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Carreiro characterised the “private side” of ballet as an antiquated world steeped in tradition, which had not kept up with the outside world. Dancers, schools, teachers, funders and fans were all part of the problem. Now the art was in crisis, she said, and it was time for a fundamental re-examination. The technique of ballet was robust, but there were problems with its repertoire. This was why she had invited Charles Handy, a specialist in organisation behaviour and the management of creativity, to speak at the artistic directors’ retreat. He is professor emeritus at the London Business School. He was new to the art and delighting in his recent discovery of it. However he recognised that, in

“A majority of the audience goes once a year. They want a great night out, value for money, a tutu, virtuosity, a sense of the familiar, and stars” Assis Carreiro

comparison with other art forms, ballet’s repertoire was small and that the art was “stuck”.

Ballet’s audience was part of the problem. A majority went to a ballet perhaps once a year; they who wanted “a great night out, value for money, a tutu, virtuosity, a sense of the familiar, and, in particular, stars.” A second constituency was “the arts patrons who see dance as a minor non-intellectual art form and are cynical about us.” Thirdly, there was a committed regular audience (“us”), which was venturesome and unafraid of risk. Finally, Carreiro suggested, there was a small but crucial constituency of people, who rarely came to the ballet, if at all. They read the Financial Times and were among the most influential men and women in the UK. She feared that they had a very one-dimensional view of dance and its world, because of one critic’s perspective over a lengthy period. “It is often a negative perspective. I find it scary, because it is what the movers and shakers read.”

Issues of identity

Alistair Spalding from Sadler’s Wells Theatre, who is on the Rural Retreat’s steering committee, explained his programming choices. A visiting company had to be clearly distinctive, a condition more easily met by contemporary ensembles than by many ballet companies. The Cloud Gate Theatre from Taiwan had recently performed at Sadler’s Wells. “When that company come to London, and present their work, it is totally different to anything else you will see from around the world.”

Ballet companies were less likely to have such a sharply etched identity. A week previously, principals and soloists from New York City Ballet had attracted large audiences to Sadler’s Wells. “At least there is something definite about those dancers”, Spalding argued; “you won’t get that approach from dancers anywhere else in the world.” With other companies the issue was less clear-cut.

Most ballet companies present mixed bills, which draw heavily on work by the same small pool of choreographers. The companies begin to resemble each other and their individuality begins to blur. This is not true of companies led by director/choreographers with a distinctive style. William Forsythe of Ballett Frankfurt and NDT’s Jiri Kylian were cases in point: “Forsythe is about to resign from his position. Maybe that is the right thing to do: come to the end of that creative process and stop. Frankfurt Ballet won’t exist and I’m sure that there won’t be another ballet company there for a while.” Too often, however, companies remained in existence when they had outlived their artistic purpose.

Spurious claims to deep-rooted tradition

Matz Skoog, artistic director of English National Ballet, will be at the Snape gathering. He is sceptical of ballet’s

“Ballet is a very recent form of dance, possibly the most recent form that now exists. I don’t think we are steeped in tradition. We don’t have the history behind us to claim that” Matz Skoog

claim to a deep-rooted tradition. “Ballet is a very recent form of dance, possibly the most recent form that now exists. We speak of ourselves as being steeped in tradition. I don’t think we are. We don’t have the history behind us to claim that, as other cultures have.” The choreographic heritage of a handful of artists in the last 150 years was, Skoog argued, a narrow basis for a claim to a great tradition.

Asked by Alistair Spalding about his company’s claim to distinctiveness, Skoog admitted that there was little distinctively British about it. More important was its role as the only major touring British ballet company. He was sceptical of British ballet’s claim to a distinct tradition: the legacy of a handful of artists such as Ashton and MacMillan scarcely amounted to a broadly based national tradition. What made a company distinctive, in Skoog’s view, was its culture and the professional and artistic attitudes of its individual members.

