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A Flying Leap to Stardom
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20378 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
1,632 Words |
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Roland Flamini
Roland Flamini is a writer on the arts currently based in
Washington, D.C |
To a ballet dancer--indeed, to any performer--stage mishaps are the scars of battle. To handle them well is to prove your mettle--your coolness under fire. Royal Ballet ballerina Darcey Bussell's worst horror story to date is set in Washington, D.C. while the London company was visiting last March. She was dancing
Swan Lake with her regular partner Philip Broomhead. Toward the end of Act I, broomhead landed badly from a jump, seriously injuring a tendon in his foot and could not continue.
At first it looked as though the performance would have to be abandoned. By coincidence, however, Robert Hill, a young American dancer and an erstwhile Royal Ballet soloist, was in the audience and
Volunteered to take over. Bus sell (pronounced like "bustle") and Hill had never danced together. It was, in any case, only the third or fourth time she herself had danced Swan Lake". "I talked to him a lot about the production during the interval and it helped," the young ballerina recalled. "But it was very, very iffy." Despite the drawbacks, they went on to finish the performance in great style, land Bussell's adroit handling of the situation further enhanced her reputation though she was only twenty-two as the Royal ballet's rising star.
Here is a chorus line to star story in the best theatrical tradition--but played at double speed. Two and a half years ago she was a fresh recruit in the Royal Ballet's corps de ballet. By the end of 1989 she had emerged full-blown as one of its principal ballerinas. Choreographer Sir Kenneth Mac Milan chose her for one of the leads in his revival of Benjamin Britten's ballet The Prince of the Pagodas and her performance had such an impact that London ballet critics singled her out as one the dancers of the year, an unheard of accolade for a newcomer. Whatever happened to paying dues?
The London Times called her "a lovely dancer, young, fresh, with amazing technique and immense assurance." Another London daily the Independent, said, "She can hold the stage against leading ballerinas yet bring a touching rather mysterious innocence to all her roles". On the March Washington, D.C. tour, and on last summer's visit by the Royal Ballet to New York, she collected more good notices from American critics. Dance critic Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times identified her as one of the dance finds of the
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