The Royal's Grande Dame

As the cloud-soft "swans" of England's Royal Ballet last week skimmed through a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a small woman with grey sculptured hair clapped her hands to halt the piano in the pit of the Metropolitan Opera House. "What on earth are the swans doing? Really!" She asked in a voice edged with impatience. "Movements on strong beats, please. You understand, don't you?" And "Isn't this lighting brighter than in the first act? Why?"

Ninette de Valois has been casting commands in the form of such darting questions ever since she singlehandedly began creating a national ballet for England almost 30 years ago. At 62, "Madame," as she is awesomely and invariably called by the company, rules the most impressive ballet realm in the Western world. Under her feminine but emphatic control: the Royal Ballet (formerly Sadler's Wells), now twirling through its sixth U.S. tour; a second, full-fledged company currently holding the fort at home; the Royal Ballet School, and a post-graduate workshop for ballet teachers.

Madame's latest Atlantic crossing has been the most spectacular to date, if not the biggest critical success. Before the troupe of 84 artists touched shore, with its 24 tons of scenery and costumes, ticket buyers had paid $500,000 for the troupe's month-long Manhattan stay. And Impresario Sol Hurok expects to gross close to $2,000,000 from the 25-city tour of the U.S. and Canada that will follow.

At the Crossroads. In its first Manhattan week, the Royal Ballet proved again that in such romantic ballets as Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake it is matchless in the West. At 41, jewel-like Prima Ballerina Margot Fonteyn is one year beyond the age at which it was once rumored she would retire. But she exhilarated audiences with her fluid, exquisite enchaine-ment and her seemingly gravity-free grace, though purists insisted they detected a slight falling-off from the sureness of her performance in New York three years ago. Later in the week the troupe unpacked La Fille Mai Gardee, one of history's first ballets (1789), which has been added to the repertory along with Ondine, Antigone and Le Baiser de la Fee (to be seen this week and next). Critics generally hailed the bucolicly cute La Fille though Choreographer Frederick Ashton's inventiveness scarcely sustained a full-length ballet.

The Royal is evidently nearing a crossroads, with Fonteyn listed only as a "guest artist" (she has been away for much of the past year) and the company relying more and more on its mainstay classical ballets. There is no shortage of younger dancers, among them Nadia Nerina--whose performance in La Fille Mai Gardee conveyed glimpses of Ulanova's unearthly lightness--Annette Page, Anya Linden and, most notably, coldly brilliant Svetlana Beriosova, 28, widely heralded as heiress apparent to Fonteyn. The Royal last week also showed off its first-rate male principals: Michael Somes, Brian Shaw, Alexander Grant and David Blair. But regardless of the available dancing talent, much depends on Madame.

Games Mistress. Ballet's undisputed grande dame (she became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951) was born Edris Stannus in Ireland, daughter of a career army officer. Her mother thought up the stage name Ninette de Valois, which Edris used in her first role in a Christmas pantomime at London's Lyceum Theatre when she was 16. By 1923, she was a member of the Diaghilev Ballet Russe, later was nicknamed "Games Mistress" because of her commanding, demanding air. Ninette eased up on her dancing career when she discovered she was "not strong on the left side" (possibly due to an unsuspected polio attack in childhood), and concentrated on bringing England up to other countries in ballet. It took some doing.

Director de Valois argued her cause with Shavian persistence; by 1926 her ballet students danced in some performances at the Old Vic Theater. Five years later she moved her school to the Sadler's Wells Theater and, with the star power of Ballerina Alicia Markova (born plain Lilian Alice Marks), the Vic-Wells ballet began its long climb to international eminence. By the time Markova left the company in 1935, Madame had found a thin but diligent little artist called Margaret Fontes, later Margot Fonteyn. Choreographer Ashton joined the troupe as resident choreographer, completing the group that eventually won for Sadler's Wells its palace-bestowed name of Royal Ballet.

Demolishing Opposition. Though Madame is married (to General Practitioner Dr. Arthur B. Connell), members of the cast say, "She is really with us all the time. It is hard to think of her having a personal life at all." Says Madame: "I adore responsibility." Instructors at the Royal Ballet School nervously caution students to put on clean tunics and tights the day she may be expected. When she arrives, she takes over with no-nonsense thoroughness, keeping the beat with her high-heeled foot and reeling off instructions. She is subject to stormy shifts of mood, one minute tossing her fine head back with Irish glee; the next demolishing opposition with the fury of Sleeping Beauty's Carabosse. Her rages are legendary, and famed Dancer-Choreographer Robert Helpmann, among others, became hilariously adept at imitating them.

At a post-premiere party thrown by Impresario Hurok in Manhattan last week, Madame benignly surveyed her troupe from a side table as they capered across the dance floor (Fonteyn herself did a rousing, sinuous tango with portly Choreographer Ashton). The youthful party exuberance, as much as the performance on the Met stage earlier, seemed to promise an inexhaustible supply of enthusiasm for the future. Whether there would also be fresh supplies of choreographers' ideas seemed less certain. Says Madame: "You cannot create genius. All you can do is nurture it."

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