“An enviable reputation”

Ross Stretton’s track record was plausible enough. He had danced with the Australian Ballet, with the Joffrey Ballet and with American Ballet Theater, where Mikhail Baryshnikov had promoted him to principal. Later he was assistant artistic director at ABT and in January 1997 he returned to the Australian Ballet as its artistic director. In his years at the Australian Ballet, Stretton had shown an appetite for innovation and had collaborated on joint productions with Bangarra Dance Theatre and Sydney Dance Theatre. The Australian Ballet also won critical praise for a season in New York in which it had shown new works by Australian choreographers.

The chairman of the Royal Opera House, Sir Colin Southgate, enthused about Stretton, praising his ‘enviable reputation’ in combining the classical repertory with new choreography, and in broadening dance’s appeal to the young. On the day his appointment was announced, Stretton told the BBC’s ‘Front Row’ that he had no wish to be a ‘museum curator’, something which might have given some of his listeners pause, and, perhaps, even the board that had just appointed him. Michael Kaiser had described the Royal Ballet as a museum with three wings, 19th century classical, 20th century ‘heritage’ (Ashton and MacMillan) and contemporary, each of them of equal importance. Stretton, it seemed, and later events proved, had little appetite for an important part of his new charge. He gave notice that the Royal Ballet’s repertory would be broadened, with the introduction of works by such choreographers as Duato, Kylian and Ek. Stretton was particularly eloquent about Duato, and regarded him highly for his musicality. Stretton also promised to make enhanced use of the Royal Opera House’s various performing spaces and to nurture the work of young British choreographers.

“Stressed Rotten”

There was a shadow side to Ross Stretton, one of which the board of the Royal Opera House may not have been aware. At the Australian Ballet, Stretton was distant from many of his dancers and became, in a former colleague’s words, “a reclusive figure”. He was nicknamed “Stressed Rotten”. Many dancers left, twenty-three of them within a year and a half of Stretton’s arrival. His casting decisions were divisive. The Melbourne daily, The Age, reported that Stretton had been cautioned by the company’s board about his management style. His defenders described Stretton as candid and direct, and at his best with individuals who were similarly resilient, but, perhaps, not similarly understanding towards dancers in need of reassurance. Stretton’s record at the Australian Ballet was an augur for his later behaviour at Covent Garden. According to one report, some members of the corps slow-handclapped when Stretton left the Australian Ballet’s studios for the last time.

“The insider’s outsider”

In the months before Stretton arrived at Covent Garden, there was much nervousness about what Anthony Dowell called the break in the company’s bloodline. Optimists countered that Peggy van Praagh and Robert Helpmann had mentored Stretton, and that he belonged to the broader colonial tradition of British ballet, in a phrase, the insider’s outsider. Stretton, it was pointed out, knew the MacMillan repertory and had danced in several of his ballets. "Kenneth thought Ross was a beautifully trained dancer," Lady Deborah MacMillan told the Times, "a perfect partner and a good company man. Well, he's in the hot seat now." Deborah MacMillan proved to be Stretton’s eventual nemesis.

In the time between his appointment and his eventual arrival at Covent Garden, there had been major management changes at the Opera House. Tony Hall, the BBC’s former director of news, had succeeded Michael Kaiser as executive director. Kaiser, who had been unhappy while in London, had returned to the United States. Stretton’s eventual problems at the Royal Ballet were compounded by the absence of Kaiser, his friend and mentor.

“We don’t care where the bodies are buried”

Three weeks after Stretton took over at the Royal Ballet, Sarah Wildor resigned as a principal, unhappy at how she had been cast in the season ahead. Wildor is to London audiences the quintessential Ashton dancer. Fresh in their minds were her recent performances in Ashton’s Fille, The Dream and Ondine. Stretton had made it clear that he was not an admirer. Ashton lovers regarded her departure as a portent for the neglect of his works, of which only two were being scheduled all year. Despite some hostile press coverage of Wildor’s departure, the board did not waver in its support for Stretton. Sir Colin Southgate had little patience with any misgivings felt by individual members. He said firmly that the board’s role was to support the artistic director and not to second-guess him. It is clear that Stretton felt little initial pressure from the board to give greater priority to the Royal Ballet’s ‘heritage’ works. He told an Australian interviewer: “We have to be very careful about the past, but we don't care where the bodies are buried. We're just getting on with life.” In the light of subsequent events, this proved a fatal miscalculation.

“A mishmash of provincial taste”

The Royal Ballet’s 2001-2 season opened with Rudolph Nureyev’s Don Quixote, and not, as Stretton had originally planned, John Cranko’s Onegin. The Don Quixote production and sets were borrowed from Stretton’s previous company, the Australian Ballet. It was televised by the BBC and was regarded by the artistic world outside dance as Stretton’s declaration of intent as director. It was roundly criticised by many of the dance critics. Judith Mackrell of the Guardian castigated its ‘shabby’ production values, Clement Crisp of the Financial Times described it as ‘limp’; and Ismene Brown of the Telegraph dismissed it as a “mishmash of provincial visual taste”. While the subsequent production, John Cranko’s Onegin, was a resounding success with critics and audiences alike, a mood had already been established and battle-lines had been drawn between Stretton and a number of newspaper critics.

