Reprint from Ballet Review 40-4 Winter 2012-2013
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Winter 2012-13 Ballet Review From the Winter 2012-13 issue of Ballet Review A Conversation with David McAllister Cover Photograph by Damir Yusupov, Ballet in Cinema: The Bolshoi’s Maria Alexandrovna and Ruslan Skvortsov in Esmeralda. 4 London – Dav id Vaughan 6 Ann Arbor – Peter Sparling 7 Stuttgart – Gary Smith 8 Annandale-on-Hudson–David Vaughan 9 Washington, D.C. – Lisa Traiger 11 New York – Harris Green 13 Stuttgart – Gary Smith 14 Paris – Peter Sparling 16 New York – David Vaughan 18 Los Angeles – Leigh Witchel 19 Helsinki – Christine Temin 56 22 New York – Susanna Sloat 25 Stuttgart – Gary Smith 26 New York – Joseph Houseal Joel Lobenthal 28 A Conversation with David McAllister Re gina Zarhina 35 Shklovsky’s High Riverbank 38 Larry L. Lash Ballet Review 40.4 38 A Phoenix in Vienna Winter 2012-13 Francis Mason Editor and Designer: Marvin Hoshino 49 Ann Hutchinson Guest on Graham Managing Editor: Roberta Hellman Ian Spencer Bell 53 Beauty Expert Senior Editor: Don Daniels Joel Lobenthal Associate Editor: Joel Lobenthal 56 A Conversation with Mimi Paul –I 68 Associate Editor: Larry Kaplan Lisa Traiger 68 Karmiel Festival Copy Editor: Barbara Palfy Daniel Jacobson Photographers: 75 Ballet in HD Tom Brazil Costas 86 London Reporter – Clement Crisp Associates: Peter Anastos 94 Here Today – Ilona Robert Gres kovic 94 Music on Disc – George Dorris George Jackson 100 Check It Out Elizabeth Kendall 28 Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds James Sutton David Vaughan Edward Willinger Cover Photograph by Damir Yusupov, Ballet in Cinema: The Bolshoi’s Sarah C. Woodcock Maria Alexandrovna and Ruslan Skvortsov in Esmeralda. Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, Madeleine Eastoe and Kevin Jackson at top. (Photos: Lisa Tomasetti, Jeff Busby) 28 ballet review A Conversation with It was mid-tour, so Williamson actually got in touch with Ninette de Valois and said that David McAllister they needed someone to come and keep the company going, and she suggested Peggy van Praagh. Joel Lobenthal Van Praagh came out and was with the Borovansky company all the rest of 1959 into BR: You started dancing with Australian Bal- 1960. And then it did subside, but at the last let in 1983 and became the artistic director in performance she actually stood in front of the 2001. I am wondering how much of an influ- house and said, “Australia needs a national ence on you were the members of De Basil’s ballet company. You need to get on to your par- Ballets Russes who stayed in Australia after liamentarians and get them to support it.” their long tours there. It just so happens that the Treasurer was in David McAllister: A huge influence. The the audience that night. So he came around, company succeeded one that had been head- knocked on the door, and said, “My name’s ed by one of the Ballets Russes dancers, Edou - Harold Holt and we should talk forever.” That’s ard Borovansky. He was more of a character how it all began. She went back to Europe for artist, I think. There were three of them that about eighteen months and then came back. started companies: Helene Kirsova in Sydney. The company was founded in September 1962; Kira Bouslov started a com- we did our first performance pany in Perth, which is still in November. the West Australian Ballet. BR: What year did you Borovansky and Kirsova yourself start as a dancer? were in competition and Bo - McAllister: I joined in 1983. rovansky very cleverly I was born in 1963, the year hooked up with J. C. Wil liam - after the birth of the ballet son Ltd., which owned all the company. theaters in Australia. Once BR: Much too late to have he got into the Wil liamson seen the Ballets Russes do family, his company’s exis- something like Le Coq d’Or. tence was underwritten, and McAllister: Interestingly, Kirsova’s company collapsed. we did a four-year Ballets Photo: James Braund They had no money. Bous - Russes program starting in lov’s company just kept chugging away, but it 2006, and we wanted to stage Le Coq d’Or be- was sort of professional-amateur. They got cause one of the ballerinas, who still lives in paid only when they performed. Australia, had married an Australian and The Borovansky company was itinerant. stayed on. Her name’s Anna Volkova; she was They would pull all the repertory together and a soloist, and she was second cast to Ri- do an eighteen-month tour around Australia, abouchinska. So we had an interest in restag- and then the company would