Ismene Brown's interview from December 2001 Clement Crisp reviews Some of the names mentioned in this piece: Ashton, Zhanna Ayupova, Balanchine, Cranko, Thomas Edur, Mats Ek, Sergei Filin, William Forsythe, Yuri Grigorovich, Matthew Hart, Stephen Jefferies, Anton Korsakov, Jiri Kylian, Constant Lambert, Nicolas Le Riche, Uliana Lopatkina, MacMillan, Monica Mason, Kyra Nicols, Tamara Rojo, Natalia Sologub, Olga Spessivtseva, Christpher Wheeldon, Andrei Uvarov, Vaganova Academy Kevin Ng reviews

The prestigious Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the heart of the business district in Hong Kong was an ideal venue to meet Clement Crisp, the eminent dance critic of the Financial Times. Last year Mr. Crisp celebrated the Golden Jubilee of his distinguished career as a dance critic. A short walking distance from the hotel is the International Finance Centre, the newest and tallest skyscraper in the city, where the Asian regional office of the Financial Times is now situated.

My meeting with Mr. Crisp was in late December 2003. The lavish Christmas decorations adorning the hotel's Clipper Lounge provided a festive atmosphere to enliven our conversation about the current developments in the ballet world today.

Kevin Ng: Mr. Crisp, are there any dancers today who can perhaps measure up to some of the greatest stars whom you've seen in the past such as Markova, Makarova, Baryshnikov, and Soloviev?

Clement Crisp: You do need stars, though the New York City Ballet is itself a star. I think that Uliana Lopatkina of the Kirov is absolutely sublime. There are some young men in Moscow and St. Petersburg, e.g. Andrei Uvarov and Sergei Filin from the Bolshoi, and a young Kirov dancer Anton Korsakov.

There is Thomas Edur, who is one of the greatest classical dancers whom I've seen in my life. I think he is incomparably good, and in every sense of the word he is a classical premier danseur - very pure and very noble. I remember that I took Dame Alicia Markova to see a performance when Edur was dancing. She said that it's exactly like the great premiers danseurs whom she remembered as a young woman. It's extraordinary, it's a great beautiful talent.

I know that I have rarely seen a dancer more gifted than Nicolas Le Riche - a knockout in everything, not least in the roles that Roland Petit made for him.

There are some other favourites like the Kirov's Natalia Sologub. I think that she is ravishing, and a great interpretative talent. The Russians go on producing extraordinary dancers.

I think the Royal Ballet's Tamara Rojo is truly remarkable. For me she was as good as Fonteyn in "Ondine", and she found things in the role which she made absolutely hers. This is what one needs to see, and this is why you have to maintain the old ballets so that dancers have something to measure themselves against. I think that it is a great tragedy with ballet companies if they don't have great senior ballerinas at the head of the company - ballerinas in their forties.

You have to look at Zhanna Ayupova with the Kirov, who is a dancer touched by the divine because she is so pure and so eloquent, and because she dances in a style that is absolutely central to the Petersburg experience. If you have someone like her, the other dancers can see that there is somebody whom they can emulate. Not just sticking your leg up at six o'clock, and not just destroying the old ballets, for instance in "La Bayadere", so that you can stick your leg up like at six o'clock which is totally alien to what the ballet is about. It's very distressing when they allow a physical trick to dominate there. So when you see a young ballerina doing that, you can't help wondering why she can't see what an artist like Ayupova does in that role, or as Aurora or Giselle.

Kyra Nicols (of the New York City Ballet) is also one of the greatest dancers of our time. She is a miracle.

If there is a dancer whom you can bring back from the past, who might he or she be?

Olga Spessivtseva - everyone I know who saw her, and everything written by critics, tells me that she was sublime in purity and in expressiveness.

Do you agree that classical ballet seems to be drifting sideways without a leader after the death of Geroge Balanchine, whom you consider as the greatest 20th century choreographer?

I cannot agree more, I can't think of a single classical choreographer of sufficient stature.

What about Christpher Wheeldon? Do you think that he may be able to fulfil the promise?

I hope so. He is young. The tragedy for any young choreographer nowadays is that when they show a bit of talent, immediately maniac people rush out and say, "It's a new Balanchine." It's like every time when a child is born they say that it's a new Jesus Christ. You have to allow young talent time to mature without that pressure. You show artistic talent and people immediately start saying you are the new this and that - it's grotesque. Years ago every female soloist was said to be the new Fonteyn. There is no such thing as a new Fonteyn; there's only one Fonteyn. And the next choreographer is not going to be a new Balanchine.

Do you think that most of the major ballet companies in the world are in decline, e.g. the Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi, the Kirov?

