Table of Contents
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"The
ballet version is solidly based on the text of Williams' play, but
John Murrell,
the well-known Canadian playwright,
has injected several sequences that allude to Blanche's past and
the experiences that made her. These visual "memory" elements
explain much of Blanche's back-story, which, in the play, is told
in dialogue."
Power
of Desire
John
Alleyne brings his vision of A Streetcar Named Desire to the stage
By
Richard Forzley
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Creating
the architecture for a new full-length ballet requires a Herculean
effort from a team of creative adventurers. John Alleyne, Ballet
British Columbia's artistic director and choreographer, has never
been one to shy away from a challenge, and his new full-length ballet,
A Streetcar Named Desire, based on the sensational play by
Tennessee Williams, is a testament both to his talent and to the
power of dance.
North American audiences are certainly familiar
with the tragic tale, whether it's from the 1951 movie version that
put Marlon Brando on the superstar map, the often-produced play
itself or the hilarious Simpsons spoof with Marge as Blanche DuBois.
And now, almost 60 years after its Broadway premiere in 1947, Alleyne
is out to capture in dance the story's seedy decadence.
Set in New Orleans, Williams' play is rife with the kinds of major
themes that choreographers love. The conflicted and tragic Blanche
DuBois, a frail and slightly mad Southern belle, is lost somewhere
between fantasy and illusion, seeing things not as they are but
as they ought to be. Both she and her pregnant sister, Stella, are
the last members of a refined Southern family, and symbolize the
Old South. Stella's blue-collar husband, Stanley, represents the
new order.
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The immediate animosity between Blanche
and Stanley sets the tone for the whole story and is exacerbated
by Blanche's pretentious arrogance. From the moment Stanley
overhears Blanche criticizing him to Stella, he devotes himself
fully to her destruction. Throughout the play, Williams demonstrates
the full range of cruelty, from Blanche's well-intentioned
deceits to Stella's self-deceiving treachery to Stanley's
deliberate malice. Stanley represents a romantic ideal of
man untouched by civilization, but who possesses a terrifying
amorality. His desire is central to who he is, and he has
no qualms about driving Blanche to madness or raping her.
Indeed, desire is the central theme of
the play. Stella embraces it through her relationship with
Stanley. Blanche, however, seeks to deny it. Loneliness is
the cruel companion to her desperation for love.
The ballet version is solidly based on
the text of Williams' play, but John Murrell, the well-known
Canadian playwright, has injected several sequences that allude
to Blanche's past and the experiences that made her. These
visual "memory" elements explain much of
Blanche's back-story, which, in the play, is told in dialogue.
"It's a play that I know extremely
well, since I've had almost a lifelong fascination with Tennessee
Williams," Murrell says. "I have worked
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with John [Alleyne] on several ballets now, and our process always
starts with a long and very thorough discussion about the source text,
so that I know what interests him. If I fail to capture what drives
the primary artist, it doesn't matter how well-written the scenario
is, I have failed."
Sometimes, as in the case of The Faerie Queen, an Alleyne/Murrell
collaboration in 2000, the process is easy. There, Alleyne was very
specific about the characters and the part of the story he wanted
to use.
"In the case of Streetcar, we developed a kind of shorthand
based on our working experience together. He can think blue-sky creatively
and I take notes. Hopefully, I bring that back to him in the first
draft. The other thing I try to do - actually the hardest part - is
tell the story just with images, movement in space and instrumental
music. Even though there may be a synopsis in the programme, you should
be able to understand the story without reading about it first. That's
the biggest challenge."
Streetcar's familiarity and its archetypal characters compounded the
difficulty of working with this particular play. "We all have
various associations with this play, so I had to chip away at the
iconic representations of Vivien Leigh, Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando
and the other great actors who have imagined these roles, and free
my imagination to get to the basic archetype and what Williams was
really after."
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Murrell is pleased that he and Alleyne
were able to open up parts of the story that, in a spoken
play or even a musical version, wouldn't be possible. "For
example, in the text there is a powerful relationship between
who Blanche has become and who she once was, perhaps one of
the most important relationships in the play. We know that
she was a very different human being with her young husband
than she is as the damaged woman in front of us in New Orleans.