fold. Then, two ing it. There’s quite a lot in the archival film months later they’d reemerge and do another center. big tour. It was in that commercial mode. BR: Why specifically Coq d’Or? Borovansky was always the center of it. He McAllister: Because no one does it anymore. choreographed a number of works and also I was talking to Alexei Ratmansky the other performed, but he staged all the Diaghilev night and as it happens he said he’s going to repertory, and then all the classical reperto- do a Coq d’Or, I think for San Francisco Ballet. ry as well. He died in 1959, and the company We ended up having to cancel our plan for a was in a dilemma. number of reasons. We had a lot of trouble ©2013 David McAllister, Joel Lobenthal 29 finding a score because the original score was years before. Markova set it once, and that was with singers. quite austere. I was at the ballet school then. BR: From 1914. I never saw Markova work, but I saw the per- McAllister: Then they did a reorchestration formances, and it was excruciatingly slow. without the singers. That score we couldn’t Everything was so mannered, whereas with find at all. There’s a suite they did that is only Baronova, it was much lighter and more ethe- about twenty-eight minutes. The original bal- real. I enjoyed it much more. let was something like forty-five. Baronova also had a wicked sense of humor. BR: Did you know Irina Baronova after she And she did a lot of talks for various things. moved to Australia? Even with us dancers she’d sit down and start McAllister: Yes, really well. talking about what it was like, what life was BR: Did she work with any of you? like. McAllister: She did. She came in 1986, from BR: When you became director the para- London, and staged Les Sylphides, and she came digm seemed to be, after Baryshnikov at Amer- back again in the 1990s. But when we started ican Ballet Theatre, that a male ex-dancer from the Ballets Russes project she was part of the the company would become the director. It’s whole reason behind it. Baronova was living not that it’s any worse than any other, or any up in Byron Bay, and she’d been down a few better, necessarily, but that’s what it is. times, so we figured, “Let’s get her to come McAllister: It’s strange. But in our com- back and restage.” She did Les Sylphides again pany not so much because there was Peggy – and also helped us with Le Spectre de la Rose and well Bobby Helpmann was there for a year in Schéhérazade. It was so wonderful. his own right. He was co-artistic director for Then we did a symposium in Adelaide, with about ten years with Peggy. But then he took her and Volkova and Valrene Tweedie, an Aus- over for a year and then left very quickly. Then tralian who joined the company in the 1940s there was Ann Williams, and then Peggy back and went on tour. We had this great day when again, and then Marilyn Welch-Jones, and then they were all there and telling stories. It was Maina Gielgud, and then Ross Stretton came all filmed. Baronova was around for quite a in. He sort of broke the drought! lot, almost two years. BR: How old were you? BR: Did she feel she could stage Le Coq d’Or? McAllister I was thirty-six when I was ap- McAllister: No. She said, even with the oth- pointed. er ballets, “Oh, I know what I did, but I’m not BR: And had you stopped dancing? really up for what anyone else did.” With Les McAllister: No, I was still dancing, but it Sylphides it’s all been notated, but stylistically was getting to that point where it was start- she could give a sense of the movement qual- ing to be time. Quite honestly, I didn’t expect ity because she’d worked with Fokine. She ac- that I would get the job. I applied because I’d tually had it from the horse’s mouth. A lot was been doing some arts management studies really interesting, like at the end of the bal- through Deakin University. let, she said, “You’re not in lines, you just melt. I was just about to finish, and when Ross You just float out to the sides.” announced that he was leaving to direct the “We never counted,” she said – because Royal Ballet, I thought this could be a very in- every one was expecting lots of counts, “I don’t teresting process to go through because ulti- understand this counting. We just listened to mately one day I’d like to do that job. the music. We were the music.” But it gave the So I applied and spoke to a few people, and production such a lovely atmosphere because everyone said, “Why not?” So I did, and then the dancers were so in awe of having her as the process went on, I got a bit more excit- around.