Ballet.co reviews for 1998: Wayne Sleep Shobana Jeyasingh Scottish Ballet Royal Ballet Richard Alston Rambert Dance Co Nothern Ballet Theatre Merce Cunningham English National Ballet Cwmni Ballet Gwent City Ballet London Birmingham Royal Ballet Adventures in Motion Pics Ballet.co Interviews in 1998

In order to succeed, those running our ballet companies need some of Dame Ninette's grasp of practical realities as well as her artistic vision. It's truly daunting task. Artistic Directors are probably up there with football managers in terms of stress and job (in)security - and are substantially less well rewarded ! But it's not impossible. ENB and BRB have both had good years. Both of them seem to have a clear view of who they are and what they want to do, and each cultivates a distinct image.

ENB has a real genius for marketing and publicity: it goes out of its way to bring in new audiences and is not afraid of being seen as populist. It was an astute move to use some of the money from the Diana Memorial fund to provide open classes and a comprehensive access and outreach programme in connection with their big production of Romeo and Juliet at the Albert Hall. ENB's programming does include a number of big narrative ballets - the very sort that the RB are criticised for putting on so often, yet ENB somehow escape censure. Their programming of mixed bills for touring is better thought through than the Royal's Dance Bites, with an intelligent mix of new work from the company's own choreographers and some older favourites to tempt the audience.

The major event this year for ENB was Deane's new production of Romeo & Juliet at the Albert Hall. There are always going to be a few people who are going to disapprove of any attempt at ballet in the round for a mass audience. In fact Deane provided a subtle and inventive production which dealt with the massive space efficiently, but never lacked passion. He certainly has a knack of finding talent new to the UK: Tamara Rojo was a delightful and touching Juliet. The much admired Oaks and Edur are also now back with ENB, and the company is rather less dependent on importing guest stars than in the past. It will be interesting to see if the ENB school, which has been talked up a good deal by Deane, can start to deliver more home grown talent in future. All good and positive news - and a healthy financial position too.

BRB are the most vibrant ballet company in the UK at the moment, with the most interesting and varied repertoire. Confidence shines out of them. Bintley is continuing to create a new work each season himself, and also inviting others to make new work for BRB. This year it was Stanton Welch (I didn't see it so I can't comment). Not all of this has been a success in the past: responses to Kudelka's work a year or so ago were lukewarm, and Lila York's didn't really come off. It's interesting though, that the general response to this approach is positive both from the critics and from audiences - better to take some risks rather than schedule a month of Sleeping Beauties. Mixing the new work with old favourites like Still Life at the Penguin Cafe still seems to bring the audiences in. Formally breaking the link with the Royal Opera House in 1997 looks like being a very far sighted move.

Bintley's tribute to de Valois was to restage her comedy, The Prospect Before Us, not seen for over 40 years. The subject - dancers without a home because of the destruction of their theatre - was grimly topical, but horribly funny. This revival seemed a much more wholehearted and generous gesture than the Royal's evening of de Valois excerpts. One of the pleasures of seeing BRB is spotting rapidly developing talent, and some of the younger men in particular look promising. Given the size of the company, dancers get a chance at leading roles early. Notable debuts this year included Robert Parker as Romeo, but this is just one example.

Rambert had another confident year, and they were the ideal choice for opening the new Sadlers Wells theatre. The new Bruce at the opening of Sadlers Wells was not a particularly festive piece, but the company looked in great form. The revival of Cruel Garden was immensely popular: in some ways there was more of a buzz at Sadlers Wells for this, with huge queues for returns, than there was for the opening night.

The lack of Covent Garden and (until October) of Sadlers Wells meant that increasing ingenuity was required to stage ballet at all in London. Few visiting ballet companies came to London in the first half of the year. The Peacock Theatre in the West End, used by Sadlers Wells during rebuilding, is pleasant, but the stage is not big enough for substantial productions. Hence ENB's need to continue to use the Royal Albert Hall for a short season each summer.

