WARTIME BALLET

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5595, 22 March 1943, Page 4

WARTIME BALLET

SURVIVAL IN BRITAIN COMPANIES IN NEW YORK A curious and interesting feature of these war years is the survival of the ballet in both Britain and America. The survival of the ballet in a rudely awakened and profoundly disturbed United States is not really remarkable, for after all no American city has yet been bombed and the art has always been part of the way of life of a large cosmopolitan community under the Stars and Stripes.

It is a difficult matter in Britain. The British Ballet, as distinct from the Russian Ballet and other groups of Continental dancers, was just getting “on to its feet,” thanks to the splendid enterprise of Miss Baylis and the vision of Miss de Valois, when war came. Dancers and staff were called up, men and women accustomed to co-operate were scattered, theatres were closed, and the work begun in May, 1931, at the “Old Vic” in London by the Vic-Wells Ballet Company seemed doomed to destraction.

By what seems to confirmed enthusiasts for Britain’s National Ballet a miracle, the venture of artistic faith initiated by Miss Baylis at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, with Anton Dolin as the guest artist, celebrated its tenth birthday in 1941, in the second year of World War No. 11., and is today drawing houses which astonish artistic London. FIRST HOME “BLITZED” The story of the “Vic.-Wells: A Ballet of Progress” is pleasantly told by Mr P. W. Manchester in a little book with 35 illustrations, which has recently reached Melbourne (London: Victor Gollancz. English price 6s). At the end of the first season of 1939 the Ashton-Berners ballet Cupid and Psyche was being given at Sadler’s Wells Theatre with indifferent success. Before the autumn season be-

g»n wgr out and, with every other theatre, the doors of Sadler’s Wells were closed. In a few months, however, the company reorganised and set out on a successful provincial tour, dancing to two pianos! At Christmas it was back at Sadler’s Wells, and during that strange lull which marked the first six months of hostilities patrons saw Frederick Ashton’s great experiment in abstract ballet, Dante Sonata—approximately enough depicting the struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, but inappropriately representing do final victory or defeat for either! In May, 1940, the company actually left London for a tour of Holland and gium officially arranged by the British council.

“It was perfectly obvious,” writes Mr Manchester, “that the invasion ot the Low Countries was a matter of days, and the cancelling of this tour would have invited no comment nor given rise to any of that unnecessary alarm and despondency of which we heard so much in those days. However, they were sent, and when they managed to get out with their lives they had to leave the scores, settings and costumes, of six ballets behind them. They have never since been able to give Checkmate, Horoscope or The Rake’s Progress. “Indomitably they returned to the Wells, and those terrible days of June and July saw some of the finest performances the Vic.-Wells have ever given us. . . On August 15 London had its first daylight air-raid warning when hundreds of us were on our way to the Wells. Immediately the audiences, which had long since returned to normal, fell away again, and from then on the performances were punctured with air-raid warnings. The company, who had far more reason than any of us to know what an air raid could be, danced through them all, and the most superb Giselle I ever saw was danced through an ‘alert.’ ” The September blitzkreig destroyed the-Sadler’s Wells Theatre—the “Old Vic.” was used only in the early years—but not the company. It, somehow, held together under grave disadvantages and actual hardships, but it gained thousands of additional friends in London and provinces by its sheer determination to live and to brighten war-time London without holding back a single man or woman needed for essential war work. The company has made the New Theatre its London home, and already, Mr Manchester says, it is becoming steeped with the special ballet atmosphere. Miss de Valois’s vision of a National Ballet has been realised. Whether the work of a wonderful woman and choreographer will endure to the very end of the war is still on the knees of the gods. NEW YORK’S TWO COMPANIES No such element of doubt is associated with New York’s future as a home of the ballet. The 1942 season, which was in full tide in December last, was ministered to by two companies, both under the management of S. Hurok, viz., the Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Riisse de Monte Carlo. Their programmes teemed with outstanding names, and new and old works were designed and produced by great choregraphers. Tudor and Dolin were the leading male dancers and the ballerinas included Alicia Mar kova—who has often assisted til British ballet in the past—lrina nova, Tamara, Toumanova and Alexandra Danilova. One American reviewer described the Ballet Theatre company as the “finest yet seen in America. The old favourites in themes and dances had m'ore acceptance than the new, Show Maiden —a pretty fairy tale of the melting of a maiden under the warmth of human love—enjoyed much popularity. Rodeo and Pillar of Fire are two of the most discussed works of the season. War has not yet harmed the ballet in America. Indeed, one New York writer declares that “the ballet admittedly has contributed much towards maintaining the status of this metropolis as a cultural centre in an otherwise blacked-out world.”