Problems in ballet.

The following is reproduced from an article I wrote for the December issue of Dance Review Magazine. Please see subsequent issues for follow-up correspondence.

Now I admit, I haven’t conducted ballet for some considerable time. In fact, the last time I did so Birmingham Royal Ballet was still called Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet! And perhaps subsequent reading will explain why! However, I do still occasionally see our ballet companies as I accompany my 15 year old daughter to a performance of one of the great Tchaikovsky ballets, and I regularly discuss the wonderful world of ballet with musicians who play in the various orchestras of our national ballet companies. The standard of our dance companies has possibly never been higher, with dancers ever more able to hold positions and attitudes, all the time looking wonderfully graceful. However, this is often to the detriment of the music and brings me to the role of the conductor and the musicians who create the aural part of dancing without whom there would be no dance. It seems to me they are there to serve the art of the ballet dancer’s body in the never-ending quest for beauty of line, as the dancers get more competent in their ability to perform more complicated steps. Fairly recently I watched a performance of Swan Lake with one of our national companies and I sat there writhing in agony! Tchaikovsky never wrote the music to be performed as was being performed that evening, in most cases going so slowly as to almost bring proceedings to a halt. White Swan in particular was musically terrible as the conductor waited for the dancer to hop painfully slowly across the stage. I could hardly sit there and if it wasn’t for my daughter, I would have walked out. The tempo marking for the White Swan solo is marked as Andante Non Troppo, the Non Troppo (not too much) being the important part here. So, the literal translation is “at a walking pace, but not too much”. What we got was a crawl…on all fours! Yes, you can argue about the pulse, is it 6 or 2, but as long as the music flows and is not held up by the whim of a technically proficient dancer wishing to show everyone her technical brilliance of balancing on one leg, then I am happy. But it didn’t. After all, if as an audience member you are being told by an artist to look how wonderful she is, how technically clever she is, then in my opinion, as that audience member you do not notice the art. The greatest artists in whatever art form you care to mention, were technically wonderful (though of course there are the exceptions), but when you watched or listened to them, you forgot their technical ability and were transported to a world that the artist had created and forced you by their artistry to enter. You look at a painting by Monet and don’t think how technically wonderful it is, though it is; you watched Rudolph Kempe conduct and didn’t think wasn’t his stick technique superb, though it was the best; you listened to Artur Rubinstein and were not dazzled by his technique, but instead awed by the total mastery of his art form. And I have deliberately chosen great artists who are sadly no longer with us, as I do not wish to upset living artists by not mentioning them, some of whom may be my friends! You do not notice the artist through their technique, but through their art, and as such their technique is a by-product of that art.
I honestly think some ballet choreographers forget that ballet is an aural art as well as a visual art. There should be a meeting of the two and the one should not be exclusive of the other. It’s no good the choreographer trying to put too many steps into too small a time span, and when it subsequently proves impossible to perform, telling the conductor to slow down. I have been asked many times by various choreographers who had created too many steps to slow the music down, though the correct tempo was that much quicker. In most cases I refused, believing it wasn’t the composer’s fault his music should suffer by being played at an incorrect tempo. Interestingly enough, the one choreographer who told me to conduct the music as I felt it (and I attended all his rehearsals) was Sir Kenneth MacMillan. He trusted me and I thought he was a genius of ballet! Now I realise, that in this time-orientated world we live in, conductors always attending rehearsals, and indeed having the same conductor and soloists for consecutive performances can be impossible. But all combinations should be worked out in rehearsal and the ultimate arbiter of tempi should be the conductor, after all he is the only person (along with the orchestra) who is there for the entire evening. Others come on, do their solo, and go off. So as the only one there throughout, the conductor should be the person in control of the overall shape of that evening’s ballet: he must therefore be allowed to shape it. I always said to dancers, if you do not like my tempi, come and talk to me, but after the performance when we will discuss it. During the performance I was in charge! Our ballet companies should become more like our opera companies where the conductor makes the decision on musical matters and any differences of opinions are sorted in rehearsals. Too often in ballet, the conductor is thought of as a secondary necessity. He must not be. He is just as important as the principal dancers, though I appreciate to an audience that may not be the case! However, to the management he should be. All of the above does not preclude the conductor from helping his soloists. It is a meeting of two art forms and the one is as important as the other. From what I’ve recently seen (and heard from despairing musicians), it is heavily biased in favour of the dance, and if they want me to take my daughter back to Tchaikovsky, it’s time some Artistic Directors and choreographers balanced out their priorities. After all, Tchaikovsky was one of the great composers and wrote great music; he never wrote boring music…….unless it is being performed by a ballet company!

© Anthony Inglis