campaign that made her a movie star overnight. She was amused by it, but
never taken in, and was hurt only when the crowds mobbed for autographs
and Americans hailed her as “_the_ star” of Sadler’s Wells.
Cultured and highly intelligent, Moira Shearer is intensely musical,
both in life and in the dance. This musicality is particularly apparent
in her portrayal of the Princess Aurora in _The Sleeping Beauty_, and in
the dual role of Odette-Odile in _Swan Lake_. Again it is markedly
noticeable in a quite non-classical work, for of all the dancers I have
seen dance the Tango in _Façade_, she is by far the most satiric and
brilliant. She is well-nigh indispensable to _Wedding Bouquet_.
Aside from the qualities I have mentioned, there is also a fine
romanticism about her work. Intelligence in a dancer is something that
is rare. There are those who argue that it is not necessarily a virtue
in a dancer. They could not be more wrong. It is, I think, Moira
Shearer’s superior intelligence that gives her, among other things, that
power of pitiless self-criticism that is the hallmark of the first-class
artist.
Moira Shearer has been as fortunate in her private life as in her
professional activities. She lives happily in a lovely London home with
her attractive and talented writer-husband, Ludovic Kennedy. During the
second Sadler’s Wells American tour, her husband drove across the
continent from New York to Los Angeles to join Moira for the California
engagement, discovering, by means of a tiny Austin, that there were
still a great many of the wide-open spaces left in the land Columbus
discovered.
In her charming London flat, with her husband, her books, her pictures,
and her music, she carries out one of her most serious ambitions: to be
a good mother; for the center of the household is her young daughter,
born in midsummer, 1952.
The depth of Moira Shearer’s sincerity I happen to know not only from
others, but from personal experience. It is a genuine and real sincerity
that applies to every aspect of her life, and not only in art and the
theatre.
A loyal colleague, she has a highly developed sense of honor. As Ninette
de Valois once remarked to me: “Anything that Moira has ever said or
promised is a bond with her, and nothing of a confirming nature in
writing is required.”
A splendid artist, _ballerina_, and film star, it is my profound hope
that Moira may meet with the same degree of success in her new venture
into the legitimate theatre.
There seems little doubt of this, since I am persuaded that she will
make good in anything she undertakes.
_BERYL GREY_
Another full-fledged _ballerina_ of the company, is Beryl Grey, who
alternates all _ballerina_ roles today with Fonteyn, Violetta Elvin,
Nadia Nerina and Rowena Jackson. Beryl Grey’s American success was
assured on the opening night of the first season at the Metropolitan
Opera House, with her gracious and commandingly sympathetic performance
of the Lilac Fairy in _The Sleeping Beauty_.
In a sense, Grey’s and Shearer’s careers have followed a similar
pattern, in that they were both “baby ballerinas.” Born Beryl Groom, at
Muswell Hill, in London’s Highgate section, in 1927, the daughter of a
government technical expert and his wife, Beryl Grey’s dancing studies
began very early in life in Manchester, and at the age of nine, she won
a scholarship at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. In 1941, she joined
the company, and so rapid was her growth as an artist that she danced
leading roles in some half-dozen of the one-act ballets in the
repertoire, in place of Margot Fonteyn who had been taken ill. Even more
remarkable is the fact that she danced the full-length _Swan Lake_ in
London on her fifteenth birthday.
The term, “baby ballerina,” has become a part of ballet’s language, due
to its association with the careers of Baronova and Toumanova in the
early ’thirties. In Grey’s case, however, she was privileged to have a
much wider experience in classical ballets than her _émigré_ Russian
predecessors. She was only seventeen when she danced the greatest of all
classical roles in the repertoire of the true _ballerina_, Giselle.
My feeling about Beryl Grey, the dancer, is that she possesses
strikingly individual qualities, both of style and technique. She has
been greatly helped along the path to stardom by Frederick Ashton who,
as I have pointed out, likes nothing better than to discover and exploit
a dancer’s talents. It was he who gave Grey her first big dramatic
parts.
