Ballet
Whoops !
By CLIVE BARNES
THE other day, Alan Brien, talking on the BBC, suggested that classical ballet was the most fragile of arts, always awaiting demolition from the ence to shout out: 'Whoops!' first drunken sailor in the audi- Ii
This is, of course, true of any stylised theatre art from Kabuki to Wagner, from Sophocles to Shake- speare, and managements must always reserve the right to refuse admission to drunken sailors. But this is not to say that Mr. Brien failed to make a valid point. More than any other art, ballet is delicately poised on a knife-edge be- tween the sublime and the ridiculous. It is always necessary to keep a drunken sailor in the back of one's mind while watching ballet. `Whoops!' is a salutary test.
Let me apply it to The Sleeping Beauty, just revived at Covent Garden as a seasonable bon-
bon. There is a passage in the first act called , `The Rose Adagio.' The ballerina, Princess Aurora, has reached her sixteenth birthday and is being courted by four Princes. Each of them
Presents her with a rose (two roses, in fact) and she dances an extraordinarily difficult adagio with them. The climax comes when, accom- Partied by a huge, bombastic peroration of Tchaikovsky, she stands on one leg like a stork, With the other leg curled behind her, and in turn each of the Princes takes her hand and slowly sPindles her round on one leg. Between each turn she lifts up her arm and holds the one- legged position for a moment before giving her hand to the next Prince. Whoops? It could easily be—the wrong expression on Aurora's face, any kind of faltering, any sign of affectation, and the whole thing degenerates into a burlesque variety act. Yet properly executed it is as honest as a straight line and as exciting as trumpets in heaven. And if you want to know whether it is being properly ]f our conjure up Mr. Brien's drunken sailor. Our boozy mariner seems to be just creating a disturbance, then the Rose Adagio is all right; but if the cry of 'Whoops!' is too near the truth to be funny, then you had better ask for your money back at the box-office. (You won't get it, but you will have made a protest.) The Sleeping Beauty is a children's ballet to about the same degree as Mozart is children's music, and like Mozart it can be looked at on more than one plane of appreciatiOn. It is en- tirely suitable for children who will dote on it at the very valid level of pantomime. Adults can See sexual symbolism in it (it has much the same story as Wagner's Siegfried) if they like, and if they don't like, can appreciate it as nothing but dance, music and period style. But do say Whoops!' to it occasionally. It is very well danced this season and the guest conductor, Sergiu Comissiona, has an agreeably sumptuous way with Tchaikovsky. ever the river at the Festival Hall, London's ' Festival Ballet is also ladling out Tchaikovsky to the kiddies, with their production of The Nut- ' r'''ocker. The production itself has great charm, out David Lichinc's choreography (newly revised et insufficiently improved) would positively give sailor a fit of whooping cough. It cannot 'e taken too seriously, but it is tastefully spec- to
,acular (itself a rare thing nowadays) and cer-
reslY has its very considerable moments. tival Ballet give it with a breezy competence.
last a word for that Cinderella, TV ballet.
s week Margaret Dale produced the Royal Ballet in La Fille Mal Gardee for the BBC, and a�e presentation was imaginative, truthful and btoget her a delight. Dale's efforts to make TV been a worthwhile proposition have not yet fully appreciated. So far she has been ...working with existing stage classics—the time St come when she can lure choreographers .,Tthe TV studios to produce original TV ballets. sit en we might all see something to make us h up and take notice.
We's lust waiting for .the news to.hreak.'
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