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'Beyond Bach' by the Australian choreographer Stephen Baynes was acclaimed by critics and audiences in his home country. But it has had a cooler response in London, as Brendan McCarthy reports...

In November Stephen Baynes said he was "a little bit concerned" about bringing his ballet Beyond Bach to London. He feared becoming a victim in the crossfire between Ross Stretton and a group of London critics who are hostile to Stretton's direction of the Royal Ballet.

Baynes' misgivings were well founded. Some of the notices were grim. Writing in the Financial Times, Clement Crisp, the doyen of the London dance critics, dismissed Beyond Bach as 'dull and provincial', while Ismene Brown of the Telegraph scorned it as 'an apprentice piece'. Critics from the other

Stephen Baynes photographer Jeff Busby ©

broadsheets conceded with occasional reservations that 'Beyond Bach' had real merit. Luke Jennings of the Evening Standard, himself a former dancer, was completely enthusiastic. Baynes, he wrote, had "dreamt on a grand scale and presented us with nothing less than the sunlit dawn of the Enlightenment".

While the London critics often disagree, it is rarely that their views are so completely divergent. Australian critics and audiences had been loud in their praise. After its premiere in 1995 Valerie Lawson of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: "Beyond Bach is a love poem to the form and structure of classical ballet. Baynes has embraced this most difficult dance form and made it transparent so that you can see the soul behind the structure, and feel as free and exhilarated watching as you might be the sight of a cathedral or a small perfect vase".

Although Maina Gielgud commissioned the ballet, it was Ross Stretton, who, when himself Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet, mostly strongly championed Baynes' work. Other companies have not needed persuasion of his talents. This year Peter Martins has commissioned him to make a work for New York City Ballet, and he is also making a piece for Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. At face value then, London audiences should be properly curious about Baynes, and it is reasonable that Stretton should choose to show 'Beyond Bach' at the Royal Opera House.

The ballet is structured around Bach's Suite No 3 in D. The conceit is that the first dancer on stage, in the case of the Royal Ballet Jonathan Cope or Johan Kobborg, is entering a space that has been undisturbed for 300 years and that is still pervaded by the spirits of its time. A woman in 18th century costume walks slowly through the set, eventually to be lost in a sea of dancers in contemporary ballet dress. In the suite of dances that follows, the centrepiece is a sextet danced to Air on a G String. After a dance for the two lead couples, two further men join them. There are then two trios that juxtapose to reach identical poses, giving a picture of a group of six, rather than one of two trios.

There are two Royal Ballet casts for 'Beyond Bach'. When Baynes came to London in October to select his casts, Darcey Bussell was keenly interested. The amplitude of Bussell's movement intrigued Baynes, but there was a difficulty - finding another dancer who could mirror her in the sextet. "The two women appear a lot of time on the stage together and particularly in the air", he told the audience at a master class for the Friends of Covent Garden. "They do have to be physically similar - they always have to be mirror images". He eventually chose to pair Bussell with Marianella Nunez, and in the case of the second cast, Alina Cojocaru with Leanne Benjamin. But the two casts, in which the leading men are Jonathan Cope and Johan Kobborg, are not interchangeable because of the dancers' sizes.

Baynes believes that the language of classical dance is still relevant. Interviewed by the Australian dance scholar Michelle Potter shortly after the premiere, he said that Beyond Bach was intended to 'wave the banner for classical ballet' and to have an emotional content beyond its steps. Although Baynes himself is not religious, religious language is never far from his lips when he discusses the piece. He uses words such as 'holy', 'processional', 'spiritual', 'cathedral', and, perhaps most tellingly of all, 'reverence'. The 'reverence' is the bow or curtsey that students make to a teacher at the end of a ballet class. Beyond Bach is Baynes' reverence to his own art.

Baynes is not a polemicist. He has the centeredness that is so characteristic of dancers together with a quiet intensity. While he is reserved, he is secure in the path he has chosen. When many choreographers are deconstructing the form and bending it to near unrecognisability, it takes courage to reassert ballet in its classic guise. He does not criticise figures such as William Forsythe: "I worked with him at Stuttgart", he says, "and haven't in any way followed his direction. But I admire him greatly, and understanding where he has gone, has nonetheless been a very strong influence"

Although Baynes was 39 when he made Beyond Bach, it feels like a young man's ballet; not in the sense that Baynes was still trying to find a choreographic voice, but rather in that of its honest and affecting idealism. Beyond Bach may not be right for London, for reasons that are culturally specific to here. Clement Crisp's sneer at the work's 'spirituality' is a key, and it echoes the critical response to David Bintley's The Protecting Veil. Clement Crisp also used the word 'provincial', perhaps aptly. It may not be Baynes' 'provincialism' that is in question, but rather ours.

Beyond Bach is part of the Royal Ballet 'Memories' triple bill which ends on February 8th. It will also be part of the 'Trilogy' programme, starting on 18th May 2002.