'Anastasia' lives at Royal Ballet - season highlights

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1995 by Jann Parry

LONDON--Two new evening-length productions will highlight Royal Ballet's 1995-96 season: a Twyla Tharp premiere and a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's three-act Anastasia, which returns in May after last being seen in 1978.

Tharp, for her first commission for Royal Ballet, originally proposed creating a single new piece for the company, to be paired with one of her existing ballets. Then, shortly before rehearsals began, she decided to choreograph three new works (which could be seen as a three-act ballet) to music by Rossini, using nearly all the dancers in the company. It will run December 9, 15, 18, and 20, and January 3 and 4, 1996.

MacMillan had discussed plans for a revival of Anastasia shortly before his death in 1992. He intended to expand the role of Rasputin, the mad monk, for Irek Mukhamedov, and to make several musical cuts. The cuts will be instituted but the choreography will remain as it was, re-created from Benesh notation. The choreographer's widow, Deborah MacMillan, has chosen designer Bob Crowley, who collaborated with MacMillan and Nicholas Hytner on Carousel, to stage the production.

Aside from these new productions, the 1995-96 season is fairly conservative. When the season was announced at a joint press conference with Royal Opera last spring, the discrepancy between the two schedules was marked. The opera company is offering nine new productions, eight revivals, and a Verdi festival. The ballet programs are limited in number, and will include several familiar productions: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Giselle, all performed the previous season, and a revival of MacMillan's Manon.

MacMillan's Prince of the Pagodas has been delayed until next fall. However, his one-act ballet The Invitation, created in 1960 for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, is to be revived for performances February 9, 13, 15, 22 and 24, and March 13 and 15, 1996. His comic pas de deux, Side Show, made for Seymour and Rudolf Nureyev in 1972, will be danced by Darcey Bussell and Mukhamedov in a Stravinsky bill, with Balanchine's Apollo and Duo Concertant (November 23, 25, and 30, and December 7 and 14). Petruchka, revived last season for Mukhamedov, has been dropped from the program.

Frederick Ashton is represented in the Royal season by two all-Ashton programs: Les Patineurs will be coupled with Tales of Beatrix Potter in performances during the holidays, and a triple bill of The Dream, Symphonic Variations, and Illuminations goes up in April and continues in May. Illuminations, set on New York City Ballet in 1950 and first staged for Royal Ballet in 1981, has not been seen here since 1983. Ashton's Rhapsody, redesigned in bold colors by Patrick Caulfield last season, returns in February.

A special performance of Sleeping Beauty on February 20, 1996 will mark the anniversary of the reopening of the Royal Opera House after World War II.

New work by current and former company members will be shown in Dance Bites, the annual small-scale tour of the regions of the United Kingdom. Matthew Hart, whose children's ballet Peter and the Wolf will be performed at Christmas, has been commissioned to create a new work for the company in February.

Hart's elevation to soloist was one of the promotions announced by Royal Ballet at the start of the season. Tracy Brown and Sarah Wildor were also promoted, to first soloist. Although an ankle injury kept Wildor off the stage for several months last season, she has now danced leading roles in Ashton's Daphnis and Chloe, Rhapsody, and The Dream, as well as making her debut as Giselle.