© Oliver Lim Earlier Jeffery Taylor interview wirh Wayne Eagling (08/05) English National Ballet reviews Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

As Wayne Eagling's first planned programme starts touring - an all British choreographers triple bill - Jeffery Taylor pays the man a brief visit...

It all started in December 2005. English National Ballet, in the grip of one of the many financial crises in its 50 year history, produced a new version of The Sleeping Beauty. At the same time a new director, Wayne Eagling, following a total collapse of the company’s leadership, stepped into the vacuum at the top. You could hear sharp intakes of breath across the nation. Luckily, Kenneth MacMillan’s 1987 version of the old Imperial showcase ballet was an instant hit; but more significantly for ENB, so was Eagling.

For fourteen months, Eagling has lifted the morale of Britain’s favourite dance company from minus zero back to red hot. The number of company performances is rising while the dancers have regained their hunger for success, that elusive asset that fills houses and earns rave reviews.

However, the Canadian-born former Royal Ballet principal dancer’s real directorial baptism of fire takes place this month. But rather than opt for the money spinning Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty, Eagling has chosen a traditionally loss making Triple Bill of short one -acters. “You have to grasp the nettle,” he says defiantly. “We’re going to lose more money than we normally do, but that’s why we get a government subsidy.” He adds, “We’re not a commercial concern like Andrew Lloyd Webber, that’s the luxury we have. It’s important to show the direction the company’s going in with me.” But does that have to be straight back into the red? “I want to change the audience’s perception of the mixed programme,” he rushes on in his North American twang, “by presenting work by living English choreographers. They’ll arrive at the theatre with low expectations and leave telling all their friends to go see it.”

The balletic treats being launched on the nation include Michael Corder’s Melody on the Move, A Million Kisses to my Skin By David Dawson and Christopher Hampson’s Sinfonietta Giocosa. “The Hampson piece,” Eagling explains, “was made in 2005 and is purely classical. Hampson has a proven record of popular ballets and I first commissioned Dawson’s piece in 2000. Dawson is English and good.” Michael Corder was inspired to create Melody on the Move in an Oxford Street record store. An album of British Light Classics from the old BBC Radio Light Programme and Home Service including Peanut Polka (Robert Farnon) and Knightsbridge March (Eric Coates) was playing over the tannoy.. “I’m not afraid of being populist,” says Eagling “and the appeal is pure nostalgia including Marigold gloves and Hoovers.”

There is bliss on the home front, too, as former dancer Monique Marchetto, originally from Milan, and Eagling’s girlfriend of three years, is about to present her partner with the ultimate in enterprise. “Monique is seven months pregnant with our first child,” he explains. “It’s a boy due 18 April and it’s very exciting. Monique wants to be with her parents in Milan for the birth which is in the middle of our Cardiff season. I have stand bys already booked in London and Wales.” This could be the founding of an Eagling dancing dynasty. “If he has Monique’s feet,” agrees the father to be, “and could dance the way I did, he’d be very good indeed.”