Ballet
Not Quite Dumas
By CLIVE BARNES Ballet, for a number of reasons, is apparently just starting a boom of at present unpredictable magnitude. Possibly it will prove even bigger than the last choreographic Gold Rush immedi- ately after the war. Already it is in effect im- possible to see Fonteyn and Nureyev with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, and the pace will quicken even more when the Bolshoi Ballet arrives in July. With ballet publicity at a peak it has never known before, a new audience is being attracted to the art. Recently I have met dozens of friends and acquaintances at Covent Garden, some of whom haven't stepped inside the place since they dropped in to take a look at Callas. This new audience is to be welcomed— we need them—but unfortunately many come in the hope of a sensation, carrying with them all sorts of preconceptions understandably de- rived from the dramatic theatre.
I doubt whether one reader in ten will believe me, but in the last fifteen years ballet has de- veloped as much as, if not more than, the drama. The days of the old-time narrative ballet as a contemporary genre are strictly numbered, and it is useless to go to watch a ballet based on La Dame aux Camelias expecting mute Dumas, or even danced Verdi. Ashton is not a theatre producer with a new alienation gimmick of silence. Fonteyn is not a prancing Duse or a tiptoe Feuillere. And Nureyev is neither a pop-singer with a new kick nor an acrobat who can walk on his nose. Finally you will only get out of ballet what you put into it. The Berliner Ensemble, Brecht or no Brecht, means little to people without German. The appreciation of anything, even of a good dinner, takes effort. Ashton has seen the Dumas story as a fantasy. He starts with Marguerite on her death-bed.
In her delirium she sees a vision of her lover, Armand. There follows a series of flashbacks outlining the story of their relationship, their first meeting, their happiness as lovers, her renunciation of him, their parting and their final quarrel. In her deserted sick-room, Marguerite is visited first by Armand's father and then Armand himself rushes in. She dies in his arms, leaving him in anguish.
The original La Dame aux Camelias has been compressed into what is virtually an extended pas de dc'ux. But this is no digest version of the play or novel, but the essence of Camille distilled into choreographic terms, transmuted into dancing. Set to the Liszt B Minor Sonata, coarsely orchestrated by Humphrey Searle (a Liszt scholar who should not only have known better but done better), the ballet careers along like a juggernaut. The febrile ecstasy of Romantic passion is with its heightened emotion an ideal choreographic subject, and Ashton never puts a port de bras wrong. The develop- ment of ill-stared love emerges clearly from the choreography, which is wanton, playful, erotic, vengeful and desperate in turn.
By concentrating on just two figures and leaving everything else as a decorative' back- ground, Ashton places his lovers on a different plane from the rest of the ballet. They pass through as if in a world of shadows, Even the Nemesis-like figure of Armand's father (finely played by Michael Somes) is left as nothing more than an almost static symbol of doom, purposely left unexplained, for no explanation could be possible in the terms of ballet. The other dancers are merely part of the scenery and atmosphere. It is perhaps debatable whether
Ashton's firm retention of the structure of the play for the chronological unfolding of the
characters is wise. It could possibly have been interesting to have used an even freer form of fantasy with the incidents muddled as if in a nightmare—a device Helpmann used in his ballet Hamlet. Yet there are obvious dramatic advantages to Ashton's swift and sketchy re- capitulation of the story in logical time- sequence.
Cecil Beaton's designs make only a slight contribution to the ballet. His costumes are pretty enough in his archly Gothic manner, but his permanent set, dominated by a golden palisade representing Marguerite's plight by a cage, is neither revealing nor attractive. Also the projection of blown-up photography to repre- sent Marguerite's delirium is obvious and pre- tentious.
The one thing this setting does do is to pro- vide ample space for Ashton's choreography, and Ashton, collaborating closely with his dancers, has found a new sort of free plastic eloquence, strongly influenced (via Nureyev) by Soviet ballet, yet retaining the clarity of out- line and warmth of feeling that have always combined to make Ashton's particular choreo- graphic style.
As Marguerite, Fonteyn gives what must be regarded as the finest performance of her career.
The need to compress the portrait within the bounds of thirty minutes gives it a pinpoint in- tensity and even its necessarily breathless haste and hysteria add to the impression of plunging tragedy. Nureyev's Armand, wild and distraught, an untamed tiger in a salon of tabbies, is like a larger-than-life Byronic gesture. He rants with such supreme conviction and authority that melodrama seems perfectly natural. Naturalness is in fact the keynote of both of their perform- ances. They show that complete involvement with character and movement which is ballet acting at its infrequent heights.
It would be easy to dismiss Marguerite and Armand as a vehicle for two of the supreme deice talents of our day, and at that level it is a satisfying theatrical experience. Yet it is, I think, much more significant than such a judgment would imply. Because Ashton uses Liszt music, Beaton scenery and a subject drenched with Romantic moonshine, it must not be thought that Marguerite and Armand is a pastiche. Ashton's originality, Iike Benjamin Britten's, finds no particular outlet in modern techniques as such. But also like Britten, he has pushed his branch of the lyric theatre to a degree of personal expressiveness that is entirely contemporary in its feeling. Con- stantly searching for a new freshness in the accepted technique of choreographic language, Marguerite and Armand is, I fancy, another stage in Ashton's journey towards the fulfilment of his quest to present dance and drama in a new equation of eloquence. It is obviously due to become a legend. I think it could equally become a classic.
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