Beryl Grey is married to a distinguished Swedish osteopath, Dr. Sven
Svenson, and they live in a charming Mayfair flat in London. Here again
one finds that characteristic of fine intelligence coupled with an
intense musicality. Also rare among dancers, Grey is an omnivorous
reader of history, biography, and the arts. She feels, I know, that,
apart from “Madame” and Ashton, who have been so keenly instrumental in
shaping her career, a sense of deep gratitude to Constant Lambert for
his kindness and help to her from her very early days; for his readiness
to discuss with her any aspect of music; and she gratefully remembers
how nothing was too inconsequential for his interest, his advice and
help; how no conductor understood what the dancer required from music
more than he did. She is also mindful of the inspiration she had from
Leonide Massine, of his limitless energy, his indefatigable enthusiasm,
his creative fire; she learned that no detail was too small to be
corrected and worked over and over. As she says: “He was so swift and
light, able to draw with immediate ease a complete and clear picture.”
Also, she points out, “He was quiet and of few words, but had a fine
sense of humor which was often reflected in his penetrating brown eyes.
His rare praise meant a great deal.”
Beryl Grey is the star in the first three-dimensional ballet film ever
to be made, based on the famous Black Swan _pas de deux_ from _Le Lac
des Cygnes_.
From the point of view of a dancer, Beryl Grey had one misfortune over
which she had to triumph: she is above average height. This she has been
able to turn into a thing of beauty, with a beautifully flowing length
of “line.” Personally, she is a gentle person, with a genuine humility
and a simple unaffected kindliness, and a fresh, completely unspoiled
charm. Her success in all the great roles has been such as to make her
one of the most popular figures with the public.
I find great pleasure in her precision and strength as a dancer, in her
poised, statuesque grace, in her clean technique; and in her special
sort of technical accomplishment, wherein nothing ever seems to present
her any problems.
During the American tours of Sadler’s Wells, she is almost invariably
greeted with flowers at the station. She seems to have friends in every
city. How she manages to do this, I am not sure; but I feel it must be a
tribute to her genuine warmth and friendliness.
_VIOLETTA ELVIN_
Violetta Elvin, another of the talented _ballerinas_ of the “fabulous”
Sadler’s Wells company, is in the direct line of Russian ballet, for she
is a product of the contemporary ballet of Russia.
The daughter of a pioneer of Russian aviation, Vassili Prokhoroff, and
his wife, Irina Grimousinkaya, a Polish artist and an early experimenter
with action photography, Violetta Prokhorova became a pupil at the
Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, at the age of nine. It is interesting to note
that she was one of a class of fifty accepted out of five hundred
applicants; it is still more interesting, and an example of the rigorous
Russian training, that, when she finished the course nine years later,
out of the original fifty there were only nine left: three girls and six
boys. Of the three girls, Prokhorova was the only one who attained
ballet’s coveted rank of _etoile_.
Violetta finished her training at the time Moscow was being evacuated
against the Nazi invasion, and was sent on a three-thousand mile journey
to be a _ballerina_ at the ballet at Tashkent, Russian Turkestan. Here,
at the age of eighteen, she danced the leading roles in two works, _The
Fountain of Bakchissarai_, based on Pushkin’s famous poem, and _Don
Quixote_, the Minkus work of which contemporary American balletgoers
know only the famous _pas de deux_, but which I presented in America,
during the season 1925-1926, staged by Laurent Novikoff, with settings
and costumes by the great Russian painter, Korovin.
Another point of interest about Elvin is that she was never a member of
the _corps de ballet_, for she was transferred from Tashkent to the
Bolshoi Ballet, which had been moved, for safety reasons, to Kuibyshev,
some five hundred miles from Moscow. In the early autumn of 1943, when
the Nazi horde had been driven back in defeat, the Ballet returned to
the Bolshoi, and Prokhorova danced important roles there.
It was in Moscow, in 1945, that Violetta Prokhorova married Harold
Elvin, an architect associated with the British Embassy, and came with
him to London. On her arrival in London she became a member of the
Sadler’s Wells Ballet, first as a soloist, and later as _ballerina_.
My own impressions are of a vibrant personality and a great beauty. Her
feet are extraordinarily beautiful, and, if I am any judge of the female
figure, I would say her body approximates the perfect classical
proportions. In her dancing, her Russian training is at all times
evident, for there is a charm of manner, a broad lyricism, coupled with
a splendid poise that are not the common heritage of all western
dancers.
It begins to sound like an overworked cliché, but again we have that
rare quality in a dancer: intelligence. Once again, intelligence coupled
with striking beauty. Elvin’s interests include all the classics in
literature, the history of art, philosophy, museums, and good Russian
food.
