Inner Turmoil, Inner Strength”
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“INNER TURMOIL, INNER STRENGTH” By Sir Peter Wright By the time I joined Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet he had already graduated to Covent Garden and I did not get to know him properly until 1952 when we were both appearing in a short season of ballets by John Cranko at Henley-on- Thames. Cranko had been asked by John Piper and Osbert Lancaster to get a group of dancers together to help save the theatre from being sold off as a warehouse. This turned out to be a major turning point in Kenneth's career. Although he had been dancing important roles at Covent Garden, he had begun to suffer from serious attacks of stage fright and Ninette de Valois realised that he needed to get away for a bit from the stresses and strains of dancing at the Royal Opera House; not only could the critics be pretty vicious, but being extremely sensitive, he suffered a lot from jealousies within the company and gibes from his colleagues. Working with Cranko at Henley in a creative and more relaxed atmosphere helped him get his confidence back and gave him the feeling of being part of a family, something he had been yearning for ever since his mother died when he was just 11 years old. Cranko gave him the lead in a new ballet Dancing set to music by the jazz pianist George Shearing, in which he partnered my wife-to-be Sonya Hana, as well as other challenging roles; but most importantly, he made Kenneth believe he could be a choreographer himself. “Kenneth's problems lay deeper than just stage fright; he seemed to have a tortured soul” However, I sensed that Kenneth's problems lay deeper than just stage fright; he seemed to have a tortured soul and, in fact, he later confided in me that he felt he needed some sort of psychiatric help but did not know how to go about finding it. His mood swings were fairly extreme; on some days he and Geoffrey Webb, another member of the group, would pretend to be wild and crazy ghouls executing dangerous and daring acts, such as leaning out of the dicky of a friend's Triumph Roadster backwards whilst travelling at 70 miles an hour with their heads practically touching the road! Then on other days he would be full of despair and totally lacking in confidence. A serious car accident shortly after Henley made his nervous condition worse and as a result he could never travel in a car faster than 20 miles an hour, would not use public transport and never flew. This was to have repercussions later when he became director of The Royal Ballet. Because the premiere of his new ballet Ballade for The Touring Company had been scheduled to take place in Lisbon a few days before the Covent Garden company opened in New York for their first season under his direction, he had to travel there by the QE2 missing the first night with disastrous results - the public were insulted and Solomon Hurok, who had done so much for the company over the years, was both angry and hurt. It took Kenneth a long time to recover from the ill feeling caused by this bad planning. I think it was shortly after the car crash that he started to drink a bit too much in order to overcome his nerves and feelings of insecurity; over the years this reliance on alcohol was to take a hold of him. He also went into psychoanalysis for several years and although this treatment didn't seem to help him much he always maintained that it did do a lot for the creation of his ballets, giving him a deeper understanding of the human psyche. Sometime later he went to a psychiatrist (very different treatment from analysis) and this helped him a great deal. “he would spend hours counting out every single note, discovering hidden phrasing, using the atmosphere of the music to huge effect” After Henley, Kenneth returned to the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet just when David Poole was starting a workshop for aspiring choreographers and Kenneth did his first piece of choreography Somnambulism to a jazz score by Stan Kenton. It was an instant success and he then did two more ballets for the group. I was in one of them, Laiderette , set to Frank Martin's Petite Suite Concertante , which required a harpsichord. The work was so successful that it was taken into the Ballet Rambert repertoire almost immediately although De Valois had wanted it for the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet but in those days, with the company's limited budget, it was not possible to tour a harpsichord. What impressed me most was his instinctive understanding of the music and his unorthodox use of it. It was a difficult score and, as he was unable to read music, he would spend hours counting out every single note, discovering hidden phrasing, using the atmosphere of the music to huge effect. We were also amazed at the way he took basic classical steps and made them look completely different, often asking us to try them backwards, turned in and with strange arms and body movements which nowadays seem quite natural. In rehearsals Kenneth demonstrated most of the steps and movements himself and then made us develop them until they looked right; he was always demanding and his choreography was very complicated and extremely difficult; much more so in those early days than in his later works. Needless to say he suffered from appalling nerves throughout and was convinced it would be a flop. In fact, it was hailed by the critics as a work of near genius and Ninette de Valois commissioned him to do a new work, Stravinsky's Danses Concertantes . Kenneth chose Nicholas Georgiadis from the Slade to design it and their association was to last throughout their careers. Cranko gave Kenneth constant support and created the part of Moondog for him in The Lady and the Fool, probably his greatest role, though he never liked the ballet, finding it far too sentimental for his taste. Cranko also gave Kenneth the idea for his next ballet, House of Birds, based on a Grimm Brothers fairy tale, Jorinda and Joringel , He was going to do it himself but then decided it would be a good piece for Kenneth; how right he was, for it brought out another aspect of Kenneth's work which was rather macabre and frightening, but showed how masterly he was when tackling a narrative work. Kenneth used Georgiadis again and John Lanchbery found the perfect music consisting of some piano pieces by Federico Mompou, which he arranged beautifully. The result was a major triumph for all concerned. Steps, ideas and choreographic invention seemed to flow out of Kenneth and within two years he had created six highly successful works. “He did though have a brilliant eye for recognising talent, often rescuing dancers from the ranks whose hidden talents were not always immediately apparent” Kenneth badly wanted to stop dancing as now he had found himself as a choreographer he had lost all desire to be a performer. Madam however wanted him to continue, firstly because good male dancers were still in short supply and, secondly, because there was no money for another choreographer's salary as Ashton and Cranko were both already under contract. Happily though, the success of Danses Concertantes had been so astounding that she had no choice and he got his way. Even so, his insecurity and depression continued and he began to rely on alcohol more and more in order to get through long and exhausting days of nerve racking rehearsals. He was, however, very quick witted and fun to be with, provided he was surrounded by his few very close friends. He had very strong likes and dislikes and was often accused of only using his friends in his ballets. He did though have a brilliant eye for recognising talent, often rescuing dancers from the ranks whose hidden talents were not always immediately apparent. He and Margaret Hill, a superb artist who joined the company from Rambert, but who did not really fit into the required Royal Ballet (then Sadler's Wells) mould, struck up a deep personal relationship and he created Solitaire for her. They helped each other a great deal as they both seemed to suffer from the same problems - feelings of loneliness and rejection; subjects that were to feature in many of Kenneth's later ballets. And then Lynn Seymour appeared on the scene! She was the perfect MacMillan dancer with a body that could make all his amazingly inventive and offbeat choreography look natural, a superb classical line, feet that could almost speak, and wonderfully expressive eyes, strangely enough with a slight cast, that made her beauty even more appealing. She was to become his muse and give him inspiration, often anticipating his choreographic thought process, suggesting steps and movements that fitted in perfectly with his ideas. They became a wonderful professional partnership and great friends, but their relationship was fairly tempestuous - they both had strong personalities with very definite ideas; but she always managed to make his often extraordinarily difficult and inventive steps make sense and brought his characters to life. Who will ever forget the rape scene in The Invitation ? “Las Hermanas contained all the things that Kenneth could depict very well: sexual repression, violent lust, jealousy and dramatic intensity.” In 1963, Kenneth went to Stuttgart on Cranko's invitation and created Las Hermanas .