A chapter from Following Sir Fred's Steps - Ashton's Legacy, the published proceedings of the conference on the choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton and his work, held at Roehampton University in 1994, and edited by Stephanie Jordan and Andrée Grau.
Ashton Dancers Across the Generations
Panel Discussion
Stephanie Jordan: I have asked each of our panel members to start with a shortcommentary on their memories and impressions of Ashton as a choreographer, as well as the importance of Ashton’s influence on them at the start of and throughout their careers. We are also talking about the Ashton style, and how he worked with individual dancers. We start with Dame Alicia, who tells me that there are eighteen roles in all that he created for her, and that it would be impossible for her to choose one, so she is going to give us a medley of several.
Alicia Markova: In 1930, after Diaghilev’s death, I was back home in England and received a letter from a young man: Sir Fred. Apparently he had sat up in the ‘gods’ while I was with the Diaghilev company. The letter explained that he had been invited by Sir Nigel Playfair to stage some dances for the play Mariage à la mode, and he wondered if I would dance with him in this new play. I did not have any work, and I thought, ‘That could be very interesting. He is young, and seems very interested in everything happening in the ballet world.’ So I accepted. This was the first time we met, and we seemed to get along very well. He started to choreograph the dances, and in the pas de deux I met for the first time what was later to become the ‘Fred Step’ - at the time we both knew it was not Fred’s step, it was the step Anna Pavlova danced in her Gavotte. He suddenly said to me, ‘You know that step that she danced?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Let’s do that in the pas de deux.’ That was the very first time we had that step - it became the ‘Fred Step’. Perhaps that will put on record how that came about.
Mariage à la mode was a big success, and we moved into the Royalty Theatre. Suddenly I was invited by Mim Rambert and Sir Fred to be guest ballerina for the Ballet Club. The first ballet he choreographed for me was La Peri, for the opening of the Ballet Club. In all the works from then on, from 1930-34, we were always doing something new.
Between Ballet Club performances, I was dancing with Anton Dolin in music-hall. Fred and I really had the kind of relationship that when I was invited to dance - whether it was in the show Kissin’ Spring, or music-hall, or the ‘pure’ ballet - I would ask him to choreograph for me, and when he was asked to stage something he would ask for me. So between all that, there must have been eighteen different works that we worked on together in the four years. Apart from that, I was also doing new works for Dame Ninette and others, but it was with Sir Fred that we just kept going. Later he was invited by Massine to do his first ballet for the Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo 1938-39. He had to go to Paris to stage that. It was called The Devil’s Holiday, a wonderful work; I was so upset that it was never seen here in England. We did it a lot at the Met and on tour. I remember when Fred arrived in Paris he was terribly nervous. I held his hand through that production because it was the first time he had done a work for an international company. When he came to New York to put on Les Illuminations for Balanchine, I held his hand too.
Beryl Grey: Part of my experience is my first memory of Dame Alicia in Les Rendezvous, created for her at Sadler’s Wells. It epitomises all that one remembers about Dame Alicia, her grace, her lightness, her wit, refinement. That link between dancer and choreographer is, for me, what identifies Sir Fred’s works. That was his extraordinary talent: identifying a dancer’s particular forte, very often an unseen talent, developing it, pulling out more than the dancer realised was within them. This is both a strength and a weakness of Sir Fred’s work, because each role is sculptured around the talents of the chosen artist, and it’s so difficult to be number two or three in that role. Many of us have seen first-night performances of Sir Fred’s ballets and then many years later we see totally different casts. They do it wonderfully, with interesting interpretations, but it never quite captures that special something that Fred was able to draw from his original choice of artists.
My first encounter with Sir Fred was very brief. I joined Sadler’s Wells in July 1941 and he was called up into the RAF the next month. Eighteen months later he was given three months’ leave of absence to stage a ballet for Sadler’s Wells. During that time I had danced leading roles for Robert Helpmann in Comus, Hamlet and The Birds. It was a great contrast to be suddenly picked by Sir Fred, who I did not know at all, and be chosen for a really nasty role - I was to represent Falsehood in The Quest. Why he chose me, I shall never know. Robert Helpmann was St George, and Fonteyn was Una, who stood for Truth. I had an absolutely marvellous time with Fred, because when you start to work with him, you are influenced by what he is. He had an enormous flexibility of attitude in his creativity which almost defies analysis. He was intensely musical, and we all believed that he would spend two or three months soaking up whatever music he had chosen.
