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The Wright Stuff
| Article
# : |
19804 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1991 |
1,402 Words |
| Author
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Kathrine Sorley Walker
Kathrine Sorley Walker is ballet and dance critic of the
London Daily Telegraph (London) and author of Ninette de
Valois: Idealist without Illusions (Hamish Hamilton, London,
1987) and De Basil's Ballets Russes (Atheneum, New York, 1983). |
Three wishes that any ballet director in Britain would beg from a fairy godmother might be a new home theater with an excellent, large stage and custom-built studios and offices, increased annual funding, and an enthusiastic and talented set of dancers. Peter Wright has seen all three come true for the company he has guided for twenty years, known worldwide as Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet but now called the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Consequently it enters the nineties representing all that is most exciting and encouraging in British ballet.
Settled since August 1990 at the Birmingham Hippodrome, with an assured financial structure for the immediate future, it has already staged a new ballet in David Bintley's Brahms Handel Variations; a fresh and glitteringly designed production of The Nutcracker; and its first productions of Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements, MacMillain's La Fin du jour, and Ashton's Jazz Calendar. In an era that sees all the performing arts in Britain struggling and beleaguered for lack of material security, this is indeed a fairy tale in real life.
For anyone outside Britain familiar mainly with London and the more picturesque tourist areas, a word must be said about Birmingham. The second city in the United Kingdom, a flourishing business center with an energetic commitment to the arts, it is situated a hundred miles northwest of London.
The moving force of this great new beginning is undoubtedly Peter Wright. A man of immense force and imagination, with the drive and optimism of the true leader and the ability to get along with boards of governors, sponsors, and the media as well as with dancers, he has had the best possible experience for the job. Trained both in classical ballet and in modern dance (with Kurt Jooss), he joined Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet as a young dancer in 1946--coevally with Kenneth MacMillan and John Cranko--and later worked as ballet master and choreographer with Cranko at the Stuttgart Ballet. He also gained experience as a dancer in the commercial musical theater and as a BBC television producer in the early sixties. The live theater drew him back, however, and in 1969 he became associate director of the Royal Ballet, with responsibility for the touring company that is now the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
On October 29, 1990, the date of the company's opening performance under its new title, the Birmingham Hippodrome was in a memorably gala mood. Galas are not always warm and welcoming, but this time there was noticeable rapport between stage and auditorium. Everyone was
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