DOCTORAL THESIS Narrative Aspects of Kenneth MacMillan’s Ballet The Invitation de Lucas Olmos, Maria Cristina Award date: 2017 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 Narrative Aspects of Kenneth MacMillan’s Ballet The Invitation by Cristina de Lucas BA Law, BA English and Literature, MA Ballet Studies A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Dance University of Roehampton 2016 To my father and to the memory of my mother, with love. ABSTRACT: The British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan (1929-1992) has a prominent place in the narrative tradition of the Royal Ballet. As a major storyteller in the history of the company, his ballets with intense, dramatic stories are an important part of the dance heritage of British ballet. This thesis focuses on one of MacMillan’s first narrative achievements, the one-act ballet The Invitation (1960), and studies the main thematic concerns and stylistic strategies that it deploys. The methodology that shapes the investigation is dance narratology, an underexplored discipline with roots in narratology and dance studies. The first extensive methodological approach proposed here blends the main tenets and principles of narrative theory (and transmedial narratology, in particular) with dance, multimedia and choreomusical analysis. The argumentation is thus structured around six central narrative categories (story, plot, narration, time, space and characters) and interwoven with analytical and theoretical practices from dance research. It also includes notions from other academic fields, such as discourse analysis, semantics, drama and film theory, and is illustrated with frequent dance examples. The discussion framed by those concepts exposes MacMillan’s most significant narrative strategies in The Invitation, suggests the artistic influences behind them, highlights the role of choreography, music (by Mátyás Seiber) and design (by Nicholas Georgiadis) in the narrative, and proposes some narrative solutions to the main flaw in the ballet, the widely contested Carnival interlude. The thesis closes with a contextualization of the ballet, placing MacMillan’s narrative choices in their most immediate artistic contexts, namely those of the Royal Ballet and British post- war drama. i ii CONTENTS ABSTRACT i CONTENTS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY: DANCE NARRATOLOGY 17 2.1 INTRODUCTION 17 2.2 NARRATIVE STUDIES 18 2.3 DANCE ANALYSIS 47 2.4 MULTIMEDIA STUDIES 55 2.5 CHOREOMUSICAL ANALYSIS 61 CHAPTER 3: SHAPING THE STORY AND THE PLOT 67 3.1 INTRODUCTION 67 3.2 LITERARY AND FILM SOURCES 69 3.3 THE SCENARIO 80 3.4 STRUCTURE 82 3.5 THE SCORE 84 3.6 PROGRAMME NOTES AND TITLE 90 CHAPTER 4: TIME 95 4.1 INTRODUCTION 95 4.2 TIME OF THE STORY 98 4.3 ‘DISCOURSE’ TIME 104 iii 4.4 CONCLUSIONS 125 CHAPTER 5: SPACE 127 5.1 INTRODUCTION 127 5.2 SPACE OF THE STORY 132 5.3 ‘DISCOURSE’ SPACE 142 5.4 CONCLUSIONS 151 CHAPTER 6: NARRATION AND EMPLOTMENT OF THE FOUR RELATIONSHIPS: ANALYSIS OF THE PAS DE DEUX 153 6.1 INTRODUCTION 153 6.2 THE GIRL AND THE BOY 154 6.3 THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE 168 6.4 THE WIFE AND THE BOY 181 6.5 THE GIRL AND THE HUSBAND 202 6.6 RECAPITULATION 217 CHAPTER 7: CHARACTERS: CONCEPTION, CHARACTERIZATION AND DANCERS’ CONTRIBUTION. THE SOLOS 221 7.1 INTRODUCTION 221 7.2 GENERAL ASPECTS 224 7.3 THE GIRL 230 7.4 THE BOY 245 7.5 THE WIFE 252 7.6 THE HUSBAND 261 CHAPTER 8: IN CONTEXT: MAIN NARRATIVE CHOICES IN PERSPECTIVE 267 iv 8.1 INTRODUCTION 267 8.2 POLITICAL, CULTURAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONTEXT: BRITAIN IN THE 1950S 268 8.3 DANCE CONTEXT: SEX ON THE BALLET STAGE 271 8.4 BRITISH POST-WAR DRAMA: MACMILLAN AS AN ‘ANGRY YOUNG MAN’ 281 8.5 DANCE CONTEXT REPRISED: EDWARDIAN SETTING AND MARRIAGE 292 8.6 THE TITLE REPRISED 297 8.7 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 301 CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSIONS 303 NOTES 313 APPENDIX 1: PICTURES 331 APPENDIX 2: MUSICAL EXAMPLES 355 APPENDIX 3: ETHICAL APPROVAL 359 BIBLIOGRAPHY 365 v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would have never been possible without the financial support provided by a full Vice Chancellor scholarship. I whole-heartedly thank the Graduate School at the University of Roehampton for granting the award and the Department of Dance for backing the project. I am most grateful to the institutions that preserve the sources and archive material that have been the basis for my research: British Film Institute, British Library, Theatre and Performance Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Royal Academy