New Zealanders in British Ballet

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 487, 22 October 1948, Page 10

New Zealanders in British Ballet

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September 16 HE Arts Council of Great Britain has just formed a small ballet company to take ballet to the smaller provincial towns of this country, and of its 20 members, three are New Zealanders. One is the designer of the sets and costumes of most of the ballets that are to be done-Terence Morgan, once of Auckland. One is’ the musical director (and first pianist in the twopiano team which is to provide the music)-Trevor Fisher, once of Wellington. And the third is a young dancer, Yvonne Cartier, lately of Auckland. Their presence in the company is a coincidence, and one that gives them rather particular pleasure. Among the remaining 17 are two Australians, two South Africans, and one from Kenya. I found them all at work the other afternoon in the Rudolph Steiner Hall, just off Baker Street. They were in their fifth and last week of rehearsal as a unit, and were thinking a little apprehensively of what was going to happen in Yarmouth next’ Monday. This is the first time the Arts Council has entered ballet in this manner. It has, of course, been subsidising the Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden ballets, but it has never before formed a company of dancers of its own. The present venture, known as ‘the St. James’s Ballet Company after the London square where the Arts Council has its headquarters, is intended to take ballet to small towns’whose citizens pay some of the taxes that support the State’s patronage of the arts, but would very seldom see ballet of a good standard unless they came up to London, or went into their nearest large town when perhaps a touring commercial company was there. The St. James’s ballet naturally will not attempt to take candensed versions of well-known fullscale ballets to these people, but is being provided (mainly by its own members) with a repertoire designed for its size and ability. The director is Alan Carter, a young, sensible, practical artist with wide experience, whose leadership is valued by the younger members. Before the last war, he was dancing at Sadler’s Wells, and then joined the R.A.F. When

he came out, he returned to Sadler’s Wells for a time; was ballet-master for the film Red Shoes (assembling the company, and directing the ballet); after that, he admits, he did ballets for the show Carissima; and now he directs the St. James. He has 12 dancers, and the other eight in the group are manager, stage manager and assistant, electrician, two pianists, wardrobe mistress, and lorry driver. * % * The repertoire at the start consists of five ballets (all new) and four divertissements. Ritornel, devised and designed by Carter, is abstract, with music composed by John Hawkins; Visions, by Carter, with designs by Morgan, is to music of Chopin; A Quiet Spot was based on a story of Maupassant by Pauline Grant, to music of Offenbach; Beggar’s Rhapsody is done to piano works of Brahms; and School for Nightingales, a 17th Century setting devised by John Cranko, is done. to music of Couperin. The four "diverts’’ as Carter calls them, include the Bluebird portion of Tchaikovski’s Sleeping Princess, and The Catch, a borrowed Sadler’s Wells piece, done to Bartok’s Rumanian Dances. The company will take these round the provinces, mostly on _ three-night stands but sometimes spending only one night in a town. By the time this is read in New Zealand, they should have toured East Anglia, and visited Weston-super-Mare, Salisbury, and even that almost mythical place known as Wigan, which does exist outside of music-hall jokes. The manager, Alan Hay, tab has had plenty of experience shepherding smail acting companies, has been around some of these places to look at stages. ay may be distinguished from the others by a neat suit, and a capacity to remember times and appointments and worldly details. Not that the others are in any evident sense inhabiters of the upper air, but when I was looking for Terence Morgen, backstage, knowing he was the designer I approached a girl (dressed in a cotton overall with floral design painted,across the back), who was painting something on the floor, and asked her if she could tell me where Mr. Morgan was. She sat up on her heels, wiped her hair back from her face, adding a little more paint to her forehead, and said, "I’m sorry, but I would not know who Mr. Morgan is." "Terry, then?" I tried and that rang the bell. They might have been a gang of undergraduates getting up a college production; but when you saw their work, it had a professional touch, with a few »blemishes that Yarmouth or Wigan might shortly remove. They will migrate by train to a provincial centre (such as Norwich, ‘for East \Anglia) and their sets and costumes will follow on the lorry. Then they will do their short local trips by bus. * * * "Mr. Morgan," when I found him sitting in the auditorium waiting to watch a dress rehearsal of A Quiet Spot, told me that he left Auckland in 1935. He was born in Wellington, and had, at the last count, 103 ; blood-relatives in Christchurch. "My great-grandfather Parsons was the owner and captain of the ship that