Already Elvin has had a film career, two motion pictures to date: _Twice
Upon a Time_, by the makers of _Red Shoes_, and the latest, the story of
the great British soprano, Nellie Melba, the title role of which is
played by Patrice Munsel.
While engaged on the second American tour of the Sadler’s Wells company,
Violetta met an American, whom she has recently married.
Talented far beyond average measure, Elvin is a true _ballerina_ in the
tradition of the Russian school and is ever alert to improve her art and
to give audiences something better than her best.
_NADIA NERINA_
I cannot fail to pay my respects to the young Nadia Nerina, today
another of the alternating _ballerinas_ of the company, with full
_ballerina_ standing, whom I particularly remember as one of the most
delightful and ebullient soloists of the company on its two American
visits.
An example of the wide British Commonwealth base of the personnel of the
Sadler’s Wells company, Nadia Nerina is from South Africa, where she was
born in 1927. It was in Cape Town that she commenced her ballet studies
and had her early career; for she was a winner of the _South African
Dancing Times_ Gold Medal and, when she was fifteen, was awarded the
Avril Kentridge Shield in the Dance Festival at Durban. Moreover, she
toured the Union of South Africa and, when nineteen, went to London to
study at the Sadler’s Wells School. Very soon after her arrival, she
was dancing leading roles and was one of the _ballerinas_ of the
Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.
Such was her success in Rosebery Avenue, and such the wisdom of Ninette
de Valois, that, within the year, Nerina was transferred to Covent
Carden. Today, as I have pointed out, she has been promoted to full
_ballerina_ status.
It is a well-deserved promotion, for Nerina’s development has been as
sure as it has been steady. I have seen her in _Le Lac des Cygnes_ since
her ascendancy to full _ballerina_ rank, and have rejoiced in her fine
technical performance, as I have in the quality of her miming--something
that is equally true in Delibes’ _Sylvia_.
It is characteristic of Ninette de Valois that she gives all her
_ballerinas_ great freedom within the organization. One is permitted to
go to Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Another to La Scala, Milan. Yet another
to films. An example of this desire on “Madame’s” part to encourage her
leading personnel to extend their experience and to prevent any spirit
of isolation, is the tour Nerina recently made through her native South
Africa, in company with her Sadler’s Wells partner, Alexis Rassine,
himself a South African.
The outstanding quality in Nerina’s dancing for me is the sheer joy she
brings to it, a sort of love for dancing for its own sake. In everything
she does, there is the imprint of her own strong personality, her
vitality, and the genuine elegance she brings to the use of her sound
technique.
_ROWENA JACKSON_
During the first two American tours of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, a
young dancer who attracted an unusual amount of attention, particularly
in the Ashton-Lambert _Les Patineurs_, for her remarkable virtuosic
performance and her multiple turns, was Rowena Jackson.
Today, Rowena Jackson is the newest addition to the Sadler’s Wells list
of _ballerinas_.
Rowena Jackson is still another example of the width of the British
Commonwealth base of the Sadler’s Wells organization, having been born
in Invercargil, New Zealand, on the 24th March, 1926, where her father
was postmaster. Her first ballet training was at the Lawson-Powell
School, in New Zealand. It was in 1947 that the young dancer joined the
Sadler’s Wells Ballet.
This rise of the British dancer more than fulfils the prophecy of The
Swan. It was thirty years ago that Pavlova said: “English women have
fine faces, graceful figures, and a real sense of poetry of dancing.
They only lack training to provide the best dancers of the world.” She
went on: “If only more real encouragement were given in England to
ballet dancers the day would not be far distant when the English dancer
would prove a formidable rival to the Russians.”
Now that the British dancer has been given the encouragement, the truth
of Anna Pavlova’s prophecy is the more striking.
As I have said, Rowena Jackson attracted attention throughout North
America in _Les Patineurs_, gaining a reputation for a surpassing
technical brilliance in turns. These turns, known as _fouetées_, I have
mentioned more than once. Legend has it that Jackson can do in excess of
one hundred-fifty of them, non-stop. It is quite incredible.