The Quest, however, was not so typical of the way Fred would work. In this instance he had only three months in total, and he had asked William Walton to compose the music specially. And for John Piper - who he had asked to design decor and costumes - it was his very first creation, not only for ballet but for the theatre. Fred had to wait, and each day a new sheet of paper would arrive from William Walton. We were in Coventry, and one or two weeks before the gala opening at the New Theatre in April 1943, the music for the last of the five scenes still had not arrived. He told the company that there was no music for the last scene, but that he knew exactly the number of bars he needed. He requested that from William Walton, and choreographed on that basis. When the music arrived it fitted perfectly It was quite remarkable. It was the only time I have ever seen Fred work without music.
He had this extraordinary feeling for the right movement to music, and inherent good taste, and he had interminable patience with the bodies of his dancers. Although he seemed to ask the impossible, he passed that patience on, and so one worked and worked until one got what he wanted. He would refer to Pavlova often, and would take off Pavlova’s use of hands, her bourrées, her pirouettes and her abandonment. If you look at photographs of Fred you see the neck is right back. This is one of the things he went on about when we were working on The Quest - I didn’t use my upper back enough, my neck enough, I had to be more abandoned.
Fred had a sensitivity about him. It acted as a magnet in his rehearsals and prevented tension. He was such a gentle, courteous, kind person. It produced a most harmonious relationship in all rehearsals that I’ve ever attended with Fred. We all adored him, and we gave everything we could.
I find his ballets beautifully characterised. You have the element of romanticism, which perhaps was his forte, but then you get these gorgeous comic characters; he could draw a character so clearly. I have an enormous rapport with his intense musicality because whenever I hear music, I want to dance.
MerlePark: What I remember, especially with the La Chatte and the pas de deux from Die Fledermaus - Voices of Spring - was that Fred usually cut the music. Seldom did he have a repeat. He said that you should always leave your audience wanting more. It’s a good lesson for young choreographers to leave their audiences wanting more, don’t you think?
The ‘Fred Step’ that we are talking about, I am not exactly sure which it is you mean. Does it end with a pas de chat? Or a soutenu? Or a glissade? I think it must be the lilt between these steps, which is the basic Fred Step. I believe Fred’s second name was ‘Bend’ – Frederick ‘Bend’ Ashton. He used to say to everybody, ninety percent of the time, ‘Bend your bodies’ - sideways or backwards, in any direction. He had a bendy body. I never saw him dance, but I guess coming from a hot country, Peru, he must have had a wonderful body, and he expected everyone else to lilt like that. In La Chatte, the last solo he created, the ‘Fred Step’ turns, and I hadn’t done it that way before. The first time I ever came across the ‘Fred Step’, the one with the pas de chat, was in Daphnis and Chloe when I first joined the company. When he was creating a role on you, sometimes he’d say, ‘What can we do now?’ We’d say ‘The Fred Step!’ He’d be delighted and say ‘Yes, put it in’ - and we would, in some way or another.
David Wall: My memories of Fred go back a long way before I met him. He was an enormous influence on me as a young student at White Lodge [the Royal Ballet Lower School]. I think I was thirteen, not really totally focused or directed. I was taken to see a rehearsal of La Fille mal gardée and that inspired me: I was focused, and knew exactly what I wanted to be when I graduated - a ballet dancer. After La Fille mal gardée, The Two Pigeons and Persephone inspired me, and I had the pleasure of working with the original casts, which was of great assistance in my later career. The only other time I talked about Fred in public, I got my wrists slapped slightly. We had just created a ballet called Sinfonietta, and I was doing an interview with, I think, Vogue magazine. We were talking about Sir Frederick and wires got crossed. What came out in print was that I did not think Fred was a choreographer, but a man with a great deal of taste. It wasn’t quite right, but I will reiterate that I do think Fred’s greatness was his taste. He was brilliant in paring down and bringing purity to the stage. I don’t think any ballet has inspired me more than Symphonic Variations for the very fact of that purity, the musicality, the blending together of the art forms into one magical ballet.
