Ballet
Conspicuous absences
Robin Young
London Festival Ballet are at a critical turn in their crisis-ridden history. Not the first time of course, nor, I'm glad to say, is it at all likely to be the last. A testing time nonetheless. Their star performers, Galina Samsova and Andre Prokovsky, have at last really not renewed their contract. They are now involved in their own group. The general manager and a daunting list of other staff, including quite a few lesser dancers, have left or are leaving._
Samsova and Prokovsky are officially supposed to be going to return to the company as guest artists whenever they can fit it in, though I suspect there is little love lost now between them and Festival's administration. Anyway, it is a bad omen that they proved unavailable for the company's new production of Cinderella, which opened (however incongruously) the present summer season at the Royal Festival Hall. Cinderella was the role with which Samsova first established herself in western Europe and Ben Stevenson's new choreography cried out for her bravura star-quality and technical
fire to lift it out of its ruts.
One cannot say that Stevenson's treatment of the ballet (done first for the National Ballet of Washington three years ago) is a bold new throw. For the most part it limps rather lamely after Ashton, and not all the new touches are felicitous.
In Act 1 the Ugly Sisters (Terry Hayworth and Donald Barclay) have a more vicious and untidy rough-and-tumble than is good for them or their characterisations — though Barclay's, a horsy, subpostmistress sort of spinster, is redeemed later. There is rather heavy emphasis on their mistreatment of Cinderella's Father, but as he is portrayed as a bumbling idiot of the most boring kind, this does not excite much sympathy. The added importance given to the portrait of Cinderella's deceased mother consists in a nice malicious touch, when the Sisters propose to give it to the disguised Fairy Godmother. What the old crone does get does not seem very clear — from Gaye Fulton, as far as I could see, nothing, and from Dagmar Kessler, the next night, a bunch of twigs. Not the sort of generosity to bind a Fairy Godmother for life.
At the Prince's ball the guests are greeted by a Jester — a stunty gymnast's role for Kirk Peterson, a rather sensational young guest from Stevenson's own company. The humour of the stepsisters' discomfitures improves Barclay's pratfalls and swoons are really very good, but it is, of course, very hard indeed to stop thinking of Ashton and Helpmann.
Back home one wonders why
the Prince lets the Ugly Sisters try the glass slipper: no one surely has forgotten them? And Cinderella is recognized because she drops the pair to the shoe, not because her foot fits — a totally unnecessary contrivance. Rumble, rumble and back to the enchanted glade as the scenery rolls away once more. An unremarkable pas de deux stretching the dancers' limited technique, and then a ludicrous re-entry of grotesquely costumed guests complete with mitre-headed priest to bless the gownenshrouded couple's nuptials.
A good show by Festival's standards, fair dancing, some successful humour, a brief tour de force from Peterson — but Samsova and Prokovsky are as sorely missed as one always feared they would be. Is it fair that the Royal should have all the great dancers — and make so little use of them?
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