"Both John and I felt there had
to be a character named Young Blanche as well as a character
called Blanche Dubois, and that would really allow us to explore
something unique."
Communicating complex ideas and relationships
through dance is clearly not easy. Alleyne, typically, spends
months researching the time period, ending up with piles of
notes and ideas about the characters. Finally, though, creating
a ballet relies on improvisation under pressure.
Throughout the early rehearsals, the
mood in the room is intense. The dancers wait anxiously, pawing
at the resin box, their arms hanging loosely. The smell of
sweat lingers in the air, along with an aura of spirituality,
thanks to the dancers' single-minded concentration.
Alleyne begins by dancing out the first
steps of the ballet, counting aloud each beat of the phrase.
The dancers immediately reproduce his
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movements and echo the counts. So it continues, hour after hour, as
the choreographer produces sequences for all the dancers in a particular
scene. They then begin repeating the sequences until Alleyne is satisfied
and ready to begin another section. If a particular movement proves
too difficult or awkward for a dancer, the choreographer may restructure
the step to fit that dancer's body and style.
By the end of each two-hour rehearsal, some progress will have been
made - perhaps two or three minutes of the finished work. In the weeks
preceding the premiere of a new ballet, Alleyne and his dancers spend
six or seven hours a day, five days a week, in the rehearsal studio.
Creating work that resonates with contemporary audiences is key to
the vigour and excitement of Alleyne's choreography. "Stories
like Streetcar are relevant to all of us, because they deal with the
nature of the common man," he says.
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Blanche, he says, is fighting a losing
battle. "The reality is that her life, given the times,
is already over. Dancing the role of Blanche is extraordinarily
difficult because of the character's emotional confusion -
it's as much a personal exploration for a dancer as it is
an opportunity to stretch creatively."
Tobin Stokes, a British Columbia-based
composer, created 95 minutes of music that, like the choreography,
reflect different time periods and a variety of moods. Stokes'
jazz score gives the musicians an opportunity to improvise
in their solos, although the counts necessarily stay the same
for the dancers. The overlaid solos may change from performance
to performance, adding a fresh layer of exploration for both
musicians and
dancers.
"The music reflects the historical
context of the story," Stokes says, "but I use modern
jazz as a way to expand on a theme. Watching these dancers
capture every nuance, phrase and intention of the music was
a fantastic experience and a real privilege for me."
For his part, Alleyne hopes that
his choreography reflects "the collision of opposites"
in Williams' play. "Perhaps classical dance with its
huge range
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of movement - but refined through a post-modern
sensibility - will make Streetcar something contemporary audiences
can relate to on a primal level." <end>
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A
Royal Celebration
The Royal Ballet's 75th anniversary
season 2005-2006 draws to a close
By: Jeffrey Taylor
They said
it would never happen.
Prancing about in tights is
an insult to British manhood,
we were told. No. Stuff like that might
be okay for Continentals, but it will
just never happen here.
Boy, how wrong the
know-it-alls were in 1931.
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In spring that year, in
apparently arid soil, an exotic seed was planted that literally
changed the face of this nation. A struggling, little-known
dancer, teacher and choreographer called Ninette de Valois
(born Edris Stannus in Baltiboys, Eire, in 1898) took the
gamble of a lifetime with a troupe of eight fat-thighed ladies
and launched the then-titled Vic-Wells Ballet at Sadler's
Wells Theatre, Islington.
Today that company, now known as the Royal Ballet, is internationally
acknowledged as a contender for the dance world's supreme
crown alongside the Paris Opera, and the Kirov and Bolshoi
Ballets. Each of these companies took two to three centuries
to reach the heights of excellence the Royal has attained
in less than one.
And with some refreshingly frank own
trumpet blowing this past autumn, the late Ninette de Valois'
company, the Royal Ballet, launched a glittering new season
to celebrate the anniversary of its first 75 years. An astonishing
achievement in a staggeringly short space of time.
