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Passing the Barre
| Article
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20237 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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7 / 1992 |
1,893 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). |
Each summer in London, ballet-goers assemble eagerly to see the Royal Ballet School's annual show. It is often a matinee, usually at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and combines pupils from both the upper and lower schools. Ballets chosen, with due care for the quality of talent on display, range from a full-length Sleeping Beauty to mixed bill of short repertoire works. For the aficionado, it is a chance to see great dancers of the future; for the students, it is an unforgettable opportunity to dance on a historic stage under professional conditions. As for the teachers, it is a moment to exhibit to the artistic directors and staff of both companies--the Royal Ballet, based at Covent Garden, and the Birmingham Royal Ballet--the present capacity and future potential of the young men and women they have trained, some from their earliest years.
Great international names have surfaced at these programs. In 1959, Antoinette Sibley danced Swanilda in Coppelia; in 1965 Lesley Collier was the Young Girl in The Two Pigeons; in 1980 Alessandra Ferri danced the duet in MacMillan's Concerto; the Bluebird pas de deux in 1984 featured Miyako Yoshida and Errol Pickford (both now admirable principal dancers); and in 1986 Darcey Bussell, the much-talked-of new youngster at Covent Garden, danced Odile in act 3 of Swan Lake.
The 1990 Covent Garden matinee was a mixed bill rather than one long traditional ballet. Typically for the Royal Ballet School, which has always stressed the importance of folk dance and national dance in its curriculum, it included the Paquita polonaise and mazurka as well as Irish jigs and Scottish reels. The divertissement included a charming small work created by Antony Tudor for the Juilliard School in New York--Little Improvisations, to Schumann's Kinderszenen--and then the upper school performed Ninette de Valois' dramatic masterpiece The Rake's Progress (coached by the 92-year-old choreographer herself) and the last act of Napoli. In this Jane Burn, who had given a delicately shaded interpretation of Little Improvisations, was spirited and piquant, and Christopher Wheeldon had the right rhythmic buoyancy and presence for the Bournonville choreography. Wheeldon, who has been at the Royal Ballet School since childhood, went on to win the gold medal in the 1991 Prix de Lausanne.
The Royal Ballet School's history predates the Royal Ballet itself. In 1925, de Valois, then aged twenty-seven, left the Diaghilev Ballet to pursue a very different career. She first opened the Academy of Choregraphic Art, a small but ambitiously planned school in London. It succeeded, and in 1931, when she agreed with Lilian
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