When I was creating Sinfonietta he was a little apprehensive. I don’t think he was totally at home with the music, by Malcolm Arnold. There was a lot of discord in the music, which I think Fred slightly felt. But it survived: its latest performances were by the Royal Ballet School a couple of years ago. After that I did Prometheus for him. I didn’t think Fred was at his most creative there. It was the bicentenary of Beethoven, the company was going to Bonn, and I think he had almost been forced into creating this ballet. That was never the way Fred created works - he created from the heart - and consequently I don’t think that ballet worked particularly well. There were wonderful moments, several very exciting variations, very witty; but on the whole it wasn’t a success.
Then we came to create The Walk to the ParadiseGarden. Merle and I feel that it was as if we walked into the studio and somehow it happened. There is no memory of why we were doing it, what we were doing it for; it just came from nowhere. We were all on the same wavelength, and it was a most pleasurable, creative period. There was a lot of love in that studio. Fred was loving what he was doing, we were loving working with him.
Park: He talked a lot about Pavlova to me; even my hairstyle was Pavlova in that ballet, as well as a lot of the arm movements and use of neck. There was a very clever lift at the end, shaped as a cross. His eye for line was extraordinary. I was upside down with my arms out and my back to the audience. I thought my arms were up at my sides making a cross, but Fred said I needed to have them much much further back. In that position I felt like a diving plane. I guess it’s like flying a radio-controlled aeroplane: that you press the control the opposite way to the way you want the aircraft to go. The position he had my arms in felt very strange – so far behind my shoulders. It just shows. You never know when you’re upside down what looks right. Fred did.
Wall: I remember Fred trying to start the creative process. With AmazonForest, that I did with Margot [Fonteyn], when we walked into the studio Margot and Fred were very much at ease with each other; I was a little apprehensive. We sat on the floor for about forty-five minutes drinking tea. Fred finally said, ‘Should we do something?’ Margot said, ‘Let’s have another cup of tea.’ So we did. As soon as he got over the initial hurdle of getting something started, it was a wonderful experience.
Park: After ParadiseGarden, there was a party in the Crush Bar at the Opera House. Madame Rambert was there and said, ‘Fred, darling, it is lovely, but it is too much on the floor.’ Those were Fred’s floor days!
Talking of music, I see Alexander Grant there. I’m sure he could say a lot about Fred and Ondine. Fred had great difficulty with that music, and didn’t like it at all.
Alexander Grant: Henze wrote the music in my house, and he was so brilliant that he wrote the orchestration straight down. Fred did not have a piano copy to work with in the studio, so he sent the orchestrations to someone else to make a piano copy - who made it sound like nothing. Eventually, Henze had to have it broadcast by an orchestra in Germany, and Frederick, for the first time, choreographed to tape, which he disliked intensely It was quite a struggle, because he loved to listen to the music endlessly before going into the studio, and he wasn’t able to because of the orchestration.
Lesley Collier: I was delighted when Anthony Dowell said that he was a little bit blasé about being chosen for a role. When you are young you are so full of self-confidence. Young people are wonderful and don’t doubt themselves. I had been a student at White Lodge and had seen La Fille mal gardée, Monotones and The Two Pigeons; most of all I had seen Merle in the Neapolitan Dance in SwanLake. They were all a total inspiration to me, though I had no idea who the choreographer was. It was the visual thing, and the musicality that really spoke to me. When I did The Two Pigeons for the school performance, Fred, who was on tour with the company in America, came back early to oversee it. He just walked into the studio, and I did it. I waited for some kind of marvellous comment, because it was a ballet I adored, I fitted into, and I thought I was jolly lovely in it. Fred said, ‘You’re too stiff, just too stiff.’ There is a lovely vision of Lynn Seymour in the solo where she goes up and through the body - well, I didn’t do that, and he did not know how to make me do it. I was left knowing I was too stiff, and was thoroughly deflated.