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What the doom merchants of 1931
overlooked was this redoubtable woman's steely determination,
profound belief in her subject and total refusal to
hear the word "no." Under her inspirational
leadership that earned her the lifelong title of
"Madam," her little company rapidly took root
in north London and abandoned its other home, Waterloo's
Old Vic Theatre. De Valois adopted Sadler's Wells' name,
spawned a school, moved in 1946 to a new home at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and added a second
company, the Sadler's Wells Opera Ballet. A decade later
came a Royal Charter and its present title, the Royal
Ballet.
"Madam was a true visionary,"
remembers former ballerina Dame Beryl Grey who first
danced
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with the new company at age 14. "She
said to me often as she got older, you know, dear, I always
knew our company would flourish." De Valois demanded of
her fledgling ballerinas the same 110 percent effort she herself
contributed. "She was a very powerful woman with ceaseless
energy," emphasizes Dame Beryl, who famously slept on the
luggage rack every night when touring by train at 15 years old,
and was already dancing the full-length Swan Lake, the
most demanding female role in the classical ballet opus. Young
"Bubbles" Grey, as she was known, earned £4
a week. "Madam gave the classes, supervised the performances,
took rehearsals and paid the company individually on a Friday.
The press," she adds, "always said, she'll never create
a permanent company, the British don't have the temperament."
How wrong they were.
It is the British people themselves, according to Monica Mason,
the current artistic director, who set the seal on the Royal
Ballet's sensational success. "Classical ballet may seem
unlikely to take root in the phlegmatic British character,"
says Mason, an Australian who had been with the company for
nearly half a century as dancer, teacher and assistant director
before taking full control in 2002. "But, unlike the rest
of Europe, the British people - rather than the upper classes
- have developed their arts," she says, roundly rejecting
ballet's media "elitist" tag. "Look at Shakespeare's
popularity." And to hammer home Mason's faith in the grassroots
enthusiasm for dance, recent surveys show that between 600,000
and one million of our children, girls and boys (our young males
are rapidly discovering an ideal scenario for meeting girls),
take
Saturday-morning ballet classes, while 15 million people - a
quarter of the U.K. population - connect with professional dance
one way or another each year.
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Also," adds Mason, "it's the nature of the
British to be open to outside influences and make them
our own. The way we rose to the challenge of Rudolf
Nureyev is a prime example."In 1962, the Royal
Ballet was coasting along quite nicely, thank you. Frederick
Ashton, founding choreographer, had already made nearly
40 works for the company, including Symphonic Variations
and Cinderella, forming the backbone of one of the world's
greatest dance repertoires. Ninette de Valois, 62, a
year from retirement, viewed her bad-boy choreographer,
Kenneth MacMillan, with her usual wry amusement. MacMillan
shocked the London purists as he made dance history,
scattering among the cosy classical favourites his savage
works depicting rape, psychosis and suicide. The company's
prima ballerina assoluta, Margot Fonteyn, at 42, was
also about to hang up her pointe shoes permanently when,
into the rather inward-looking environs of Covent Garden,
leapt a marauding Tatar from the foothills of the Ural
Mountains called Rudolf Nureyev.
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This sexy, young (23) and charismatic
virtuoso dancer, a defector from St. Petersburg's Kirov Ballet,
was a major earthquake at Covent Garden, a wake-up call in particular
to the male dancers about expectations, both artistically and
technically. It was the beginning of the soaring improvement
of Royal Ballet men, later personified in world class stars
like Anthony Dowell and Jonathan Cope.
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"My job was to look
after Rudi," remembers Michael Brown, a former
actor who joined the Royal Ballet as a dresser in 1963
and today is student administrator of English National
Ballet School. "I have to say he was the most difficult
person I ever looked after.
"He would fly in from an appearance
abroad," Brown goes on, "and go straight on
stage, but he flack was me and that's when the throwing
started." Brown persevered and became head of wardrobe
in 1978.
"In New York, I refused to
have anything to do with him for three days," he
recalls. "He wouldn't let anyone else near him
and every time I was called, I just said no. Eventually
the company asked me to stand in the wings. We didn't
speak, just stared at each other. He called me a flipping
English peasant. Naturally, I could have killed him,
but I had the deepest respect for him."