Assis Carreiro did not completely agree. While the notion of British style was associated, in particular, with the Royal Ballet, its influence was not confined to one company but was influential throughout the Commonwealth. “In Canada it was Ashton; the hallmark of the style was that control, the arabesque was never too high. It was beautiful, it was clean, and it was wonderful footwork. Sarah Wildor had that quality. That was British ballet. It was schooling.”

Globalisation and interpretation

The uniformity brought about by globalisation began with training. Teachers were exchanged more frequently. Nureyev’s arrival in the West was a pivotal moment. It was naïve to think that dance could live in isolation, Matz Skoog suggested. “There is a much greater exchange of talent across borders and it’s happening so much faster. We need to go

“When the Royal Ballet performed Forsythe, I hardly recognised it, to be honest” Alistair Spalding

with the flow of it.”

Alistair Spalding saw problems ahead for companies with mixed repertoires, which lacked a strong signature of their own. “When the Royal Ballet performed Forsythe”, he continued, “I hardly recognised it, to be honest.” Companies would always struggle to perform works new to them in a style close to that intended by their creators. Paris Opera Ballet was a rare exception. They seemed able to take work from other traditions and make it their own, said Spalding.

Toby Bennett, who lectures in dance at Roehampton, took issue with this, arguing that there was a proprietorial attitude, peculiar to dance, that a work could not be approached in different ways. Such a closed mentality was alien to music and to theatre. “This is the creative essence of what you do – a new interpretation.”

Fostering new choreographers

Matz Skoog described the delicate balance to be struck between artistic adventure and financial prudence. While audiences should be challenged, his company needed “bums on seats.” Otherwise it would go out of business. Helping choreographers take their first steps in studio workshops was easy. The major challenge was to develop them to a point where they could be trusted with proper production budgets. Susie Crow from the Ballet Independents’ Group, herself a choreographer, suggested that ballet could usefully learn from such seasons as Resolution at The Place, where “anyone can present their work and it can be seen against others’ work.” Ballet was much less flexible, she said: company

“Ashley Page made a great work, Fearful Symmetries. But the poor guy was only allowed to make one work a year, which is not exactly choreographer development to me” Assis Carreiro

structures made it difficult and there was little room for outsiders.

Assis Carreiro agreed. A middle ground was needed, where choreographers could experiment and risk failure without opprobrium. She instanced Ashley Page. “He made a great work, Fearful Symmetries. But the poor guy was only allowed to make one work a year, which is not exactly choreographer development to me. He was put on a huge stage to fail or to succeed. That is a huge weight to put on someone.” When a member of the audience suggested that Ashton or MacMillan had to take similar risks on the main stage of the Royal Opera House, she replied: “The time was different and expectations were different. It was a baby art form developing. We are in a different world now; the weight of that stage is huge.”

The Royal Ballet’s Dance Bites programme had brought experimental work to the regions but in Carreiro’s view, it was often of uneven quality. Dance Bites was frequently at odds with audiences’ traditional expectations, but this was not the core problem. “I go to ballet because I want to be uplifted, moved, or cry. Swan Lake can do it to me or Wayne McGregor. Audiences want to be taken somewhere and, as long as it’s good, it’s all about being good. Eidos Telos doesn’t look like ballet at all. You may have bought a ticket because of the ‘ballet’ word. But you will be in a very different world when you spend an evening with Ballet Frankfurt and you might not have thought you liked it when you walked in, because you thought it was weird. But hopefully most people who see it are transported to another word and it makes you realise that the ‘b’ word has so much potential and that’s so exciting. But it has to be quality. We have

“Ballet took form in a society that was elitist and portrays a society that is elitist.” Matz Skoog

to nurture the next generation of quality. I don’t believe we have done a good job of that.”

Internal company cultures

Matz Skoog suggested that ballet was unattractively elitist, and that this was a legacy of the art’s beginnings. “It took form in a society that was elitist and portrays a society that is elitist.” The insular world of ballet mirrored that. Tensions arose when companies presented contemporary work, rooted in a society with contemporary values. The conflict was unnecessary, but ballet, in its insularity, clung to it.

