In mid-October 2014, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London opened an exhibition, Russian avant-garde theatre: war, revolution & design, in its Theatre and Performance Galleries. It consisted of around 150 works, most of which came from a twenty year period between 1913 and 1933, that is just before the Revolution of 1917 until the beginnings of Social Realism in the 1930s. The majority of items, largely works on paper, came from the Bakhrushin State Theatre Museum in Moscow with smaller amounts of material from the St Petersburg Museum of Theatre and Music, the Victoria & Albert Museum and from private collections.
The designs were mostly in spectacular condition, especially in terms of colour which seemed scarcely to have dimmed over the century or so since the designs were painted. With the prominence that has been given to the designers who worked with Diaghilev over approximately the same period, many of them Russian, this exhibition was an exceptional opportunity to see another side of Russian design.
Many of the theatrical works represented had never been realised in performance. Satanic Ballet designed by Alexandra Exter, for example, is thought to have been prepared for the Moscow Chamber Ballet and was meant to be a series of improvisations without thematic content, but never made it to the stage. Other productions were of course realised but what was interesting was that the designs often showed movement despite the fact that they came from a period when the art being produced in Russia was dominated by constructivism. Some designs have a real fluidity to them, others remain within the constructivist mode but still show some potential for body movement.
A handsome book was produced for the exhibition and of particular interest as far as dance is concerned is an essay by Nicoletta Misler entitled ‘Precarious Bodies: Performing Constructivism’. Misler writes of Satanic Ballet:
Naked bodies—in keeping with Goleizvosky’s [the choreographer] interest in the culture of nudist performance—were to have leapt and twisted along diagonal ladders leaning against a void as if to confirm Exter’s conviction that ‘free movement is the fundamental element of the theatrical act’. (p. 55)
In her essay Misler also examines, briefly, the role of the Choreological Laboratory, part of the Russian State Academy of Artistic Sciences established in Moscow in 1921, and the research into the theory of movement that was carried out there. Her discussion of the various experiments carried out and the outcomes in terms of theatrical expression seem to me to be well worth following up.
Russian avant-garde theatre book cover
Unfortunately the book doesn’t have an index but it is full of illustrations of a remarkable collection of designs and a selection of essays that are mind-expanding.
Russian avant-garde theatre: war, revolution and design (London: Nick Hern Books, 2014) ISBN 978 I 84842 I 453 I
Harry Haythorne, child performer extraordinaire, well-travelled dancer, ballet master, artistic director, teacher and mentor, has died in Melbourne aged 88.
Haythorne was the child of an English father and an Australian mother of Irish descent who met at a dance hall in Adelaide: both parents loved ballroom dancing. But they were barred from many dance halls in Adelaide because they dared to introduce what Haythorne jokingly referred to in an interview as ‘filthy foreign dances’ such as the foxtrot and the quickstep. His father had brought these dance styles with him when he migrated to Australia. They were unknown at the time in Adelaide.
Haythorne began his own dance training with Jean Bedford who taught ‘operatic dancing’ and shortly afterwards began tap classes with Herbert Noye. His initial ambitions were to go into vaudeville. Even with the arrival of the Ballets Russes in Australia in the 1930s, which was an exciting time for him, he still did not have ambitions to take up ballet seriously.
When Haythorne was about 14 he began his professional performing career with Harold Raymond’s Varieties, a Tivoli-style vaudeville group established initially as a concert party to entertain troops as World War II began. With Harold Raymond he took part in comedy sketches, played his piano accordion, sang and danced. His star act, which would feature again much later in his life, was his tap dancing routine on roller-skates.
Eventually, in the late 1940s, he took ballet classes from Joanna Priest and performed in her South Australian Ballet before leaving for England. It was seeing Ballet Rambert during its Australasian tour 1947–1949 that inspired him to change direction and look to ballet as a career. In London he took classes with Anna Northcote and Stanislas Idzikowski before auditioning successfully for Metropolitan Ballet, later joining Mona Ingelsby’s International Ballet. But his career in England and Europe was an eclectic one and he also worked on the Max Bygraves Show, danced on early British television shows, performed in the Cole Porter musical Can Can and toured to South Africa with a production of The Pyjama Game.
Haythorne listed the three greatest influences on his early career as Léonide Massine, for whom he acted as personal assistant and ballet master for Massine’s company, Les ballets européens; Walter Gore, for whom he was ballet master for Gore’s London Ballet; and Peter Darrell who hired him as manager of Western Theatre Ballet and then as his assistant artistic director of Scottish Ballet in Glasgow.
Always an Australian at heart, Haythorne began to miss his homeland and made various moves to return. He eventually came back as artistic director of Queensland Ballet, a position he took up in 1975. With Queensland Ballet he mounted works by Australian choreographers including Graeme Murphy, Garth Welch and Don Asker and had Hans Brenaa stage La sylphide and other Bournonville ballets. But it was a short directorship. Haythorne was unhappy at how his contract was terminated in 1978 and always maintained that no reason was given other than ‘boards don’t have to give reasons’. But he remained in Queensland for the next few years and worked to established the tertiary dance course at Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education (now Queensland University of Technology).