One new development was the transformation of the Barbican theatre for dance and opera. The orchestra pit is quite oddly shaped, and the stage rather shallow, but at least it gives us a choice of another venue. The Royal used it in June for a week: it looked better suited to contemporary dance, and both Tharp and Merce Cunningham played here. The biggest impact by far was the reopening of Sadlers Wells in October. It's a huge stage and a vast improvement (apart from the bar prices). It's wonderful to have a substantial space dedicated to dance both for British and visiting companies. The Peacock is also continuing to run a full programme as well: I wish them luck for next year, after the ROH's cancellation of its six month booking from next April blew a huge hole in their schedules. Let us be optimistic for now, and hope we have some interesting dance visitors instead.

Another unexpected dance venue in December was the Lyceum, used by BRB over Christmas to present their much loved version of the Nutcracker. It's so ironic. The Lyceum, just a few yards down the road from Covent Garden, had long been suggested as a new dance venue for London, and a possible home for the Royal Ballet during the rebuilding. Nothing ever came of it: various objections seemed to have been raised by the Covent Garden management (why can't I rid my mind of the idea they didn't think it was grand enough ?) The theatre ended up being renovated and used for a revival of a Lloyd-Webber musical. Such a shame: it's fine theatre for dance: a generous size stage, with good enough facilities for all the Nutcracker transformations and flying, and excellent sight lines, decorated in riotously over the top Victorian style. Another opportunity missed.

One emerging trend related to the change in venues available is the breakdown of the strict geographic demarcation that the Arts Council tried to enforce. There was no subsidy for touring outside your home area - so NBT and Scottish Ballet never came south, and the Royal didn't tour in Britain because they were simply too grand. Absurd really - what's the point in BRB working so hard to expand the audience for dance in Birmingham if no one else is allowed to go there ? Some venues are making a determined effort to create and maintain a local dance audience - the Swan in High Wycombe, and the theatre in Woking. At least this year the RB went to Belfast for a week. Next year, NBT will be at Sadlers Wells, and BRB plan at least two visits to London. There are indications that the Royal may do more touring in Britain in the future. I think all these are positive signs: it's been the sort of year that makes you want to seize on any vaguely positive point.

But not everything in the garden is rosy. Scottish Ballet spent the year without an Artistic Director, and much of the future there is still murky. Christopher Gable, Artistic Director of Northern Ballet Theatre died this year. This is a great loss: he had a strong personal vision for NBT, who had developed their own strongly dramatic narrative style. It will be interesting to see what direction the company takes now. Next year, Didy Veldman of Rambert is creating a Carmen for them - hard to imagine what this will be like.

Well, we have to get round to the Royal Ballet eventually. I keep putting this off. The Royal are still without a home and won't have one for some time. The rebuilt Opera House should be available in December 1999, though there are rumbles that this might actually turn out to be March 2000. In this last year, the RB have done a Christmas season at the Festival Hall (Cinderella, Tales from Beatrix Potter, Patineurs); the Dance Bites tour of mainly new work in March; a one week season at the Barbican around the time of Dame Ninette's birthday in June (Rake's Progress, New Page, Birthday Offering); a five-week season of the usual blockbusters at the Coliseum (Beauty, Swan Lake, Manon, Bayadere); a few weeks at Sadlers Wells with four different programmes, mainly mixed bills; and finally back at the Festival Hall again (Cinderella, Fille mal Gardee, R&J)

The programming for at least the first half of the year has been dismissed as tired and unadventurous. Dance Bites was pretty much the same format as the previous year, when its concept had been fairly heavily criticised. Its emphasis is very much on modern works or newly commissioned works from choreographers with some connection with the Royal (there doesn't seem to be enough budding dance makers in house, hence invitations to former RB dancers such as Wheeldon). There's undoubtedly an audience for this in London (where Dance Bites doesn't venture), but lots of audiences around the country long to see something more traditional. In London, by contrast, we've seen our lifetime's share of Beauties already.