Brilliance is one thing. Interpretation is another. When I saw Jackson
in _Le Lac des Cygnes_, my admiration for her and for Ninette de Valois
soared. Jackson’s Swan Queen proved to me that at Sadler’s Wells another
_ballerina_ had been born. (I nearly wrote “created”; but _ballerinas_
are born, not made). As the Swan Queen she was all pathos and softness
and tenderness and protectiveness; to the evil Black Swan, Odile, she
brought the hard brittleness the role demands.
Rowena Jackson’s future among the illustrious of the world of ballet
seems assured, and I shall watch her with interest, as I am sure will
audiences.
_SADLER’S WELLS THEATRE BALLET_
While I was in London after the close of the first American tour of the
Sadler’s Wells Covent Garden Ballet, I paid a visit to the Sadler’s
Wells Theatre, the cradle of the organization.
The Sadler’s Wells Theatre is in Rosebery Avenue, in the Borough of
Islington, now a middle-class residential section of London, but once a
county borough. For nearly three hundred years, the site of the Sadler’s
Wells Theatre has been used for entertainment purposes. Several theatres
have stood on the site, and while the dance has always been prominent in
its history, everything from tight-rope and wire-walking exhibitions to
performing dogs and dance troupes has been seen there.
It was in 1683 that a certain Thomas Sadler, who was, apparently, a
Highway Surveyor, lived there in what was then Clerkenwell, and found a
well, actually a spring, having medicinal properties, in his garden. It
soon was regarded as a holy well, with healing powers attributed to it.
Hither came the halt, the blind and the sick to be cured, and Mr. Sadler
determined to commercialize his property. On his lawn he built his Musik
House, a long room with a stage, orchestra and seats for those partakers
of the waters who desired refreshments as well during their
imbibing--and he also provided entertainment. The well is still there
today, preserved under the present theatre, but is no longer used, and
the theatre’s water supply is from the municipal mains.
Rebuilt, largely by public subscription, the present theatre was opened
in 1931, alternating opera and Shakespeare with the Old Vic, but
eventually it became the exclusive home and base of the Sadler’s Wells
Opera Company and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company. In 1946, when
Ninette de Valois accepted the invitation of the Covent Garden Opera
Trust to move the Sadler’s Wells Ballet company to the Royal Opera
House, Covent Garden, another company (actually the revival of another
idea, the Sadler’s Wells Opera Ballet) was established at the Sadler’s
Wells Theatre, and called the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.
Here, in a fine, comfortable, modern theatre, I saw a fresh young
company, with seasoned artists, first-class productions, and some
first-rate dancing: a company I felt America should know.
There was an extensive repertoire of modern works by Frederick Ashton,
Ninette de Valois, and the rising young John Cranko, and others. The
Ashton works include _Façade_, the Ravel _Valses Nobles et
Sentimentales_; _Les Rendez-Vous_, to Auber music arranged by Constant
Lambert; and the charming _Capriol Suite_, to the music by Philip
Heseltine (Peter Warlock), inspired by Arbeau’s _Orchesographie_. There
were three works by Andrée Howard: _Assembly Ball_, to the Bizet
Symphony in C; _Mardi Gras_; and _La Fête Etrange_. Celia Franka had an
interesting work, _Khadra_, to a Sibelius score, with charming Persian
miniature setting and costumes by Honor Frost. The young South African
John Cranko, who had been a member of the Covent Garden company in the
first New York season, had a number of extremely interesting works,
including _Sea Change_; and Ninette de Valois had revived her _The
Haunted Ballroom_, to a Geoffrey Toye score, and the Lambert-Boyce _The
Prospect Before Us_. There were also sound classics, including _Swan
Lake_, in the second act version.
The company, under the direction of Ninette de Valois, had a fine
dancer, Peggy van Praagh, as ballet mistress.
It occurred to me that, by adding new elements and reviving full length
works, it would be an excellent thing to bring the company to the United
States and Canada for a tour following upon that of the Covent Garden
company.
I discussed the matter with Ninette de Valois and David Webster, both of
whom were favorable to the idea; and, since it was impossible for the
Covent Garden company to come over for a third tour at that time, they
urged me to give further consideration to the possibility.
On my next visit to London, I went over matters in detail with George
Chamberlain, Clerk to the Governors of Sadler’s Wells, and himself the
opposite number at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre to David Webster at Covent
Garden. I found Chamberlain equally cooperative and helpful, despite the
fact he has a wide variety of interests and responsibilities, including
the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company, the Old Vic, and the Sadler’s Wells
School. We have become close friends. Following our initial conferences,
we went into a series of them, in conjunction with Ursula Moreton, at
the time “Madame’s” assistant at Sadler’s Wells, and Peggy van Praagh,
the company’s ballet mistress.