The highlight of the new celebratory season is a revival
of The Sleeping Beauty designed by Oliver Messel,
which reopened the Covent Garden stage after the Second
World War in 1946. That performance was attended by
the King, the Queen, the two Princesses, the rest of
the Royal Family and the entire Cabinet. "It was
the pinnacle of Madam's career," remembers Dame
Beryl. "It was also a terrible ordeal, as she always
turned to absolute jelly when confronted with royalty."
Three years later, Fonteyn in The
Sleeping Beauty conquered America and established
herself, and the company, on the international stage
with her glorious dancing and swashbuckling private
life with husband Tito Arias, a member of
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Panama's ruling clan.
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The final decade of the 20th century
brought more momentous changes to the organization.
In 1990, former company dancer, Peter Wright crowned
his 25 years directorship of Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet,
the touring section, with a move to the Midlands and
a permanent home in the Birmingham Hippodrome. The brilliant
dancer and choreographer David Bintley now leads the
renamed Birmingham Royal Ballet. The same year, Bolshoi
star Irek Mukhamedov joined the company and set new
standards of dance drama, continued today by great actors
like Tamara Rojo and Ivan Putrov. In 1998, talks began
to move the Royal Ballet Upper School to a site in Covent
Garden linked to the Royal Opera House, an objective
achieved in 2003, while the house itself was closed
from July 1997 to December 1999 for a £214 million
refit.
Jeffrey Phillips retired when he
turned 65 last November, after a lifetime's career with
the company, from junior ballet school through dancing
with the touring company to project manager for the
massive makeover. "It was the most exciting time
in my life," he insists. "As a former dancer,
I could say what bits should go where to suit us in
the new building," says Phillips, responsible for
£19 million of the overall budget.
"The James Street corner on
the Piazza has the best access to the stage, so I got
the ballet in there. The corps de ballet are the busiest
of the lot in an opera house, but always have to run
up and down hundreds of stairs, so I got them on the
first floor." He also made sure the dressing rooms
are as a dancer wants them. "I got lights under
mirrors," he explains, "so you could see to
do under your chin, I was always being told off for
missing that bit, and the showers that are absolutely
vital for sweaty dancers. All principal dressing rooms
are en suite, the corps rooms have football showers
and there's a dancer's own laundry for personal use."
Sprawling across the heart of England with more than
150 dancers in two companies in purpose-built home theatres,
two symphony orchestras, two schools and an overall
back up staff of hundreds, the Royal Ballet has grown
out of all recognition since those well-endowed eight
ladies that spring day in Islington 75 years ago. Or
has it?
"We must feed dancers with
passion and belief back into the company," says
Monica
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Mason. "The leader must inspire
love and commitment and the youngest dancers, with all
their hearts, have to know and aspire to the company's
values. That's the soul of the Royal Ballet."
"People talk a lot about
the company losing its identity," adds Dame Beryl,
"but watching them night after night, there is
no mistake - it is the Royal Ballet that Ninette would
instantly recognize and be proud of."
Dame Ninette de Valois, OM,
CH, DBE, died peacefully at her home in West London
at 8.45 a.m. on March 8, 2001. She was 102 years old.
Her legacy is a priceless contribution to the nation
- a truly Great Briton. <end>
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This article was first published
in the Sunday Express, October 2005. Jeffery Taylor is a
former dancer and dance critic of the Sunday Express, London,
England.
[top]
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TABLE OF CONTENTS: Summer
2006 Issue [top]
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- John Neumeier's Quest
by Victor Swoboda
- In Search of Diaghilev: Victor Smirnov-Golovanov
by Ian Robertson
- Life After Dance
by Sarah Murphy-Dyson
- A National Voice for Dance: the Canadian Dance Assembly
by Kaija Pepper
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Departments
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- Commentaries from Vancouver, the Prairies, Montréal,
Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Britain, the Netherlands, Italy,
Russia, Denmark and Australia.
- Reviews of Nuevo Ballet Espanol, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Alberta
Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Houston Ballet
- Book Reviews
by Michael Crabb and Kaija Pepper
- Notebook
by Michael Crabb
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