I was finally taken into the company after that performance. The years went by and I was allowed to do the Neapolitan Dance, which was a great shock, because Merle had made it look so easy, and so wonderfully musical. I could hardly hold the tambourine, let alone dance with it above my head. I was beginning to realise that his choreography looked as if it were nothing, but was very difficult to get into the body And it was difficult to follow someone who had already had it choreographed on them. The Neapolitan was a disaster. It came to the next season and I didn’t have a performance. With courage I said, ‘I don’t seem to have a performance.’ It wasn’t Fred who spoke to me, but a below-Fred person who said, ‘I’m sorry, but Fred thought you were too stiff.’ I realised that I had to pull myself together and get to grips with this choreographer, who was then becoming a rather marvellous person in my life.
When I was chosen to do Rhapsody, I was in total awe of this person who had become so amazing to me, because in every ballet you realise how his musicality is complete orchestration. Fred is the orchestra choreographer. With Rhapsody, we started with my very first entrance in the solo, which is very fast. Fred was nervous, I was nervous, and Philip Gammon was raring to go at the piano. Philip was a marvellous help to Fred: he would really take the music apart for him. I think Rhapsody is probably one of the fastest footwork ballets, and Fred was insistent that every note had a step on it - not just a step with the feet, but with a change of arm and change of head. He clearly had decided that I was capable of the fast footwork, but he was determined to make me bend, come what may. It was a joy to work with him. We pulled the music apart and we did steps in different ways.
When it came to the pas de deux with Baryshnikov, it wasn’t as harmonious as one might have hoped. Baryshnikov is a musician, and he was very quick to know the music. I am only a musician by ear, I don’t play an instrument; I felt undermined by this marvellous Russian who was so quick that he almost dismissed anybody who couldn’t keep up. This was a nightmare, because though I feel music very well, I was getting left behind. And Fred was just sitting there, he didn’t jump to my defence. I used to give him a lift home afterwards, and I said, ‘Fred, I feel terrible.’ He said, ‘You will work it out, don’t worry.’ But I felt I was not contributing, that it had all been taken away from me. From the joy of the solo, the pas de deux became a bit of a nightmare. In the end we worked it out and I learned Misha’s musicality for it, which sort of went against my own hearing. As there were two ways of hearing the music, it was interesting that Fred, who had a very clear idea of the musicality, allowed us to get on with the musicality of it. Although it was distressing at the beginning, it was kind of him in the end. It is interesting that Anthony Dowell talked about the bourrée lift. The pas de deux begins with this in Rhapsody: the girl is taken across the stage, lifted, and then put down. Baryshnikov had had to have the pas de deux in A Month in the Country changed because he couldn’t do this lift. When Anthony took Baryshnikov’s role in Rhapsody, it became a ‘Fred’ ballet for me, and it was quite wonderful.
David Vaughan: You’ve all had the experience of having a work created for you by Sir Frederick, and you’ve all had the experience of taking over a role created for someone else. Dame Alicia, the Tango in Façade was originally done for Lopokova and you took it over...
Markova: The whole conception of the Tango today is very different from the beginning. Lopokova had a special quality of humour and innocence. When it was choreographed, she interpreted it as a country bumpkin. Sir Fred was the perfect Dago, Lopokova a debutante who had come up from the country. The costume was ill-fitting. It had everything on it: this little hat with flowers, a piece of maribou round the neck, a pink jacket of the very cheapest material, a knee-length orange tutu, and black tango shoes laced up. On top of that were black lace mittens - it was absolutely disaster! There were kiss-curls painted on the cheeks, and when you came on you behaved as if you were absolutely perfect. The whole thing between Sir Fred and the debutante was almost as if he did not wish to touch her. The debutante is naïve; everything he tries to teach her goes wrong. There were roars of laughter all the way through. Just as she thinks she is getting the rhythm of the walk across in front of him, he tips her over in the air. With the fast lift, where he whirls her round onto the ground and they come face to face, again there were roars of laughter. That was why he asked me if I would give some thought to it after its first production for the Camargo Society, where I had done the Polka - which was another joke on Sir Fred’s part. He always had little in-jokes and secrets in a way.
