Ashbridge disappointed

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32702, 3 September 1971, Page 2

Ashbridge disappointed

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Sept 2. The ballet director, Bryan Ashbridge, will fly back to Australia today a disappointed man. Earlier this year, he resigned as assistant artistic director of the Australian Ballet to become artistic director for ballet with the New Zealand Ballet and Opera Trust in Wellington.

Today, nine weeks after he took the New Zealand appointment, he will return to. the Australian position he left. He shows signs of professional frustration and disillusionment, but when asked the reasons for his departure is circumspect.

One of the reasons—and he emphasises that there are “lots of others”—is the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council funding system that prevented his knowing early enough how much money would be available for future programmes, which must be planned at least a year ahead. “How can you contract artists, plan budgets, and hire theatres and musicians at only a few weeks notice?” he said. “Unless you do it well ahead, all the artists have gone elsewhere, and the theatres and orchestras have been booked by some other organisation.

“The way things work at the moment is back to front It is like hiring dancers, singers, and musicians and then looking for a backer." Among the other reasons Mr Ashbridge gives for his departure is a lack of cooperation that he says he encountered. Pressed on the point, he said: "Frankly, nobody really listened to me when I raised the various problems I could see arising next year.

"1 sincerely believe that not until I handed in my resignation were they really prepared to listen and to do

something to remedy the situation." Mr Ashbridge also felt a lack of artistic independence. He had to answer to a board, and at least three committees—reduced to one after he had resigned. "I spent nine weeks carrying ideas on programmes and budgets to committees, from committees to the board, and then from the board back to committees. It was like punching a pillow,” Mr Ashbridge said. Not until he had resigned was he shown the Auckland proposals for the establishment of a New Zealand Opera and Ballqt Trust Board. He considered thempractical, and virtually identical ifStSUV'tSi submitted last November to the Arts Council committee of inquiry into opera and ballet. "Given Arts Council fund* ing,” he said, "I see no reason why the Auckland trust board should not work well, and I should be keen to consider a position with “I have argued for years that ballet should be where the population is—end that is in Auckland.” — —~