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Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Britain's Best
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15383 |
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THE ARTS
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12 / 1989 |
2,057 Words |
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Kathrine Sorley Walker
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A young choreographer who declared that he was "sick to death of fairy stories," who thirty years ago shocked the London ballet audience with a controversial work featuring a rape, this month is marking his sixtieth birthday with a new version of a fairy story.
Sir Kenneth MacMillan, long internationally renowned, was tempted back to the world of fantasy by Benjamin Britten's full-length score composed in 1957. Employing the lyrical and dramatic dance idiom of which he is a master, MacMillan, in Prince of the Pagodas, unfolds a tale of two rival royal sisters, Belle-Epine and Belle-Rose, and the strange journey the maltreated Belle-Rose takes to kingdom of the Pagodas where she marries the Prince.
Deeply concerned with the psychological problems of men and women, revealing and probing their souls with surgical accuracy in many of his greatest productions, MacMillan no doubt was intrigued by the unhappy and arrogant character of the elder sister. Belle-Epine may be heir to her father's crown, sought in marriage by kings from every part of the world, but she is jealous of her sister's beauty and charm. As belle-Rose finds happiness abroad, Belle-Epine becomes increasingly wicked and tyrannical at home, deposing and mistreating her father. Hers is a twisted nature likely to rank with many memorable MacMillan studies. Deeply disturbed people have often been grippingly portrayed in his choreography.
Creative Teeth
One of his earliest works, Laiderette--for Sadler's Wells (Royal Ballet) Choreographic Group, the venture on which most of the Royal Ballet's current choreographers cut their creative teeth--is a sad and haunting piece about an ugly girl. Its theme concerns an outsider--people for whom MacMillan has special sympathy--a minor member of a troupe of itinerant pierrots, who seems to find love at a masked ball when the master of a mansion is attracted to her. When the moment of unmasking comes, however, he turns from her in disgust.
MacMillan's early life was difficult; he lost his mother at an early age; his father, injured in World War I, went bankrupt in 1935 and, following the death of his wife, withdrew from his family.
MacMillan's ambition, formed early, to become a dancer, set him apart from family and friends. With no real encouragement he managed to find a dance teacher, paying her what he could from pocket money. He worked immensely hard and made enough progress to qualify for entry into the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. At fourteen, MacMillan forged a letter from his father to Dame Ninette de Valois, principal of the school as well as director of the company, and traveled to London to audition. De Valois reported to his dancing teacher that she was most impressed. "He was well-grown, well-made, has a good presence and is obviously intelligent. What he has managed to do in one year and nine months is quite extraordinary." His father then reluctantly agreed that he could take the offered place in the spring of 1945.
So far he had not thought of choreography. He had not even seen much ballet, so he watched the company--still known as Sadler's Wells Ballet--avidly at every opportunity. He continued to make rapid progress and in the summer of 1946 was taken into the small "second" company, Sadler's Wells Theatre
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