Ice skating, folk dancing, and engineering are an unusual background for the choreographic and artistic director of a ballet company, but Pavel Smok, whose Prague Chamber Ballet made a recent British debut at the Brighton International Festival in Sussex, is a highly unusual man. Immediately on meeting him, you are aware of his sturdy independent style, his identity with the cultural and national traditions of his native country of Czechoslovakia, and his humorous approach to life.
He is a dominant personality. At Brighton, where his company stages two programs at the Gardner Arts Centre of the University of Sussex, he appeared in an introductory discussion chaired by the British dance critic Alastair Macaulay, with Richard Alston, director of the celebrated Rambert Dance Company, and Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie, whose modern dance group, Carousel, is based in Brighton. Apologizing for what was in fact a perfectly viable command of English, he proved to be the most relaxed and entertaining of the panelists. Fielding questions adroitly and often amusingly, he left none of us in doubt as to his certainty of purpose where his company is concerned. Asked whether the recent revolution had changed things for them his answer was definite. "Not at all. Our situation was always revolutionary, never establishment. We always stayed free, so we remain as we were."
'As We Were'
The phrase "as we were," means that they have no stage or theater of their own, they have low funding and lead an itinerant life, but they keep their artistic independence totally intact. A state subsidy, granted in 1983 after years of refusal (there was steady opposition from the people in charge of the national theaters) confirmed them as a fully professional body because they were needed to represent Czech cultural achievement, but they have never done anything for ideological reasons. They have, however, toured extensively in Germany, Poland, and other Eastern European countries. They have been in Malta and Cyprus, and in Finland, Italy, and Spain, appearing often at music and ballet festivals, and they have made some important forays farther afield. This began in 1980, when they became the first Czech ballet ensemble to visit Australia as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts. In 1985 they were in Cuba, in 1987 in China, and in 1989 in India. As a result they have managed to keep their sixteen dancers working for fifty-two weeks every year and they hope to maintain this pace under the new Czech government. The repertory, of course, will always reflect the riches of Czech music through scores by Janacek, Smetana, Dvorak and Martinu. Most important of all, the company will continue to create and dance according to Smok's beliefs.
Above everything, perhaps, Smok is dedicated to the theatrical importance of ballet. This is not a group in which technique is worshipped. Smok himself came to ballet studies late. As the 1946 Czech junior champion in figure skating, he always had good athletic ability; however, he followed his father by training to be an engineer at the Prague Technical University before turning to drama and ballet. He graduated from the Prague Conservatory Dance Department at the late age of twenty-six, and became a soloist with the Prague Army Opera. His performing career was affected, and finally stopped, by a spinal operation - after which, as he says, "I couldn't pose, I had to keep moving, so my ballets are all movement." You suspect that this would be the case anyway, because in his works, it seems, emotions are represented
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