The first visit of the Manx Ballet to London is undoubtedly the most
outstanding feature in the annals of choregraphic and corybantic
realism since the historic _première_ of the Botocudo Troupe on
September 31st, 1919. And it is all the more welcome as an indication
of the emergence of a native school, fully equipped in technique and
scenic resource and, above all, imbued from start to finish with
a high sense of the paramount importance of psycho-analysis in
eliminating all supra-liminal elements from the orchestro-mimetic
drama.
The most ambitious as well as the most successful item in the
programme presented on Saturday night at the Colossodrome was _The Cat
of Ballasalla_, that wonderful old Manx legend of the Princess who
was turned into a cat by the enchantments of the Wizard of Dhoon
and subsequently sentenced to decaudation by the cruel Scandinavian
invader, MAGNUS BARFOD. The scene of the trial in the great
synclinorium of Greeba Castle--exhibiting contemporaneous
carboniferous tuffs, soft argillaceous rocks with choriambic fossils
as well as later dolerite dykes, amid which the feline amenities of
the Princess were illustrated with miraculous agility by Miss Agneesh
Crannoge--compares favourably with the most ambitious enormities ever
perpetrated by the genius of BAKST, DIAGHILEV, or even COCODRILLO, the
Sardinian neo-Gongorist.
The music, which is chiefly founded on Manx folk-songs, developed
and adapted by Mr. Orry Poolvash, is richly suggestive of the
psycho-analytic basic aroma which pervades the entire scenario. The
absence of a Coda in the Funeral March which concludes the ballet is
an exquisitely pathetic touch which could only have occurred to a
composer of genius. The orchestration is sumptuous and sonorous, the
usual instruments being supplemented by two Glory Quayle-horns, a
quartet of Laxey-phones with rotating C and C sharp crooks, a Manx
harp with three strings, and a Miaowola, which gives out the Death
Motive of the Princess at the various crises of the drama in tones of
sublimated anguish and intensity.
We have only space in this brief preliminary notice to remark that the
programme includes a humorous extravaganza entitled _The Quirks of
Quilliam_, in which a grotesque _pas de quatre_ for the _Deemster_,
the _Doomster_, the _Boomster_ and the _Scrabster_, forms the central
episode; and ends with a satiric sketch, _The Golden Calf of Man_,
apparently aimed at the extravagance of Lancashire trippers, who are
pursued by demons into Sulby Glen, and released, to the sound of
sea-trumpets, by the beneficent intervention of _Lord Greeba_ on their
promising to evacuate the island.
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