There was nothing new in the blockbuster season at the Coliseum, and very few notable debuts. The only new work commissioned this year were small scale pieces for the Dance Bites tour and two new works by Ashley Page. Cheating, Lying, Stealing featured Durante and Mukhamedov generating some real sexual tension, but it was the dancers not the dance that was memorable. Sawdust and Tinsel was a grim experience which not even dancers I admire could make interesting. The lack of a full time company choreographer has taken a considerable toll: there is no clear artistic vision of where the company is going.

It would be nice to say that the standard of dancing is being maintained. However, despite some good individual performances overall, there is a note of staleness and frustration: some of the big productions look paradoxically both under-rehearsed but yet not fresh. It was clear that many of the dancers found Birthday Offering something of an uphill struggle in June, and matters had improved only slightly in this department in the autumn. In general, the MacMillan works fare better (but there are still outbreaks of sloppiness e.g. in the beggar's dance in Manon, fluffed each time I saw it). However, the number of dancers who look assured in Ashton (Yoshida, Wildor, Rosato, Valtat, Samson) are few. Guillem, when she is here, is still astonishing, and lovingly partnered by Cope: and other dancers too have been on form (Yoshida, Trevitt, Nunn).

Casting still seems at times to be done by a capricious god. Bussell attempted Checkmate's Black Queen in the de Valois tribute without convincing anyone. It has been a pleasure to see her dancing with Zelensky this season, but neither of them were ideally cast in Manon.

The programming of the autumn season at Sadlers Wells was much more enterprising: an evening of Ashton, some of the best surviving bits of Dance Bites, Concerto, fleetingly glimpsed in the summer. But by then, it was survival rather than dance itself which was at the forefront of everyone's minds, as the Royal Opera House threatened to go under and take the Royal Ballet with it. Compromises were eventually reached, and we shall see something of the RB before the Opera House opens, but it was desperately close. A breakaway of the RB from the ROH seemed a distinct possibility. In this situation, it would have been good to see the Artistic Director get up and defend the reputation of his company and what it stood for. I have to say Dowell was extraordinarily elusive. The dancers took it on themselves to put their case to the press and public - and very eloquently too, in many cases. Its often crass handling of the dispute has not done the ROH any favours.

    The Sadlers Wells season included a number of works in which we were looking forward to seeing Kumakawa, including Patineurs, and Mr Worldly Wise. Sadly in the autumn he decided to depart - not perhaps too much of a surprise, but it was a shame he did not complete the season. The ranks of the Royal's male dancers had already been thinned by the departure of Adam Cooper and Errol Pickford the previous year. The Royal did not renew Mukhamedov's contact after the summer: he, and Durante, are now guest artists. Although his powers are declining, he still remains a much loved and moving artist, and most sensible companies would have thought how best to use him rather than letting him go. It hardly encourages loyalty.

Further defections were to come as five more male dancers resigned to join Kumakawa's new company. Trevitt, Nunn, Cassidy, Avis and Dibble will all leave after the end of the Christmas season, leaving the only male principals remaining to be Bruce Sansom, Jonathan Cope and Carlos Acosta, who joined this autumn. I'm sorry they are going, but the pressures have been enormous and who can blame them for taking up a new opportunity. Trevitt has had a very good year and looked increasingly confident. He was my favourite Rake, and an excellent Lescaut - cold hearted and manipulative. Nunn has looked very good in a number of works, especially Forsythe and Concerto. I particularly liked Avis as an actor (especially his Monsieur G M in Manon).

The year ended with a revival of Fille mal Gardee, absent for the last seven years, a production unfamiliar to most of the company. In this at least they have looked secure and relaxed and back on form. Two other pieces of good news to think about for 1999 are Carlos Acosta - very impressive on what we've seen of him so far, and the appointment of Michael Kaiser as Executive Director of the ROH - someone with some actual experience of running a ballet company, which makes a pleasant change. I'm afraid my crystal ball remains distinctly murky for the Royal Ballet in 1999, all the same.