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An interesting year with Rambert and Royal Ballet both getting new artistic directors and Paris Opera Ballet, under Nureyev, being seen to have bounced back from a real low only a few years earlier. Meanwhile the Royal Opera House (ROH) plans for the future....
Opera House changes
Plans are revealed for Phase 2 extension and rebuilding work on Covent Garden. The main aims are to modernise the stage, enable The Royal Ballet to move from Barons Court and to give greater public accessibility to the House. With no government money available it has to be the case that part of the site is developed for commercial use. The plans took 6 years to develop and were first shown in 1986.
The cost of developing the opera house are £56M of which £33m comes from the profit on the commercial development... leaving £23m to be found. A year later the Westminster City Council gave planning permission.
Norman Morrice resigns as Director of The Royal Ballet at the end of the 85/86 Season in June. Anthony Dowell takes over, having been the assistant for 2 years.
Sir Colin Davies also retires - Bernard Haitink takes over as Music Director
Meanwhile the ballet companies continue touring with RB going to Canada and Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (SWRB and now BRB) going off to the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Israel.
Some numbers
Covent Garden Friends 14,800 full members, 2,000 juniors, 200 American Friends. Full members pay £21 at this time. (In 1998 Friends are up to approximately 19,000)
The ROH ARTS Council subsidy for 85/86 is £12,593,000
Dancing Times costs 90p
At the opening Paris Opera Ballet gala in New York (with ABT) tickets cost $1000
Calendar
| January |
20: Robert North resigns after a disagreement with the Board of Ballet Rambert. (North has recently - Autumn 1999 - taken over as the new Artistic Director for Scottish Ballet)
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| February |
4: SWRB Open in New York with Peter Wright's Sleeping Beauty (designs by Philip Prowse). The season is a success but at a week is thought too short and some aspects of the production are criticised - Arlene Croce (The New Yorker) called Mr Wright "Mr Wrong"!
12: London Contemporary Dance Theatre play Eastbourne for the first time and include a new work by Siobhan Davies. What the Eastbourne residents thought is not recorded...
19: Rambert appointed Richard Alston as AD
Jeremy James and Mark Baldwin are dancers with the company around this time - now (1999) they have their own companies.
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| April |
1: Erik Bruhn the Royal Danish and ABT dancer dies.
28: World Premiere of David Bintley's The Snow Queen for SWRB at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Based on the Hans Andersen fairy tale, which is very similar to Le Baiser de la Fee which RB premiere 10 days later! Leanne Benjamin and Roland Price are in the premiere. Samira Saidi is the Snow Queen. The ballet is a popular success but not quite so lauded by the critics: "There are gems in The Snow Queen, but the ballet itself is a disappointment" Julie Kavanagh, New Statesman, 17.5.86
A young looking David Leonard ("Dance Publisher") is interviewed in the April Dancing Times by Barbara Newman for the Speaking of Dance Series. "I'll come and run the place for you, for a few months anyway, until I find a decent librarianship job" - Leonard to John O'Brian who was having staff problems at the Ballet Bookshop back in the late sixties!
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| May |
8: MacMillan's Le Baiser de la Fee gets its premiere at the Opera House, though it's actually more a reworking of a piece he first did in 1960. All rather odd given that MacMillan is once said to have told the Times "I'm sick to death of fairy stories!"
In the May edition of Dancing Times an arts school punk (one Jon Gray) writes to complain of the bad manners of a Covent Garden regular who told him, "This is a civilised place; you don't belong here, so don't come again." (Perhaps the Covent Garden regular was a younger Colin Southgate, now the ROH Chairman and occasionally off message in this respect...)
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| June |
14: June Rambert's Sixtieth anniversary Gala is held in the presence of the Queen Mother. Many early works from the company's history are danced and the company wins the Society of West End Theatres/Gordon's Gin Award for the best achievement in dance. In a review Beth Genne says, "Unlike the Royal Ballet, which is going through a period of the doldrums - thrown into greater relief by the recent uplifting performances of Sibley and Dowell in The Dream - the Rambert dancers are responding to and, in turn, communicating a sense of excitement in their audiences and faith in the future of the company".
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| July |
1: Dance Theatre of Harlem open at the Coliseum.
8: Paris Opera Ballet begin their first American tour since 1948. Its a shared gala with ABT in which both directors, Nureyev and Baryshnikov also dance. Twyla Tharp appeared in Push Comes to Shove and a young Sylvie Guillem and Patrick Dupond "astonished everyone in Le Corsaire: Guillem with her sustained balances..." (Jack Anderson in Dancing Times). Nureyev was still dancing regularly and seemed to have good nights and not so good nights, but the tour was a triumph for him: ".. simply amazing... Such brilliance and finesse is all the more remarkable because it is not so long ago that the Paris Opera Ballet was, despite its occasional good dancer, virtually the laughing stock of the civilized dance world." Clive Barnes. Later in the run, on the first night of Raymonda, Manuel Legris was promoted to etoile, the first time such an honour had ever been bestowed outside Paris.
14: First night of the Ashton Romeo and Juliet, brought back by Peter Schaufuss as AD of London Festival Ballet.
17: Darcey Bussell dances in Concerto in the RBS annual performance "Bussell soared through the third movement as if it was the easiest task in the world". Stuart Cassidy and Sergiu Pobereznic also impressed.
22: The Bolshoi season at the ROH kicks off with a gala performance of Ivan the Terrible. Mary Clarke is enthusiastic: "There are times when we all think of emulating Richard Buckle and Giving Up Ballet for Ever and then something happens like the Bolshoi Ballet's season at Covent Garden and balletomania comes sweeping over us in the presence of these marvellous dancers". Nina Ananiashvili was dancing in Raymonda as a soloist (part of a "dazzling cast"). Nina is also interviewed in the December Dancing Times.
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| August |
18: Bolshoi Ballet appear at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Later they go on to appear in a 4,000 seat tent at Battersea Park.
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| September |
1: Tokoyo Ballet opens at Covent Garden for a week.
28: Sir Robbert Helpmann dies.
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October |
8: Bintley's Galanteries gets its premiere with the Royal Ballet. Alastair Macaulay (in the Dancing Times) is not incredibly impressed and in the nicest possible way has a long 'go' at Bintley both as choreographer and dancer.
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December |
Prince Charles was President of the Friends of Covent Garden and attended the Christmas party - the Princess dancing with Wayne Sleep.
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Saddest event of the year
The death of Erik Bruhn in April, aged 58, of lung cancer came as a shock. A Royal Danish Ballet dancer who went on to guest with a number of companies before a long career with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and the Director of the National Ballet of Canada. He was the dancer Nureyev most admired in the West. Of Bruhn Baryshnikov said, "He was a much better dancer than Rudolf and he didn't have one-tenth the career... He deserved much more credit."
Next Month
The year we'll be looking at will be 1946. Do write to us if you have any particular memories of that year (you old thing you!).
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