Last week, two other immensely generous friends took me to the Royal Opera House to see “Ashton Celebrated”.
It was so utterly enchanting that I went back with my friend Ysenda a few days later to see it again, and I wish, really , that I had been every single night.
Only about halfway through life did I begin to see how extraordinary a gift it is to be a choreographer, and why Terpsichore is one of the Muses. Ashton and Macmillan were two of the greatest choreographers, and we have had these giants in our midst. Thank God, the Royal Opera House show and reshow their work. I still have not absorbed the lesson which almost any visit to the ballet provides - namely that none of this magical art form would be possible without constant, repeated, and punishing discipline by the dancers : but that the result is the feeling that we have all LET GO, that audience and performers are all floating in a non-verbal, etherial-yet-wholly-physical magical spell.
I have always loved ballet, but am completely ignorant of it . One of the things which opened my eyes to seeing the point of it was reading Osbert Sitwell’s Left Hand, Right Hand, and his account of what Sergei Diaghilev had brought to Western Europe with the Ballet Russe. “It” - modern art - all began with him. Without Diaghilev we’d have no Picasso, no Ezra Pound, and probably not much of the twentieth century musical repertoire. We would have learnt none of the lessons which began with the Imagist poets, and which have transformed our way of seeing experience.
As for my nearest and dearest - well, although we have all enjoyed going to the Nutcracker at Christmas (especially at the Royal Opera House which still has the stupendous sets designed by Julia Trevelyan Oman) - they do not particularly want to accompany me. So, very late in the day, I am catching up. The Ashton evening consisted of several enchantments, ending up with his superb use of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. All the pieces were amazing , but it is the Dream which will stay with me forever. And, incidentally, one of the nice things about growing old is that one can admit likes and dislikes more freely. I was always rather a snob about Mendelssohn, but Ashton’s use of his music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream reminds us - as if we needed reminding! - not merely how consistently delightful Mendelssohn is, but how ingenious. I am no longer a “shy Mendelssohnian”, fearing that a love of the Italian Symphony or Fingal’s Cave are a bit middle-brow.
Since seeing Ashton’s Dream , I have been in a daze of joy. As well as being breathtaking in its beauty, and in the skill of its execution, Natalia Osopova as Titania and William Bracewell as Oberon were gymnastic miracles. How could anyone sculpt, writhe, torment their bodies into such a condition that they could float before one’s eyes? “Labour is blossoming or dancing where/The body is not bruised to pleasure soul”, as the great poet has it : but something must be bruised to achieve such magical effects. On souffre pour etre beau. How they must suffer, and how grateful we are to them. (I once asked a retired ballet dancer - “Doesn’t it sometimes hurt, doing that thing where you teeter along on your toes?” “Sometimes?” was the reply, “ALWAYS. And your body goes on hurting for the rest of your life. And it is WORTH IT”.)
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