I think that they are mutating. I am very worried when companies deny their past. It's important always to remember your past and to grow from your past. You don't spend your whole time buying in new works or new dancers that you have not made yourself. The homogenising of the repertory is terrible; every company has got to do their William Forsythe. But I think it's very important that each company should dance Balanchine. Balanchine after all is the supreme genius.

I think it's very important that the Royal Ballet should go on stressing its heritage of Ashton, MacMillan and Cranko who are all important figures. Out of this will come something authentically Royal Ballet.

The Paris Opera is interesting in that they haven't had a proper choreographer since Lifar. They do dance Roland Petit who is a very great French choreographer, and that is vital for them. But apart from that, I haven't seen any French classical choreography.

I don't think that the Kirov is in decline. I really do think that the Kirov is still an absolutely miraculous company. It's based on this wonderful school; the Vaganova Academy is as good as it was, and the dancers are produced by this wonderful tradition. There are few problems there. I think that the Bolshoi has had big problems, because when they lost Yuri Grigorovich they lost a great guiding force.

Do you think that the Kirov's reconstruction of the classics is the right approach? There was some talk that "Swan Lake" may be their next project.

"The Sleeping Beauty" is very fascinating, but I think "La Bayadere" quite simply is not even the original version. It's the 1900 version, and I don't think it made any sense. The last act was an absolute dog's dinner, it didn't make any dramatic sense at all. Makarova did it much more interestingly. It's not a reconstruction. She tried to do what she thought Petipa had done, in the sense of finishing the story. But the Kirov version, which they say is authentic, is absolutely uninteresting, too complex and too adult. And the dance for Solor with both Nikiya and Gamzatti in the last act doesn't have any progress, and keeps on being interrupted. It's too silly.

If they are going to reconstruct "Swan Lake", they should look at the Royal Ballet's version which is the best, because it's based on the real notation - the 1895 notation. The text is beautiful, reconstructed from Stepanov notation and supervised by that great scholar Professor Wiley. It's an absolutely marvellous staging, and as near to the 1895 version as we can hope.

Did you like Makarova's production of "The Sleeping Beauty" for the Royal Ballet last year, which wasn't well received by most of the London critics?

Yes, I did. Don't forget that the Royal Ballet's tradition dates back to 1946, while her tradition dates back to the first performance in 1890. So it's a rather different kind of idea of tradition. She believes, and rightly so, that the old ballets cannot stay set in stone, or lie like flies in amber. If you are ging to make sense of them and understand from both the points of view of the dancers and the audiences, there have to be subtle changes that keep on reviving ideas of the ballet.

Essentially it's a visual experience. If you did it all in the old fashion, you'd find it looking most peculiar. I can remember some of the old dancers in the 1940s. I don't think people now would have accepted some of the things they did then. A few things change - physique, technique. And there are a few losses. But you can't go back to a kind of a museum attitude towards this. "La Bayadere" is a very interesting case in point. The refinements, alterations, and editings made by the Soviets were very good.

Sometimes when a single artist like Sylvie Guillem imposes the idea of very high extensions, and when other people want to copy it, I think that's wrong. (I'm not saying categorically, I mustn't.) I want to see dance which is respectful. Of course extensions have gone higher. One of the losses is that pointe work has become less interesting. Shoes have become stronger and harder, and the feet are not as interesting as they were. I want to see the footwork. If you see the shoes that Dame Alicia Markova wore, which were made by Nicolini originally, they were so light-weight that the foot did all the work. Now you feel the shoes put on by the girls are so hard that the foot cannot work properly. You see dancers breaking shoes - hitting them with a hammer or cracking them near the door.

Turning back to the Royal Ballet, are you more optimistic after Ross Stretton's departure and his replacement by Monica Mason?

Of course, I must be, because she comes out of the Royal Ballet and is a product of the entire thing. She knows what the Royal Ballet is about, she has a long experience of it. She is a very intelligent woman, and she was a superb dancer, and I have enormous hopes for what she will do for the future.

Do you think that the Royal Ballet is neglecting their heritage, and is not producing good new works of reasonable quality?

There seem to be several things wrong with the Royal Ballet. One is that they have not got a house choreographer whom in the past they had in Dame Ninette, Ashton, MacMillan, Cranko, and also Bintley for a while. We don't have a choreographer with a proper understanding of the classical background to make any choreography. And we don't have a music director.