The epithet ‘provincial’ clung to Stretton throughout his time at Covent Garden. He was criticised for his frequent resort to former associates in Australia. When the Royal Ballet performed Stephen Baynes’ Beyond Bach in February, it was dismissed by Clement Crisp as 'dull and provincial', and by Ismene Brown as 'an apprentice piece’. There was near-unanimous hostility to the conductor Charles Barker, whose work was dismissed by newspaper critics as ‘lack-lustre’ and ‘leaden’. Barker and Stretton had been colleagues both at American Ballet Theater and at the Australian Ballet.

“Homogenised and faceless repertory”

Criticism of Stretton mounted with a series of mixed bills in early 2002. As had been his wont at the Australian Ballet, he gave the bills generic titles, Memories and Enduring Images. Both programmes lacked coherence and contrast. Clement Crisp of the Financial Times was scornful. Of Memories he wrote: “If this is the Royal Ballet, then we are in for a bad time.” Enduring Images Crisp dismissed as representing “all that was most tiresome in European classic dance”. He was withering about two ballets by Nacho Duato, Remanso and Por Vos Muero, which Stretton had particularly championed. He wrote: “Works such as these are now the commonplace of ideas and style in European ballet, where lack of creative imagination has produced a homogenised and faceless repertory. The clarity of classic ballet, the force of academism, is obscured and overpowered by such stuff. The Duato contributions are faux Kylian, soaked in dubious emotion and decked with no less dubious capers.”

Duato's 'Por Vos Muero'
Photographer Carlos Cortes

Clement Crisp’s opinions were shared by a number of his colleagues, notably Ismene Brown of the Telegraph. Although Clement Crisp writes for a relatively small audience, which, for the most part, does not follow dance, his readers are influential and in a particular position to influence the Royal Opera House’s fortunes. He has been the bane of Opera House managements who have long endured his memorably acid prose. Crisp’s determined campaign against Stretton’s incumbency, in which he was joined by a number of other critics, resonated within the Royal Opera House and with dancegoers who read his columns on the internet. At the press conference to introduce the Royal Ballet’s repertory for the year 2002-2003, it was clear that some of the barbs had struck home. Stretton told journalists that he feared that hostile critical response might have sapped Duato’s willingness to work in future with the Royal Ballet.

Stretton was initially taken aback by the strength of critical reaction. He was unused to such close and persistent scrutiny. London is unusual among world dance capitals in its numbers of dance writers and in the existence of an opinionated ‘virtual community’ who debate the Royal Ballet’s affairs daily on the internet.

“A learning curve”

Within the company itself there was unease at a growing level of injuries. This happened at a time when the company was simultaneously rehearsing a series of works in highly divergent styles, classical and modern. One principal, Johan Kobborg, observed that perhaps the Royal Ballet needed more dancers or fewer ballets. A spokesman for the Opera House conceded that the level of injuries was abnormal and that Ross Stretton was “on a learning curve”. A visitor, Kathryn Bennetts from Ballett Frankfurt, who was rehearsing William Forsythe's "In the middle, somewhat elevated”, complained that she had never had to set the ballet so quickly, and that the dancers were overwhelmed and exhausted. She said she had never heard of dancers being asked to perform so many ballets at once, or to rehearse in such starkly contrasting movement styles. Although the company performed fewer triple bills last year than in some previous seasons, the fact that they were scheduled closely together, added to the pressures on the company.

Pressure for ‘no confidence’ vote

The company’s visit to Australia in June brought issues to a head. It was a troubled tour characterised by disappointing audiences and mounting injuries among principals and corps-members alike. After the Royal Ballet returned to London, it limped to the end of the Covent Garden season, few performances taking place with the originally announced casts. By then the dancers were in a mood for insurrection. They were alienated by what they perceived as Stretton’s indecision and his disregard for traditional hierarchy. His frequent preference for young members of the corps over established soloists infuriated many in the company. At a meeting of their trade union, Equity, they came close to passing a resolution of no confidence in Stretton’s leadership. Experienced Equity officials persuaded them instead to ask for talks with Tony Hall, the Opera House’s current executive director.

Even then Stretton might have survived. What precipitated his downfall was Lady Deborah MacMillan’s threat to withdraw the Royal Ballet’s privileged access to the works of her late husband Kenneth. She was unhappy about the company’s planned season of MacMillan works and had been particularly enraged by Stretton’s assertion that Kenneth MacMillan’s one-act ballets were chamber pieces, not suitable for the main Opera House stage. She left the board in no doubt that she would carry out her threat if Stretton stayed. The board was also faced with allegations, albeit unbacked by formal complaints, about Stretton’s personal relations with young dancers.