of Dance, Royal Opera House and Birmingham Royal Ballet. I also owe my deepest gratitude to a good number of people who, with kindness and generosity, have enabled the progress of my investigation: Julia Seiber, Evgenia Georgiadis, Lynne Wake, Marion Tait, Patricia Tierney, Jann Parry, Deborah MacMillan, Gary Harris, Chris Jones and Susie Crow. I have been extremely fortunate to develop my project in an environment of academic excellence and rigour. The teachers, staff and fellow MA and PhD students at the Dance Department at Roehampton have made my journey an enriching and stimulating experience. I truly aspire to emulate the world-leading scholars that I have encountered here and I truly hope that my path crosses again (and frequently) with the enthusiast, committed and budding academics that form the postgraduate community of the Department. To all of them: thanks and long life to dance research! I would like to express my very special and warmest thanks to the following people: vii To Tamara Tomic-Vajagic, who was the first person to find some value in my research and trained me in many aspects of the academic life. To Stacey Prickett, who has constantly encouraged and nurtured the development of my academic skills and has been a huge source of confidence and inspiration. And to my three supervisors, whose guidance has led this project into completion. In particular, I thank Stephanie Jordan for her fastidious mind and meticulous methodology, which have been instrumental in keeping the thesis accurate and in steering the analysis of the music. Helena Hammond’s breath and width of knowledge has been a key factor in broadening my arguments and taking them further. Without her invaluable inputs, the scope of this thesis would have been much narrower. Geraldine Morris has always provided sharp suggestions to improve my text and to keep my research alert to the particularities of the history of the Royal Ballet. More importantly, she was the first supporter of this project and has been its staunchest advocate ever since. To all three: Thank you! I feel privileged for the wealth of knowledge that you have put at my disposal. Finally, I would like to thank the kind reader who opens the pages of this thesis. The research that it presents is made out of love for stories and for Kenneth MacMillan’s ballets. Thanks for giving me the chance to share my thoughts with you. viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Kenneth MacMillan and Narrative In an extended interview which features in the most comprehensive documentary about his career to this date, the British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan (1929- 1992) acknowledged that he was ‘naturally drawn’ to narrative ballets (in Bailey, 1990). The challenge of telling believable stories and delineating multi-faceted, integral characters to which the audience could relate was a chief motivation for his creativity. In his pursuit of dramatic stories and well-crafted characters, MacMillan opened up ballet repertory to themes previously considered unsuitable for the ballet stage, used ballet as a means to delineate the characters’ psychological motivations, and invested his fluid choreography with a powerful expressive quality. As a consequence of his interest in narrative dance, more than two-thirds of his repertory is composed of narrative ballets, a dance genre that he broadened and strengthened by eschewing its ubiquitous ‘fairy tale’ atmosphere (which he considerably disliked), and by reinvigorating this genre through the creation of innovative works that have earned their place in the history of ballet. His full-evening ballets Romeo and Juliet (1964), Manon (1974), and Mayerling (1978) are much-loved and respected pieces still regularly performed not only by the Royal Ballet, the company where he developed most of his career1, but also by ballet companies all over the world. Focus of this Thesis This thesis explores that aspect of MacMillan’s choreography: storytelling. It addresses questions related to the craft of telling stories, such as the selection of the events in the story, their arrangement in a particular plot, the definition of the 1 temporal and spatial features of the storyworld, the delineation of characters, etc. Ultimately, it investigates how the components of the dance (set and costume design, music, choreography and dancers’ performance) shape the constituents of the narrative (plot, characters, time, space, etc.). To illustrate the discussion, the examples come from just one narrative ballet, The Invitation (1960), which MacMillan created towards the beginning of his career.