One of the great things about Constant Lambert was that he could say when a score was good and when a score was bad - when it's 'musique dansante' or not. I remember when a very gifted young Matthew Hart used two scores which were entirely unsuitable for dancing. One was the Britten Violin Concerto, the other was an extremely difficult but beautiful score by Brian Elias. A music director would have said no and suggested another piece of music. I do think it's an artistic director's job to interfere or to take decisions and say, "You may want to do that, or if you want to do that, perhaps find somewhere else to do it; I don't think that that's going to suit you or our company. Prove me wrong, but not on our time and with our dancers." This may be an extreme case. It's very sad that Michael Corder emerged and was not used by the company properly or fully. I think he is a real talent who should have been nutured and kept and encouraged and allowed to make more and more works. He's always produced good work.

It's all very well to put on MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet", "Manon", and "Mayerling" the whole time. You put them on the poster, and the house fills up. But what about the others? There is a whole collection of his works. And the same with Ashton. They seem to rely upon too few Ashton ballets on the whole. I haven't seen "The Two Pigeons" for a long time. So many of those lovely ballets of Ashton ought to be brought back too. They are part of the fabric of the British experience. You've got to know about "A Wedding Bouquet", "Les Patineurs". It's no good sticking new clothes on, as in the way they ruined "Les Rendezvous" by putting it in hideous new costumes. All those old ballets should be there; you must have a heritage. You don't have to put them all within a season though. You tell people about it, and people have to learn to understand and enjoy the selection.

The Royal Ballet has won audiences for 70 years now with its own choreographies. And not to do this is to deny your past. You have to make new works of course, but I don't think it's necessary for us to join others and to have all that homogenised Eurotrash rubbish from Mats Ek, Forsythe, Kylian, and all those tiresome people. Their work is for their countries, their companies and their European audiences. We have a most distinguished balletic history. Why deny it? We made it ours, and others emulated us - the Royal Ballet - for many years.

Do you think that the New York City Ballet (NYCB) has declined in their dancing of the Balanchine repertory, which has now shrunk to just barely half the repertory every season?

People are always going to carry on, aren't they? You have to allow that while they maintain the amount of Balanchine's work, there are no problems. And the amount of Jerry Robbins' work too. This seems to be a contradiction of what we've been talking about the Royal Ballet, but you can't just have a museum. It's got to go on, and out of this Balanchine experience will come choreographers who will take Balanchine's message and develop it for a new age. So while you maintain say a 50% of Balanchine works in the repertory, there isn't much wrong, is there? Because it's always there, and everyone acknowledges his genius.

You wrote in a recent review from Copenhagen that the NYCB dancers were not in good form in "Symphony in C"?

They opened their season in Tivoli with "Symphony in C" in the first programme. It looked very off. I thought that the setting was wrong, the location wasn't very happy, and they didn't look good. But don't forget that "Symphony in C" was created for the Paris Opera as "Le Palais de Cristal". What's very interesting is that when the Kirov dance it, you see what I saw in 1947 as "Le Palais de Cristal", because they dance it with such an interesting verve and personality. It's very much the way it was. It had colour and allure with Tamara Toumanova, Micheline Bardin, Michel Renault, and all sorts of wonderful dancers in it, and they were tremendous personalities. With the Kirov, Veronika Part was lovely. That was very much the French style with a great deal of charm and sex appeal. (When you see Ayupova in "Emeralds", you see Violette Verdy who was absolutely sublime. She was absolutely beautiful, and nobody could be more musical. A knockout!)

You've seen the NYCB since their first London season in 1950.

What Kirstein and Balanchine made was American ballet. Kirstein wanted classical ballet to be American, and Mr. Balanchine, who was always adventurous, realised exactly what he wanted and loved. He produced truly American ballet. When you look at NYCB, you can still see American classical ballet. NYCB is still a great company, and has maintained its identity. Sometimes it makes you wonder what you are looking at, if you see the Royal Ballet shuffling its way through Mats Ek's "Carmen", or Forsythe's works like "In The Middle Somewhat Elevated". You are not seeing the Royal Ballet. God knows what you are seeing! It's not out of their training, their temperament, or their identity.

Why do you detest so much the works of Mats Ek, William Forsythe, and Jiri Kylian?

Because I think that they are very bad choreographers. As simple as that! And I think that they are destroying classical ballet. They don't understand classical ballet, and I dislike what they do. I don't deny the fact that they can do it where they wish. I don't want to look at it, and I find them repetitive and vulgar. And there is no creative variety - all those terrible boring ballets look the same.

You travel regularly to Paris, Russia, and New York. When you are invited by a foreign company, do you feel that you sometimes have to be diplomatic when you review their performances?