Resignation

There was only one possible outcome. On 24th September Ross Stretton resigned and Monica Mason was appointed as acting director. In a statement released the following day by the Royal Opera House, Stretton said that despite his “enormous respect” for the company’s ‘great heritage’ his interests lay primarily in developing the future of ballet. His resignation was accepted with immediate effect. Stretton had cleared his desk and left the House before the news broke. Sir Colin Southgate, who had chaired the board that appointed Stretton denied that he had been fired, but that it had been “ just one of those things that hadn't worked out.” Stretton went to ground commenting only to an Evening Standard reporter who door-stepped him that the circumstances of his departure had been “rotten, really rotten.”

Stretton the Outsider

Ross Stretton struggled to understand the ethos of the Royal Ballet. His compatriot Gailene Stock, the director of the Royal Ballet School, warns that outsiders running major British institutions need a “reasonable degree of tact, diplomacy and strength” to survive. Stretton was direct rather than emollient. Instead of cultivating people and interests that were important to his success, he alienated them, perhaps without meaning to do so. He showed poor judgement in not ensuring a proper company presence at the Gala for Dame Beryl Grey, and compounded his difficulties with his choice of programme for the Royal Jubilee Gala in July. The Royal Gala was less a celebration of the Royal Ballet’s heritage than a hastily garnered selection of works performed in the previous nine months. Stretton was accused of egotism and of celebrating his own directorship. This may have been unfair, as the company, faced with the tour of Australia and its summer season at Covent Garden, had little time to rehearse. But few were prepared to give Stretton the benefit of the doubt. While the Opera House board might have regarded Stretton’s previous difficulties as transitory, they could not have ignored the adverse reaction to the Royal Gala.

Few British works commissioned

Stretton’s repertory choices were intellectually defensible, if not always well programmed, or matched to the Royal Ballet’s strengths. They were vulnerable to criticism as ballet’s equivalent of ‘one-size-fits-all’ globalisation. Suspicions lingered that Stretton might have programmed similarly for the Australian Ballet, had he remained in Melbourne.

He is most open to criticism for the paucity of new British commissions in the two seasons he planned. There are only two new works, both of them by established choreographers, David Bintley and Christopher Wheeldon. The litmus test of Stretton’s success was his ability to reignite the Royal Ballet’s creativity and to broaden its appeal to new audiences. At the time he left, there was little evidence of new work in gestation. The most serious criticism of his record in this respect came from the Telegraph’s Ismene Brown. Despite an almost fifty percent increase in the Royal Ballet’s budget when the Opera House reopened, she pointed out, the company was in creative decline, offering fewer mixed bills than it did under Anthony Dowell’s leadership and longer runs of the 19th century classics.

In fairness to Stretton, any outsider would have struggled with the ambiance of the Royal Opera House. The levers available to the director of the Royal Ballet are limited. What he or she achieves is often by the grace and consent of other interests. The artistic director of the Royal Ballet needs to be an artist, an advocate, a fund-raiser and a formidably gifted politician. Few people in the world of dance combine these gifts.

A combination of bad publicity, flawed repertory choices and a lack of ability to navigate the culture of the London dance world undermined Ross Stretton. Had he been a brilliant and distinctive director, a board might have overlooked much else. Had he been an unexceptional director, but one who communicated with his key constituencies, the board would have been similarly tolerant. But he had ceased to be ‘a safe pair of hands’. Despite the obvious dangers of caving into a coup by the Royal Ballet’s dancers, together with the added pressures from Deborah MacMillan, the board had little option but to cut Stretton adrift.

“Taking the Royal Ballet to another place”

Ross Stretton’s misfortunes have overshadowed the Royal Ballet’s difficulties during the directorship of his predecessor, Anthony Dowell. There was persistent criticism that the company lacked clear artistic focus and that performance standards had slipped. It was inevitable that any new director would have a difficult first year. Stretton quite properly challenged the company’s traditional orthodoxies. Even if his repertory choices sat uncomfortably on the Royal Ballet, it was right to experiment and right to risk failure. Just as it would be unimaginable for a major orchestra never to perform the works of Peter Maxwell Davies, John Adams or Hans Werner Henze, it should be equally inconceivable for the Royal Ballet to ignore altogether the works of such choreographers as Ek, Kylian and Preljocaj. But that was precisely what happened before Stretton’s arrival.

Ross Stretton’s instinct “to take the Royal Ballet to another place” was absolutely correct. His departure does not resolve the company’s long-term difficulties. It will not attract new and younger audiences in large numbers by remaining as it is. Change, while it will antagonise the company’s more traditional following, is crucial to a healthy future. Such change, to be successful, can come only from the company’s sense of what it is, where it is, and what makes it unique and inimitable. While Stretton failed to realise this, he rendered those who follow him one sterling service. He insisted on the need for change and prepared the ground for his successors. Ross Stretton’s year at Covent Garden marks a clear watershed in the history of the Royal Ballet. By risking, and failing, he has helped to show Monica Mason, and those who follow her, where they might succeed instead.