took Godley out,’ he said. "He liked it, so he came back here and collected his family and went out and stayed." Mr. Morgan had done commercial art and window-dressing in Auckland, and was in the Auckland Little Theatre, and W.E.A. Drama Club. He came here on a scholarship given by the British Drama League in New Zealand. He "took one look at the school it was for and sent the money back"; then he "fussed around for a while" and got accepted for Michael Checkhov’s studio at Dartington Hall, on a full scholarship basis. He became the studio’s assistant director, and went to the U.S. with it; left it when it reorganised, and went to New York; was in The Corn is Green with Ethel Barrymore, joined the R.A.F. in New York, crossed the Atlantic; "a G.D.-the lowest form of life"; was roped in for all kinds of acting and designing work; ended as a flight sergeant. Was released two years ago; designed a ballet for New York, arranged a costume exhibition at a London theatre, and then became costume liaison man on Red Shoes. Thus he and Carter met. Now he is signed up to a film’ concern known as "Independent Producers" and works for the St. James’s "by courtesy of, etc.’ "I’m one of Rank’s boys now," he says. He has designed all the sets for the St. James’s company’s new ballets, except one. He likes being here, likes his job, but also likes being a New Zeéalander, and talks like one. Xe * * Trevor Fisher was sitting at the piano when I found him, loosely dangling a cigarette, and tinkling away at some Offenbach. * "Top part only," he said. "Four hands. Don’t know where my second’ pianist has got to." I asked him where he was from, and he thought for a moment. "Might as well say Wellington, I suppose." Pupil of Bernard Page-"Yes, I'd be glad if you’d mention that." Left. in 1931,

Studied in Austria. In England did concerts and recitals, BBC work, accompanying, etc.; during the war, ENSA and CEMA tours-"That’s about all"; except that he has played piano for ballet before for Pauline Grant’s lunchtime ballet at the Cambridge Theatre in 1944; and wrote the Covent Garden Opera Book on Traviata. * % * Miss Cartier, when I found her, was parachuting down the backstage stairs. If I had known her, I would not have recognised her. She was due on the stage to dance in a dress rehearsal of the Maupassant-Offenbach arr. FisherPauline Grant-Morgan ballet, A Quiet Spot. And since Offenbach is always good for a can-can, Miss Cartier was ehveloped in a Morgan creation of grease-paint, beauty-spots, eyelashes the length of a camel’s, a black bonnet, a low-cut bodice, vast skirt, black lace stockings and (though this fact did not emerge till later) a piece of a motor tyre’s inner tube by way of garter. "Oh, but how nice," she said, when I stated my business. We leaned against, a whitewashed wall in a narrow passage and carried on a conversation through which other people passed back and forth. P Miss Cartier left home only last December; is from Auckland, where she was with the Repertory Ballet Theatre, and danced for the Light Opera Company; pupil of the Nettleton Edward Ballet School; is here on a two-year scholarship to the Royal Academy, and was in the Sadler’s Wells Company as a student when the St. James’s was about to be formed. "Just came along for an audition . .. yes, they do call it ‘audition’." Dances in four of the five ballets, and is in some of the "diverts.". Likes it; finds the company happy, the training invaluable, the presence of two New Zealanders "nice."

"You don’t want the red lights up till the can-can?" someone shouted, So the red lights went off, leaving the picnic spot with the hedge and stile in cooler. lighting. The curtain came down. Mr. Fisher tickled the piano with bass-less Offenbach. The curtain went up again. A loofy yokel danced on with a flower in hand; his lady came by. They passed the time of day. A stuffy old picnic party came on in their black clothes and disapproving looks; the rustics passed the time of day a little more self-consciously; along came some fast young lasses, including Miss Cartier, in garb that will provide even Wigan. which may not know its Offenbach, with the clue to what’s to come; old man in the stuffy picnic party rolls his eyes. Piano gets louder, and Trevor Fisher contrives to grab a few bass notes with his left hand to help things along a bit. Granny of the picnic party gets carried away by old times or something; yokel, jiragged in, too, gets drunk on one gulp of the stuff, incurs severe displeasure of rustic maiden; everyone, including the pianist, now kicking up bobsy-die. Miss Cartier takes off rubber band, throws it around a little; old man’s eyes roll. "Lightning!" an urgent voice shouted from behind me in the audience. A tardy electrician supplied a prodigious number 6f flashes. Moral disapproval of staid members of picnic party dissolved in rainstorm; rustic maiden forgives a little matter of drunkenness on the part of rustic yokel, whose braces have now come off. Danse generalefinis. Everyone seemed to think it would come off better in Yarmouth, or at any rate in Weston-super-Mare. And it looked like being great fun. If the. other ballets and divertissements succeeded in being themselves as this one did, the whole project ought to be a good introduction to ballet for people who have hardly seen it before.

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