous Manqué; what- ever its merits, choreographic, scenic and theatri- cal, it is destined to be a landmark in con- temporary ballet history; it will be seen in most Western countries during the next seven or eight months. It pulls into sharp perspective the gnaw- ing problem of the future shape of ballet : most planning (if so positive a word may describe how balletic policies are brought to realisation) for Western ballet leans towards a reviving of the nineteenth-century formula of the programme- length ballet. No other development seems pos- sible after fifty years' exploitation of the one- acter everywhere save in Russia. Le Rendezvous Manqué is going 'to convince half the directors that a similar kind of full-sized dramatic narrative in music and movement is good box-office : the other half Of the power-holders will remain un- convinced, but unable to think up a formula
which will gibe ballet a new look and a new sales appeal.
Perhaps we could just start part of the business all over again by bringing different training methods into dance schools so that our perfor- mers, like the Russians, can acquire a totally
expressive style based on a full understanding of the classical movement vocabulary and of the basic functions of the theatre? Such a develop- ment would shock as smartly as—and probably no more harmfully than—any other cold shower.
A. V. COIGN
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