If I can just digress from the Tango to the Polka. The original decor was different because there was, as usual, no money, so everything had to be done very cheaply The set at the back had the farmhouse door, and I was painted in my polka outfit on that door. Before the Polka, in the milkmaid scene, I had to stand in that door and open the lower part, which would reveal the real part of me on pointe with the skirt, while the upper part was the painted image. During the introduction for the Polka, I had to push the door open and stride out - and I strode out wearing bloomers, not the pretty-pretty costume they wear today. On the opening night there was a gasp in the audience - everybody thought I’d lost my skirt. Fred had wanted to surprise them, so at the dress rehearsal I didn’t drop the skirt, but at the performance I danced in the bloomers. The Polka was a comment on the music-hall which Fred and I both had experienced. It was a based on music-hall jokes: the fall-over step and my bloomers and boater hat. All the movements in it featured a tilting of the boater hat. The pas de chat steps in the middle should have little wobbling head movements - today they go with the music, but originally it was syncopated, and had lots of detail in it. When I was dancing for Diaghilev, Sir Fred had seen me do double turns in the air, like the men in Balanchine’s The NightingaIe. At the end of the Polka he put in the double turns. He told me that later he had to change it because the girls couldn’t cope with the double turn in the air and he couldn’t explain to them those music-hall feelings, which shows how he would adapt material for other artists. After Camargo, when Façade came to the Ballet Club, we didn’t have Lopokova. That was when Sir Fred asked me to do the Tango. I was uncertain, as I’d never done anything like the Tango and the Tarantella, but I said I was willing, although I didn’t think I could ever do it like Lopokova. Fred said, ‘Fine, you do it your way.’
There were other experiences too. I never knew what he would throw at me. When he decided to do High Yellow with Buddy Bradley, the great black director, I had private lessons with Buddy every day for six weeks. I had to learn to do things like ‘snake hips’, how to dance like a black girl. I was always interested; I didn’t mind what Fred threw at me.
Wall: One of the most difficult roles I had to take over was in The Dream, which was given to the touring company of the Royal Ballet. It was choreographed on Anthony Dowell, who is a left turner and has a lot of speed in his work. I managed to convert it to the right, but still could not get as much speed as Anthony After we’d been doing it for about four months, I said to Fred, ‘I really do not think this role suits me.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, just do it your way, I am very happy with the way you are interpreting it.’ Fred saw each dancer in a very different way, and did allow changes to occur in the choreography when needed.
Park: I agree. When I did Rhapsody I could never run on my pointes like Lesley could; I took great big steps. Fred did not mind, he was very fair about it. In Titania, Antoinette did six little turns, posé. I was better at en dedans and he said that it was fine, that it looks the same as long as the body goes ‘bend’!
Collier: I had the same thing in La Fille mal gardée with the coda step in the second act. I was able to do a lot of things on pointe, and I managed to do this pas de chat staying on pointe in the pas de bourrée. Until then it had been coming down onto the flat and going up. Fred said, ‘I rather like that, I think you could do that very well.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s very difficult.’ He said, ‘Yes I know, but I think that’s a very nice look.’ He really didn’t mind, and the alternative was to repeat this little running step on pointe, which a lot of dancers do, to echo what happens at the end of the Fanny Elssler pas de deux. He was very flexible about things. He wanted people to love his ballets and feel happy and comfortable in them. You did have to bend, you couldn’t say, ‘Fred, I can’t bend.’ But if you had a little trick which made you feel comfortable which gave a nice effect of sharpness or something that he liked, he was more than willing to let you do it.
Grey: I cannot remember him changing anything for me. I don’t think I dared ask him, I thought we had to do everything he asked. He used to say, ‘Make it comfortable.’ He would actually try to persuade your body to find and adjust so that the result was exactly what he felt was right for you. I think he was concerned with the overall vision, with the picture, and I think the little details that have been mentioned didn’t worry him.
