Page 51 - Ritz Issue 50

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Marion Toil and S1ephen Jeffries in The Taming of 1he Shr<'II'
"MICHAEL BATCHELOR," he said. The same virtues are exemplified by two "And what do you do?" "I dance with the dancers who are the saving graces of the
But we're talking of young dancers who
may be the great ones of the future, and up
till now I've been beating about the bush,
because where I look most for those 1and
where I'm most hopeful is among the ,
young women of the Royal Ballet at
Covent Garden. Amid the soloists PIPPA
WYLDE is the reserved and authoritative
latest recruit to, the company's dwindling - Winter in Cinderella - was not
Royal Ballet."
As you file through lists of names of
dancers who're the hopes for the future, you always come to MICHAEL BATCHELOR's name and sigh. He joined the Royal Ballet in '74 and-first came to real prominence in '77 when he found himself at short notice (ah, shucks) replacing WAYNE EAGLING as Benvolio opposite MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV as
Romeo. Blonde with the sulpted visage of a frosty angel, BATCHELOR's always been noticed for his legs. Yes. They used to fly from the hips with extraordinary blend of ease and power. They're legs like no others, their lines travel from thigh to toe with uniquely arrowlike lines and very ·slim calves.
The only legs they're like are SUZANNE FARRELL's - the heroine of my life.
(I don't think I've ever written about a man's legs like this before : and even though this is Ritz, don't get me wrong).
In the past year BATCH ELOR's changed. The leg extensions have lost the old flip and the thighs have gained a lot of weight - not all of it muscle. He hasn't received many soloist parts and he's been given no principal parts at all. Why? Well, it's said that he can't jump (he can, though it's a jump that travels rather than soars), he can't partner (apparently he has small wrists, so lifts are difficult - still he always manages mighty well), he isn't musical (true, he's not the most sharply "on time" dancer, but his phras\{1g and spirit are always dead right and the underlying dynamics are glorious) and he can't turn (he doesn't find turns easy, but he always
manages). But the thing is, it's not easy to spot these faults, if they are such. From the first BATCHELOR has shown himself a professional, and in several ways he has gifts no other man in the company, beneath the level of ANTHONY DOWELL, DAVID WALL and STEPHEN JEFFERIES, has.
Sadler's Wells Royal B-allet male contingent. MICHAEL CORDER is beginning to take leading roles - Albrecht in Giselle, Franz in Coppelia - and (now that DESMOND KELLY is past his prime except as the most handsome partner around) he lo9ks like the only one in those roles in that company worth watching after DAVID ASHMOLE. It's clear, buoyant dancing : the only fault I've heard of him is that he squeeies his partner's waist too hard in partnering, which should be not too hard to correct. And, only in his second year in the company and with much experience already in some soloist roles in MACMILLAN ballets normally given to principals, PRICE, with his s12lit-second ascents into split leaps and easy, stron~ turns, should be the great demi-caractere virtuoso of the coming generation.
I sound confident and optimistic, looking to these cancers for 1981and for the '80s as a whole. It isn't really so. These are about the only dancers who strike me as having that potential: and when I see that dancers like BATCHELOR are receiving less attention than coryphes i1ke ASH LEY PAGE and ANTHONY DOWSON, (conscientious athletes with no sense of form to their classical work, slapdash feet, lurching plebeian head positions and style apparently aped from the mayhem manner of EAGLING), I'm seriously alarmed.
As I write I feel increasingly like a cross between a talent-scout and a pimp.
But maybe all dance critics have
something .9f that in them.
What of other, non-Royal, companies?
Well, as everyone knows, London Festival Ballet is not the place to look for stylish dancing; but if you must go, why not try DEBORAH WEISS and MATZ SKOOG. WEISS is just two years out of the Royal Ballet School : PETER SCHAUFUSS spotted her at once, and, despite claw hands and spiked elbows, her bounding gazelle's leap and fluid style makes her the most ethereal of all the company's Sylphides and Queens of the Wilis. And SKOOG is beginning to dance principal
group or Swan Queens, and JENNIFER JACKSON the wilful self-possessed latest Lise in La Fi/le ma! gardee. The one who's caught everyone's eye is ROSALYN WHITTEN. Petite, happy, she's a wit and an adventuress. She has a daring in her dance style that often makes her more interesting than any of the company's principal female dancers (among whom the only true ballerina is still MONICA
MASON). With luscious leg-curves of thigh, calf and foot like LYNN SEYMOUR's and a blend of impudence as well as sensuality, WHITTEN's highly
expressive talent could win her ballerina position by storm rather than by natural ability. We'll see - in all probability, before too long. •
Among the coryphee and corps ranks I now count fourteen women for whom I make a point of looking out: and eleven of them have been featured in soloist roles this season. I can't mention all of them, so I'll
just mention the four most obvious. FIONA CHADWICK, who in November made an astonishing debut as the Firebird, dances this January as Winter in ASHTON's Cinderella and showed herself at once the only undoubted ballerina on the stage. Physique, technique, musicality,
she's serenely on top of all these: and if repertory allows, she's set for ballerinadom.
Two I worry about are BRYONY
outstanding.
