David Bintley: a rebel for tradition - artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1996 by Sheryl Flatow

When David Bintley, artistic director of Britain's Birmingham Royal Ballet, was a very young dancer and an aspiring choreographer, he created some ballets in workshops at the Royal Ballet School that were seen and admired by Sir Frederick Ashton. "He's the only one," Ashton repeatedly said, in recognition of Bintley's blossoming choreographic talent.

Peter Wright, who was then artistic director of Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet), also believed that Bintley had a gift. In 1978, eighteen months after Bintley joined the company, Wright gave the twenty-year-old dancer the opportunity to choreograph. The result was The Outsider, a ballet that dealt with prostitution and murder. "It was X-rated and had a really stupid story," Bintley says, "but the steps were actually pretty good." Good enough to launch his choreographic career.

Today Bintley is not only one of the preeminent British choreographers working in classical dance and the spiritual heir to Ashton, but the successor of Wright in Birmingham. One of his primary goals is to continue the English classical traditionofdance embodied in the work of Ashton.

"There's a side of British dance that is being lost," Bintley says. "I'm talking about the pre-1970s English dance, the kind of English classicism that was most influenced by Ashton. A large part of what Fred did and what Fred was about is not being followed up by current choreographers. Classical dance is being sidetracked into this pure, physical thing, which is perceived to be new and exciting to many people. It's happening everywhere. But this emphasis on extreme physicality is a dead end, because you can only go so far before people start falling apart."

As former resident choreographer of both Sadler's Wells and Royal Ballet, Bintley is--as Ashton was--a traditionalist who believes in the energy, beauty, and infinite variety of the classical dance vocabulary. His body of work, some forty ballets, is mercifully free of the ugly, contortionist excesses indulged in by many choreographers today, and reconfirms the power and poetry of classicism.

Bintley was born thirty-nine years ago in Huddersfield, England, on September 17--Ashton's birthday. An affable and unpretentious man who bears more than a passing resemblance to Robin Williams, he was a stagestruck youngster who saw dance as a way of making it to the other side of the footlights. "I learned ballet, tap, modern everything," he says. "But ballet was the one thing that got me. And then the goal was no longer to just get onstage. It was more important to become a good classical dancer and to make it to the Royal Ballet."

By the time he began attending the Royal Ballet School, he had already begun choreographing. "I knew from an early age that I wanted to choreograph," he says. "So I made pieces and danced in them. When I went to the Royal Ballet School, I was known as somebody who was interested in choreographing. Then I won the school choreography competition, and suddenly I was someone with a voice." He was also making a mark as a character dancer. In June 1976, he had a huge success as Coppelius in the school production of Coppe'lia. Three months later, he was a member of Sadler's Wells.

During the next decade, Bintley emerged not only as a choreographer of distinction, but as a superb dramatic dancer. In 1984 he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Dance in recognition of his performance as Petrouchka. Although he has not officially retired from the stage, the last major role he danced was Widow Simone in La Fille Mal Gardee with San Francisco Ballet in 1963.

Bintley has always derived more satisfaction from creating ballets than from being in them. Fortunately for him, Wright recognized and encouraged his talent. "He gave me my first chance," says Bintley, "and then he regularly gave me more opportunities and offered advice." Bintley was appointed resident choreographer of Sadler's Wells in 1983.

He choreographed his first work for Royal Ballet in 1980 and was resident choreographer from 1986 to 1993. Word is that his parting from the Royal was less than amicable; all he will say is, "It was time."

In 1988 Bintley established a relationship with San Francisco Ballet when he set an earlier work, The Sons of Horus, on the company. Since then he has choreographed three striking and diverse world premieres for SFB. Although one would be hard-pressed to define the Bintley style--it seems to transmogrify, Zelig-like, from one piece to the next--these three pieces offer a kind of microcosm of the range of his work.

The Wanderer Fantasy, to Liszt's orchestration of Schubert's piano score of the same name, is a pure-dance piece that seems to spring organically from the music. Job tells the epic story of the biblical character. The Dance House, which was seen in New York City when SFB performed at City Center in November 1995, is informed by a poem from a German medieval dance-of-death woodcut, and is Bintley's response to a friend's death from AIDS. The narrative is implied rather than literal; although the central character is a death figure, the inspired choreography and imagery are propelled by ideas and feelings rather than by a linear story. Audiences can see in the piece whatever they choose.