Collier: It makes it very difficult for the people who are looking after the ballets, because they want to stay true to this. After his death, when they did Fille, they went back to the original film with Nadia [Nerina], and there were some lovely things there which had got lost or changed over the years. I think it is important to have them back again, provided he hadn’t changed things for the better. You see those dancers and what they could do, and there must be dancers coming up that can and would like to do them; and I’m sure he would love to have it back again.
Grey: Change is inevitable because each temperament and each body is different, each dancer’s reaction to music is imperceptibly different. I’ve seen lots of changes in roles that I did, but it is interesting that people interpret things in different ways.
Collier: When we did Rhapsody, Fred said that he’d asked Baryshnikov to ‘bring his shopping bag with him’, and I wondered what he meant. Fred said, ‘All his tricks, I wanted him to do all his tricks.’ He wanted to learn from Baryshnikov, he wanted to create something that Baryshnikov could be fantastic in - which is why Anthony Dowell nearly died when he had to take it over. It became a different ballet, and it worked both ways - it gave a wider range to one ballet.
Wall: Fred himself was a very good keeper. On several occasions he rehearsed the company in Les Sylphides; that was a wonderful experience.
Collier: That’s very true. The Sylphides rehearsals were far more nerve-wracking than for his own ballets because he was a bit of a stickler for them. One thing that we might have gathered from this conference is that Fred was really a ballerina at heart and he knew what a ballerina should do. If you could look into him, you could become that ballerina; but you couldn’t copy it, you had to digest it and give it out again. Fred was a wonderful coach on SwanLakeand the Rose Adagio. He did a spectacular Rose Adagio. He was a fabulous ballerina. Everyone has a guiding soul, I think, and Pavlova was his before and after her death.
Markova: Although he had respect for classical ballet, he was crazy about jazz, which I think is important. He used to save his money and go shopping for records. I remember one ‘big’ record, Rita Kenner in Ten Cents a Dance. Another important influence came from his training, particularly the first influence from Massine. Sir Fred had the good sense to go to Massine for a couple of private lessons before he was passed on to Mim Rambert. Fred’s sense of movement grew from that. Massine was strict Cecchetti. Fred carried on with this Italian School influence under Mim Rambert, who was also Cecchetti. When he went to Paris, his next great influence was Madame Nijinska. After the Italian School, he added the Russian School and the new ideas of Nijinska. When I first met him he was obsessed with Nijinska. When he came back to England, he was again influenced by Massine, and so it was back to the Italian School. At the same time, Fred was interested in any kind of dance. We would go and see Indian dancing when we were doing La Péri. We went to exhibitions, and I studied the make-up and the movements. We studied a great deal before he started choreographing. Perhaps we had more time in those days; we were always at a museum or a show. And music - this was the most important part. He was always asking me, ‘Did you hear that lovely piece of music on the radio last night?’ He knew that I had worked with composers like Ravel with Diaghilev, and we had a very happy relationship.
Jordan: Can you comment on your own development within a particular role, or on the changing perceptions of an Ashton role?
Collier: In Rhapsody, when Merle did my role, it was the first time I was able to go out front and watch. When you are in a ballet, you can’t see where you are in it; that’s why I like to be second cast, to see where I fit in. When I saw Merle do it, I was appalled - she didn’t even look tired. It’s the most killing thing I’ve ever had to do, and Merle looked as cool as a cucumber. The quality there was every bit ‘Fred’; there wasn’t an atom that wasn’t asked for. She was doing everything I did and yet she looked amazing. With that vision in my mind, I went back to Rhapsody and calmed down a bit. I think the tension and excitement from the rehearsal studio never left me - a waste of energy really. Merle economised wonderfully without losing a thing; Ravenna Tucker had the same calm, serene approach. I went back to it with a vision of what I wanted. It still killed me, but I had this idea and it felt different. However special it is to have a role created on you, it is equally important to see other people dance it so that you can see where you fit in the whole plan of the ballet.
Wall: The role that I took on which became part of me was in The Two Pigeons. Christopher Gable had created it with Lynn Seymour and they then both transferred to the Royal Ballet, who didn’t have the production. I was fortunate enough to perform it at least twice a week on fourteen-week tours, so I got to know the role rather well. I didn’t try to be like Christopher. It was a wonderfully complete piece for a young dancer - I think I was seventeen when I did it - it had everything, pyrotechnics, the solo was vigorous and vital. It had a lot of humour - not many dancers get the opportunity to work on how to be a comedian on the stage. The opening scene of Two Pigeons taught me a great deal which enhanced performances that were to come. It had the glorious pas de deux at the end of Act II. That pas de deux was so simple, an understatement that was so pure.