Susie Crow, who, with Jennifer Jackson, moderated the evening, asked the panel how companies might address their dysfunctional internal cultures. Alistair Spalding had been struck by the experience of watching William Forsythe in rehearsal at Sadler’s Wells with dancers from Ballett Frankfurt. “The night before the opening, he gave such a talking-to to the dancers. It was unbelievable. He basically said: “Look – you are all individually responsible for your performance tonight. It’s up to you. You’re the only person that can do this.” Suddenly they just – I saw the difference. It comes down to the fact that everyone must do his or her job properly. Simple as that.” Jennifer Jackson remembered a similar experience in her time at the Royal Ballet. . As a member of the corps de ballet I remember Michael Somes saying to us ‘You are responsible for this work’. What made the company great in a way was that we all felt an enormous responsibility for the reputation of the Royal Ballet, even if we were in the corps.”

Culture change also demanded, Assis Carreiro added, a greater focus on dancers’ intellectual formation. Artistic directors have been formed in ballet cultures that were, in effect, dictatorships. When they assume power themselves, a dictatorial style was the only one with which they were often familiar. Directors have little experience of, and training in, the use of power: to insist ‘it’s my right – it’s my right’ is not credible in this day and age. Matz Skoog said that when appointing dancers he made his decision as much on a dancer’s attitude and sense of intellectual curiosity as much as his or her aptitude. He increasingly made his final decision on the basis of the interview rather than the previous audition. There were limits, he admitted. “I try not to be too stuck in my ways. I would prefer to have a company of all sorts if I could. But dealing with our sort of repertoire, some sort of unity is desirable.”

Petter Jacobsson, the former artistic director of the Royal Swedish Ballet, portrayed dancers as highly conservative.

“I know a lot of contemporary dancers and there is a huge anti-ballet shift” Petter Jacobsson

They were insecure and overly wed to narrowly drawn artistic boundaries. All too frequently, dancers lacked a proper comprehension of why they were stage and did not understand the motivation a piece required. Dance was too sectarian, he argued. After all, “it’s all movement”. Such narrowness was also true of contemporary dancers, among whom he noticed a “huge anti-ballet shift”. The better contemporary dancers, Jacobsson argued, were open to ballet, seeing in it a valuable discipline that could enhance their own work.

Carreiro agreed with Jacobbson on dancers’ lack of performance motivation. “We have lost the human side of ballet that is not about technique, and I’m not talking about making stars. But when you see a great performance, you know. You are moved. You are taken somewhere. Opera has managed to keep that up.”

Ideal world prescriptions

The three speakers were asked how they would address ballet’s creative deficit. Assis Carreiro suggested that, in an ideal world, she would impose a moratorium on full-length ballets for five years, with the Arts Council insisting that each company would perform properly thought-out triple bills. “You ban all the touring Russian companies doing Swan Lake. If you eat spaghetti with butter and Parmesan and you have never had anything else, then that’s all you want. But if you keep giving them scampi and lobster and really weird sauces, they’ll keep eating it because they don’t know anything it. The arts council keeps saying ‘bums on seats, bums on seats’ and the audience doesn’t know that there is anything different.

Matz Skoog agreed that such a moratorium would be excellent, if money were not an object. For his part, Alistair Spalding fantasised about every seat at Sadler’s Wells being free. If audience enjoyed what they saw, they would stay and if they did not, they would be free to leave. Spalding continued: “That would completely change the nature of what

“Real change will come from one single person” Matz Skoog

happened on stage and we would be surprised what people would stay and watch – and what they would walk out of.”

Whatever the success of these fantasy prescriptions, Matz Skoog reminded his listeners that, ultimately, one singularly creative person would be the catalyst for real change in ballet’s fortunes. Until then, directors, dancers and the wider dance world would have to content themselves with preparing the ground.