Arts & Manners: Royal Return

Since 1949, New York dance fans have welcomed the almost yearly visits of England’s Royal Ballet with a cordiality verging on frenzy, and this spring’s season was no exception. Neither our own New York City Ballet nor the Washington-based American Ballet Theater, beloved though they are, ever seem quite so glamorous. You could tell by the elaborate evening gowns, jewels and hair-dos (which made the intermissions almost as much of a spectacle as the performances) that the audiences felt they were in for something special— and they weren’t disappointed. Almost no one (other than the select few who follow ballet politics with the fervor of Sovietologists assessing a May Day lineup) seemed to care that the new director, Kenneth MacMillan, was, until the final week, conspicuous by his absence, or that Clive Barnes, the New York Times’ stage arbiter maximus, put his mark of disapproval on virtually every new (i.e., MacMillan) production except Dances at a Gathering, the masterpiece created two years ago by the American choreographer Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet and restaged for the Royal by its author. It was enough that the Royal was back, that those delectable concoctions of color and grace and romance —Swan Lake, Giselle etc.—were on view once again.

What gives the Royal Ballet its special cachet, at least over here, is its very regality: Its sets are enchanted palaces, its costumes, marvels of velvet, gold and satin—and its stars, Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn, are the embodiment of fairy-tale royalty. This year it was apparent, even to noncognoscenti, that Fonteyn at the age of 52 was not quite up to her earlier standards and that Nureyev, at least at the season’s beginning, seemed a bit muscle-bound—but whether dancing together or separately, their magic still worked. (At the final performance of Sleeping Beauty they were applauded for 58 solid minutes, surely some sort of a record.)

Since 1949, New York dance fans have welcomed the almost yearly visits of England’s Royal Ballet with a cordiality verging on frenzy, and this spring’s season was no exception. Neither our own New York City Ballet nor the Washington-based American Ballet Theater, beloved though they are, ever seem quite so glamorous. You could tell by the elaborate evening gowns, jewels and hair-dos (which made the intermissions almost as much of a spectacle as the performances) that the audiences felt they were in for something special— and they weren’t disappointed. Almost no one (other than the select few who follow ballet politics with the fervor of Sovietologists assessing a May Day lineup) seemed to care that the new director, Kenneth MacMillan, was, until the final week, conspicuous by his absence, or that Clive Barnes, the New York Times’ stage arbiter maximus, put his mark of disapproval on virtually every new (i.e., MacMillan) production except Dances at a Gathering, the masterpiece created two years ago by the American choreographer Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet and restaged for the Royal by its author. It was enough that the Royal was back, that those delectable concoctions of color and grace and romance —Swan Lake, Giselle etc.—were on view once again.

What gives the Royal Ballet its special cachet, at least over here, is its very regality: Its sets are enchanted palaces, its costumes, marvels of velvet, gold and satin—and its stars, Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn, are the embodiment of fairy-tale royalty. This year it was apparent, even to noncognoscenti, that Fonteyn at the age of 52 was not quite up to her earlier standards and that Nureyev, at least at the season’s beginning, seemed a bit muscle-bound—but whether dancing together or separately, their magic still worked. (At the final performance of Sleeping Beauty they were applauded for 58 solid minutes, surely some sort of a record.)