As a result of these discussions, it was agreed to increase the size of
the dancing personnel of the company from thirty-two to thirty-six, and
to bring to North America a repertoire of fourteen ballets, including
one full-length work, and to add to the roster one or two more principal
dancers.
Handshakes all round sealed the bargain, and a contract was signed for a
twenty-two week season for 1951-52.
It was on my return to London, in March, 1951, that I saw the _première_
of the first of their new productions, _Pineapple Poll_, a ballet freely
adapted from the Bab Ballad, “The Bumbeat Woman’s Story,” by W. S.
Gilbert, with music by Arthur Sullivan, arranged by a young Australian,
Charles Mackerras, a conductor at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. The
scenery and costumes were by Osbert Lancaster, noted architectural
historian and cartoonist, and the choreography by John Cranko, who had
worked in collaboration with Lancaster and Mackerras.
The work had its first performance at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre on the
13th March, 1951. The entire programme I saw that night was made up of
Cranko works, and I found myself seated before a quartet of works,
highly varied in content and style, all of which interested me, some, to
be sure, more than others. The evening commenced with Cranko’s _Sea
Change_. A tragic work in a free style, a character ballet whose story
was moving, but a ballet in which I never felt music and movement quite
came together. The score was the orchestral piece, _En Saga_, by Jan
Sibelius.
The new work, _Pineapple Poll_, was the second ballet of the evening. I
was enchanted with it. I had always been a Sullivan admirer, and here
were pieces from nigh on to a dozen of the Sullivan operas, woven
together with great skill and brilliant orchestration into a marvelous
integral whole by Charles Mackerras, a complete score in itself, as if
it might have been directly composed for the ballet. I watched the
dancers closely, and it was impossible for me to imagine a finer
interpretation. Elaine Fifield, in the title role, was something more
than piquant; she was a genuine _ballerina_, with a fascinating sense of
character, her whole performance highly intelligent. There was no
“mugging,” no “cuteness”; on the contrary, there were both humor and
wit, and I noted she was a beautifully “clean” dancer. David Blair was a
compelling officer, and his “hornpipe” almost on points literally
brought the house down. Three other dancers impressed me: Sheillah
O’Reilly, Stella Claire and David Poole. Osbert Lancaster’s sets were
masterful, both as sets and as architecture. This, I decided, was a
Cranko masterpiece, and it impressed me in much the same way as some of
Massine’s gay ballets.
_Pineapple Poll_ was followed by a delicate fantasy by Cranko, _Beauty
and the Beast_, an extended _pas de deux_, set to some of Ravel’s
_Mother Goose Suite_, and beautifully danced by Patricia Miller and
David Poole, who were, I learned, a pair of South Africans from the
Sadler’s Wells School.
The closing piece on the programme was another new ballet by Cranko,
_Pastorale_, which had been given its first performance earlier in the
season, just before Christmas. It was the complete antithesis of the
Sullivan ballet. This was a Mozart work, his _Divertimento No. 2_, and
choreography was Mozartian in feeling. It was a work of genuine charm,
delicacy and real humor that revealed to me the excellence of a
half-dozen of the principals of the company: Elaine Fifield and Patricia
Miller, whom I have already mentioned, and young Svetlana Beriosova,
the daughter of Nicholas Beriosoff, a former member of the Ballet Russe
de Monte Carlo. Svetlana was born in Lithuania in 1932, and had been
brought to America by her parents in 1940, when, off and on, she toured
with them in the days of my management of the Massine company, and
frequently appeared as the little child, Clara, in _The Nutcracker_. Now
rapidly maturing, she had been seen by Ninette de Valois in a small
English ballet company, and had been taken into the Sadler’s Wells
organization. The three ballerinas had an equal number of impressive
partners in _Pastorale_: Pirmin Trecu, David Poole and David Blair.
I decided that _Pineapple Poll_, _Pastorale_ and _Beauty and the Beast_
must be included in the repertoire for America, and that the first of
these could be a tremendous American success, a sort of British _Gaîté
Parisienne_.