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 Harold Turner | |||||||
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Harold Turner was modern British ballet's first male virtuoso. Tamara Karsavina described him as having 'a lithe body and a heart of oak', and it was his presence in the young Vic-Wells ballet that made possible some of its greatest creations, including Checkmate and Les Patineurs. His exuberant, athletic, classical technique inspired and set a standard for succeeding generations of male dancers, and in the second half of his career he became a fine character dancer. Turner was born in 1909, in Manchester, and started dancing when he was 16, learning from Alfred Haines and appearing with his company. His talent was noticed by both Anton Dolin and Massine, and with their encouragement he moved to London to study with Marie Rambert. By 1930 he was already good enough to partner Karsavina in Le Spectre de la Rose, and throughout the 30s he danced with the fledgling British companies, being acknowledged as the technical equal of any dancer in the Ballets Russes. He was in many of Ashton's early works (including Mars and Venus, seen in the photograph), and at the first performance of de Valois' Rake's Progress his dancing in the minor roles of the Dancing Master and the Gentleman with a Rope stole some of the best notices. He danced as many of the great classical virtuoso roles as were available at that time - he was a famous Blue Bird, for instance - and also appeared often in ballets inherited from the Diaghilev repertoire, such as Les Sylphides and Carnaval. He was a fine Frantz in Coppélia and even danced Albrecht, but his great roles were as the first Red Knight in Checkmate and as the Blue Skater in Les Patineurs. It's arguable that he has never been surpassed, possibly never even equalled, in either of these very different creations. Certainly at the time, no-one else in the company could have tackled either of them, and it was years before he was replaced in either role. The finale of Patineurs even contains some of Turner's own choreography, produced to finish off a section when Ashton was too ill to continue. Turner left Sadler's Wells in 1940, and during the war he appeared with other companies, as well as serving in the RAF. He rejoined when the company moved to Covent Garden, and up to his retirement in 1950 he moved more into the character repertory, dancing the Rake for the first time and also giving performances of the Miller in Massine's Le Tricorne which were generally judged to be the equal of Massine's own. After he stopped dancing he taught at the Sadler's Wells School and was also ballet master of the Covent Garden Opera Ballet. He was rehearsing for a return to the stage in Massine's The Good Humoured Ladies in 1962 when he died, backstage at the Royal Opera House. He was married to dancer Gerd Larsen.
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