Ballet's New Wares

After four weeks of flexing its muscles at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, the Royal Ballet (formerly known as Sadler's Wells) moved out to begin a four-month coast-to-coast tour. Along with its new name, the company brought five ballets previously unknown to U.S. audiences--including some of the most gaudily packaged merchandise it had ever displayed.

Most satisfying of the new items were Birthday Offering by Veteran Frederick Ashton and Solitaire by Kenneth MacMillan. Ashton whipped out his piece last year in honor of the company's 25th anniversary; it proved to be a sequined, dazzling showpiece for 14 soloists, and a convincing demonstration of the kind of high-caliber reserve talent the Royal Ballet can call on when it needs to. Margot Fonteyn's enchainement (linked movements) looked as poised and effortless as everybody expected; there was also some lithe, beautifully filigreed dancing by Rowena Jackson, Nadia Nerina, Svetlana Beriosova. Solitaire, a less panoplied affair, unfolded the story of a girl who does not belong, and tries to break into the games of "the insiders." Anya Linden, in the lead, expressed her loneliness in a series of crabbed progressions that contrasted harshly and movingly with the tossing gusto of the other dancers.

Two of the other new ballets--Ashton's La Peri and MacMillan's Noctambules--failed despite inspired and startling flashes of choreographic brilliance. The most ballyhooed premiere of all was Prince of the Pagodas (TIME, Jan. 14) by John Cranko, with music by Benjamin Britten (his first ballet score). Choreographer Cranko's splintered story had in it recurrent themes from Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, plus snatches of court intrigue reminiscent of King Lear viewed through the wrong end of the telescope. The stage was roiled by gaudy dancers, the sets were feverish with color, but despite all that the ballet did not get across its tale of a rejected princess (Ballerina Beriosova) and a prince who has been transformed into a salamander, Composer Britten's dry, percussive, deftly syncopated score never provided the needed emotional lift.

All in all, the Royal Ballet's performances were worth seeing for the quality of the soloists if not for the imagination of the choreographers. But as always, the company was at its best in the familiar pageantesque fairy-tale fare--Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty--and in a revised and turbulent Petrouchka. Fonteyn & Co. still moved with a cool and stately charm unmatched by any other ballet group seen in the U.S. That seems to be more than enough for U.S. audiences; half a million people who will see the Royal Ballet during its present tour have already bought more than a million dollars' worth of tickets.

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