No, I am a great one for biting the hand that feeds me. There is a very interesting question here. In point of fact, I have a great many invitations which I don't accept, because I don't want to be caught up with those people, with what they are doing, and with what they expect me to do for them. I refuse invitations more than I accept. And in the cases when I report, 90% of my foreign trips are paid for by myself or by my newspaper. I choose when I want to go. I wouldn't dream of going anywhere. If you are a journalist, well and good. But I am not a journalist, I am a critic. My job is to write about what I see on the stage. In a sense there is a distinction, though there is no question of one being better than the other. But if one accepted invitations to see foreign companies, there might then be an obligation on your part to be sympathetic.

I've had eight or nine invitations from one particular company. I've always had to decline them. When I am invited to see a company where there are people involved whom I don't like, I can't go. It would be immoral. I am very busy too. Years ago I was invited to go to Beijing. Unfortunately it was a matter of a month's notice, and I couldn't simply clear my existing commitments. This time I've come to Hong Kong for one reason only - and that's my profound admiration and respect and tremendous interest in ballet in China. Certainly it's a chance for me to see Chinese dancers and to see a company directed by Stephen Jefferies who is one of the greatest dramatic dancers whom I've seen in my life, whom I hugely respect.

You wrote several years ago that the future of classical ballet may well lie in China. Why are you of this opinion?

I do think that the Chinese have an absolutely natural affinity with ballet. The National Ballet of China danced "La Sylphide" on a visit to Copenhagen with exactly the way it should be danced. The Chinese dancers' physique is right, their temperament is right, and their aesthetic understanding is right. There are no problems at all. I've gone on record and wrote in the Financial Times that I do think that an important part of the future of ballet may well come out of China. China has got to produce some excellent choreographers, and that's going to take a very long time, before they can produce authentically Chinese classical choreography, dealing with Chinese themes.

The ballet "Raise the Red Lantern" is anyway corrupted, in the sense that it came out of a film (by Zhang Yimou). They've got to look at for instance Peking Opera and Chinese history. They should make ballets related to the Chinese experience, Chinese aesthetic, and Chinese literature. Madame Dai Ailian (one of the founders of the National Ballet of China) was always bringing in new, interesting and illuminating work for her dancers. So they did have a wonderful understanding.

And I think that the fact that they danced Bournonville so well is terribly encouraging, because it means that they can move on from that experience to make something which will reflect the Chinese gift for classical dancing and Chinese theatre. In a funny way, if you look at the story of "La Sylphide", it could be transferred to a Chinese setting, and it would not seen unnatural or unwise. They can make a Chinese ballet out of this, though they don't need to. It helps young creators and young dancers to understand in which way they can go forward. In Beijing they must make increasing numbers of ballets on Chinese themes - it's got to be Chinese classical ballet. We've accepted Russian ballet and Russian themes. We've made them wonderfully so on British themes. They can do the same in China.

Why do you think that ballet still tends to be looked down as an elitist art?

Only by people who don't know anything about it. For goodness sake, get the people to see it, and they will see that it's not elitist, and they will have a good time.

With your long ballet-going experience, is there a temptation sometimes to look back to the past and think that the present doesn't live up to it?

Every time a new company comes into town, when it's a new school's performance or a new display by young dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet or at the Royal Ballet School, one is constantly interested and occasionally absolutely moved by young dancers. I was in Paris recently to help give an award to a young dancer in the Paris Opera Ballet. We chose two dancers - one was 19, the other was 20. It's a private award, and they asked me to join them on the selection board. We chose them. The excitement about these young talents was quite as much as our excitement in seeing the great dancers in the past. What treasurable experiences there are in seeing some of the young dancers of the Kirov like Anton Korsakov, Natalia Sologub, or Irina Golub. Marvellous! And there is this girl in the Paris Opera, Fanny Fiat, whom I have the most enormous respect. She's absolutely beautiful. A fascinating young dancer.

Do you find it worrying that newspapers in general throughout the world are cutting down on dance coverage? Your reviews in the FT are getting shorter nowadays, whereas in the past you used to have the space for instance to write about the three different casts of "Mayerling" when it was premiered in 1978?

I think that newspapers and their critical response are changing. The readership is changing. Some newspapers have cut down completely on dance criticism. Not the FT, thank God! The demands of circulation, the demands of an increasing global audience are factors. The FT now has several different editions. There are reviews which appear in some editions but not others. I think that many newspapers, in order to keep circulation going when faced with the competition from the television and the internet, have to adapt. If you look at the papers of 30, 40, or 50 years ago, you'd hardly recognise them.

Things change, things mutate. I still write about the things that I think are important. I've never felt that I should have written about that but cannot. As far as I am concerned, I always get to cover everything that I think is important.