I'm trying to tell myself it was Christmas
pudding, but I'm not convinced. EYDEN is said to be one of the two
young dancers KENNETH
MACMILLAN singled out for attention in '78 because he felt they were alone in dancing "like women, not just little girls". The other is GENESIA ROSATO. She doesn't have all the qualities of technique that others do, though she's more than competent. Where she shines is in a general relaxation in all she does. She never forces, never strains, she seems in command of all her dances and with such ease that your thoughts in watching her aren't directed towards details of choreography or technique - you think at once of what her dances are saying. She is simply the most expressive dancer beneath principal level I ever remember seeing. As Summer in Cinderella her long legs are nattered by the high tutu, and she_shimmers as if in hazy shafts of light in a languorous ecstasy. MACMILLAN is also rumoured once in a fit of pique to have said that she's got "sex on the brain", to which I have two comments. First, that's been no barrier to a few other ballerinas who come to mind. And second, now that you've read all this ecstatic splurge, the one who you'll think
-has "sex on the brain" is not ROSATO but me.
A dancer who "fills" his choreography so
that it looks rich, takes risks with it so that it
looks bold, gives its consistent elegance so
that it looks proud, gives it a polish so that roles too - Romeo, Albrecht, Franz all it looks more comp!ete than more brilliant this March at the Coliseum - a accounts by his colleagues - that's what. Scandinavian injection of sweet wit and
BATCHELOR is. He's the only heir apparent to the real tradition of the "danseur noble" beneath principal level : the Royal is trashing its own potential until it gives him the opportunities his talent deserves.
Other male dancers to watch for I981? There's STEPHEN BEAGLEY, who this season.for the first time has begun to dance a bit like a man rather than a boy : always possessed of brilliant feet and a fine physique, BEAGLEY's been an accomplished soloist of rather lack - lustre quality until given the BARYSblNIKOY role in ASHTON's Rhapsody this October. And STEPHEN SHERIFF, a younger, slighter dancer who returned in December after eleven months of injury. It's not clear what direction SHERIFF's talent will take him just now : his presence and style mark him out for the noblest roles, but his
medium height, slim physique and bubbly manner suggest a demi-caractere stylist. With the best virtues of n1mble fleetness and elegant deportment of the Royal Ballet implicit in all he does, "stylist" should always be the word.
Oh hell, this is sounding like propaganda, isn't it? Just remember what a sourpuss I usually sound, and be grateful.
1981 may also be the year for two of the youngest men in the company. DA YID PEDEN is like SHERIFF, a nimble stylist of slight physique and medium height : PHILLIP BROOMHEAD is the long - limbed "noble" type with soaring elevation. Since their graduation in July, both have been given soloist roles in Swan Lake and have taken them with distinction : both are
known to be covering other major roles. Watch this space.
brilliance into the tepid ranks of LFB. Ballet Rambert are a mixed bag of
dancers.
I shan't pretend that one of my hopes for
RICHARD ALSTON's new infusion of taxing choreography is that it'll lead some of the more clumsy "old hands" to move on. MICHAEL CLARKE is the outstanding member of the new wave of clean, fleet Rambert dancers, but he's not alone.
As for LONDON CONTEMPORARY DANCE THEATRE, it's full of good dancers but the only ones who look anything more than good are the older generation. And this is not a column about golden oldies. I haven't a clue what age the all - too - beautiful STEPHEN GILES of EXTEMPORARY DANCE THEATRE is, but he looks like one whose lustrously assured style will be a pleasure to watch for some years to come.
The scene for women is a little brighter. The Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet has a few girls in its corps who could turn out fine or even gloriously: one I hope will ascend this year is SUSAN LUCAS. LUCAS, alway~ a clear, light, attractive dancer, was the first (and still one of the f~w) Vl'.hose
involvement and prettiness m the corps de ballet used invariably to draw my eye to her from the central dancing in svch ballets as The Two Pigeons. Since then she's gai~ed the stamina she lacked and has shone m a few coryphee roles. (And if she gets some principal/ soloist roles then I won't feel guilty any more for giving her most of my attention).
Just above her is NICOLA KATRAK KATRAK's a lyric dancer with light oliv skin and wide girlish black eyes. Her fee
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aren't strong, but I don't think it's that that makes her the only dancer who's made me wonder if that was how the very young FONTEYN looked : I·think it's a general quality of fluent line, of limpid musicality and of heartbreaking vulnerability onstage. She's a soloist now, in her sixth year in the company, and has two or three principal roles - in particular that of the tender young girl of The Two Pigeons. If ASHTON's Nocturne (1936, Fonteyn's third Ashton role) could be revived, it should be for KATRAK. She's not just a lyricist, she's also a characterful wit - hilarious as the dopey contortionist young lover in Elite Syncopations, nirtatious as a Gipsy in Coppelia.
BRIND and DEIRDRE EYDEN. They're a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife. Both of them tall, EYDEN tends to be too fat while BRIND tends to be wafer-thin. BRIND is the company's next Swan Queen (her debut comes on Easter Saturday): it's a role she's been earmarked for for some seasons, even though she's only in her third year with the company. But right now she's too thin. As Summer in Cinderella this January her arms looked stick-like and her legs chuntered in bourr~es in a seri!!Sof bumps. It's no secret that I've said she looks to me like the most talented young dancer in the world : so let her friends feed her up, and bring back that quality of liquidity that made her style so ravishing - and before Easter Saturday. EYDEN sufTers mainly from a lack of repertory - she's the obvious choice for Firebird and Queen of the Wilis. She's just the calm stylist that the company's signature work Ashton's Symphonic Variations suits (she shows up all her companions in it) - a fresh, free spirit. However the last role I saw her take
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