I think the mark of a great ballet is the number of casts that succeed in it. Everybody says ‘I wish I’d seen the first cast.’ The more successful casts there are in a ballet - La Fille mal gardée, Two Pigeons, Cinderella, all Fred’s ballets - the more success there is in those pieces. I actually took courage into my hands one evening and asked Fred which was his own favourite of his ballets. I was quite astounded when he told me that it was Scenes de ballet, not Symphonic. Two Pigeons was the role I felt was almost mine.
Park: I don’t really have one, except perhaps with Voices of Spring, which we did so often over five years, every New Year’s Eve. It did change. Each time we did it, it would be faster or whatever; but I can’t think of a definite role that I developed.
Jordan: At the beginning of his career, did Fred tend to come with conceptions about what he wanted? The impression is that later he was more immediately involved in getting the dancers to bring ideas to him.
Markova: With the period that I’m discussing (the beginning of his career - he’d only done A Tragedy of Fashion), when he arrived the first thing he would say to me was ‘Feed me, please!’ The first time I thought he meant he was hungry. He said, ‘No, feed me with steps.’ I would reply, ‘Which direction, what sort of thing?’ He would say, ‘I want something brilliant!’ I would show him this and that; he knew that I’d already worked with all the great choreographers. Maybe a few days later he would compose something, and sometimes I would say, ‘I don’t think we should do that. Massine has already used those steps, I’m sure you can find a twist or use something else.’ Then he would come up with these wonderful ideas. For instance, the variation in Rendezvous - after the entrance, he said, ‘I want double pirouette in attitude, closing in fifth behind and the double pirouette en dehors, and as you come out of it, I want you to swivel round as though you’re tipsy’ I said, ‘That’s rather difficult, the double and the double!’ And then it was repeated a second time. Eventually I managed to get the control for the pirouettes and the swing, and into the second time. He would make terrific demands for control, but you had to have complete freedom: you had to try and wed those two things together. It was similar with Fokine when I worked with him: from the waist down you had to have a terribly strong technique; from the waist up it was Duncan. I think it goes back to training. With Diaghilev we had the Cecchetti training, which allowed us to serve any choreographer. At that time we had Fokine, Massine, Nijinska, then Balanchine. We had to come with one body but be able to serve whatever was required. Sir Fred also had had Cecchetti, Nijinska, Massine.
Alastair Macaulay: Merle Park, in the light of what Dame Alicia has been saying about the way he took from non-ballet material, could you talk about the way he used social dance for the SwanLakepas de quatre? At the same time, I would like to ask Lesley Collier, as she has insisted that she could not bend (we all know this is not true - she was a very bendy Alice, and it wasn’t just upper body, it also moved from the pelvis), could you talk about Tweedledum and Tweedledee?
Park: He based the first girl’s solo, which I originally did, on the cha cha cha - that was the dance of that day We had just been on a big tour of Brazil and Rio, and had done a lot of samba dancing after the performances. Fred was always there, he adored it. Antoinette Sibley did the other girl’s solo, which was based on the twist.
Collier: You wanted me to talk about Alice. I had always tried hard to please Fred and I did learn how to use my body. A common problem with dancers is that they are not very strong underneath and a lot of the tension is taken in the top - and I was obviously one of these dancers. I was supposed to be strong, but I had clearly never moved in the right way. I think as I did get stronger underneath I was much freer to move on the top, and I also became quite interested in being daring. We’ve also heard about how Fred loved people to be daring. If you go to the limits, like on a renversé, which is an upside-down step, you almost come back on yourself - so the more you go, the more you come back on yourself. It all became an interesting science for me physically. Not only was I trying to please Fred, I also found it stimulating to see what the body could do. I still do find that fascinating: even as age creeps on, the body may get even more bendy!