But after deciding that he did not want to head a school but direct a company he accepted the position of artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 1981. Haythorne’s directorship of the Royal New Zealand Ballet was a fruitful one and lasted until 1992. During his tenure the company staged works by New Zealand and Australian choreographers as well as ballets by major international artists. Haythorne oversaw the company’s 30th anniversary in 1983; toured the company to China, the United States, Australia and Europe; and staged his own, full-length Swan Lake. For the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s 60th anniversary in 2013, encapsulating his attitude to his appointment in 1981, and also his approach to directorship in general, he wrote:
I knew I had to learn much more about New Zealand and its history, familiarise myself not only with its dance world but also with its literature, music and visual arts, while still keeping a finger on the international pulse.*
Harry Haythorne as Father Winter in Cinderella, Royal New Zealand Ballet, 1991. Photographer unknown
On his return to Australia in 1993 Haythorne was always in demand. He taught dance history at the Victorian College of the Arts and repertoire at the National Theatre Ballet School. He returned to the stage on several occasions with productions by the Australian Ballet, taking cameo roles in Stanton Welch’s Cinderella, Graeme Murphy’s Nutcracker and Swan Lake, Ronald Hynd’s Merry Widow, and the joint Australian Ballet/Sydney Dance company production of Murphy’s Tivoli.
Many will remember clearly his role in Tivoli where he was cast as an old vaudeville trouper and, at the age of 75, reprised his tap dancing/roller-skating/skipping routine from the 1940s. For his performances in this role he received a 2001 Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer. I also especially enjoyed his performance as the Marquis in Act I of Murphy’s Swan Lake. His role required him to assemble guests at the wedding into various groups and to photograph them using an old camera on a tripod. Much of this action took place upstage outside of the main activities. But Haythorne made the role his own and his interactions with the guests, including the children who were part of the crowd, were always fascinating and he never paused to stand and watch what was happening downstage.
But perhaps my fondest memory is of sitting in his Melbourne flat after recording an interview with Robin Haig, who was staying with him at the time. Harry got out a bottle of wine and some huge goblets that looked like they could have been a prop from Swan Lake. After a glass or two and much talk and laughter I realised that my plane home to Canberra had already departed. Consternation! Several hurried phone calls later a taxi arrived. I was hustled into the taxi, we sped down the freeway and I made the next plane.
Harry Haythorne: born Adelaide, 7 October 1926; died Melbourne, 24 November 2014
* Harry Haythorne quoted in Jennifer Shennan and Anne Rowse, The Royal New Zealand Ballet at Sixty (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2013), p. 86
Michelle Potter, 25 November 2014
Featured image: Harry Haythorne, c. 2000. Photographer unknown
UPDATE: See Jennifer Shennan’s tribute to Harry Haythorne at this link.
Last Saturday, 22 November 2014, I had the pleasure of seeing Gillian Murphy, whose dancing I have admired for some time now, guesting with the Australian Ballet in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère. My comments for DanceTabs are at this link. For other posts on Gillian Murphy follow this link.
The annual Australian Dance Awards were announced in Sydney last night in a ceremony at the Sydney Opera House hosted by Frances Rings and Kip Gamblin. My report for The Canberra Times necessarily (and happily) focused on links to dance in the ACT. But congratulations to all.
Victoria Tennant is the elder daughter of Cecil Tennant and Irina Baronova, the latter so well-known in Australia where she first charmed audiences with her dancing in 1938 with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, and where she also spent her last years in a beautiful house at Byron Bay, New South Wales. Victoria Tennant, of course, knew Baronova in quite a different role from her legion of Australian fans: ‘Our mother was devoted to us,’ she writes, ‘and not exactly like anyone else’s mum. No one else’s mum did pirouettes in the butcher’s.’ This observation perhaps encapsulates the tenor of this book: it is a very intimate memento built around a personal collection of letters, photographs and other archival materials.
What is especially attractive about this book is its extensive use of photographs, which have been drawn largely from Baronova’s own collection. Many have never been published previously. Some are glamorous shots from Baronova’s Hollywood years. Others are informal shots of family and friends. Yet others are lesser known shots and early images from ballets in which Baronova starred.
Images from Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo by Victoria Tennant: clockwise from top left, Baronova in the movie Florian, 1940; driving with friends from San Diego to Los Angeles, 1936; in costume for Le Spectre de la rose, 1932; in costume for Thamar, 1935.
The book also has a special quality because much of the text consists of quotes from letters, an oral history made for the New York Public Library’s Dance Division, and recorded conversations made by Baronova at various times, although, unfortunately, it is not always clear which source is being used. But the informal voice of Baronova is strong. Anyone who met her, however briefly, or saw her speak in public, or teach or coach, will recognise that the words are hers and will be charmed all over again. These sections are differentiated from the linking text, written by Tennant, by the use of a differently coloured font.
There are some beautifully insightful moments when Baronova talks about working with various choreographers in different ballets. I was especially taken by her comments on Les Sylphides.
Nobody realizes that in Les Sylphides the whole thing is a dialogue between the Sylphides and the invisible creatures of the forest. It’s a whispering talk. All the gestures are listening, questioning, whispering back. It’s a conversation, and the Sylphides turn in the direction of the voice they hear and run to it. If you don’t know that, there are no reasons for doing anything, it’s just empty and boring. The whole ballet should be acting and reacting. To do it any other way is not fair to Fokine.
The chapter on Baronova’s time in Australia, 1938–1939, is short. But much has been written now about that time in Australia’s ballet history (although the last word has not yet been said I am sure) and the book is balanced in its coverage of the many strands of Baronova’s life. From a reference point of view it is good to have a list of Baronova’s repertoire from 1931 to 1946, although it is a shame that her film roles are not included as well.
Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo has been beautifully designed and produced and, with its strong focus on imagery, makes a wonderful companion to Baronova’s autobiography.
Victoria Tennant, Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2014) Hardback, 244 pp. ISBN 978 0 226 16716 9 RRP USD55.00/£38.50.
This month’s diary is something of a celebration of three of Australia’s senior artists: Eileen Kramer (Cramer), former Bodenwieser dancer; Dame Margaret Scott, founding director of the Australian Ballet School; and Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, founder of Australian Dance Theatre. Each has been in the news in different ways recently. I have arranged these mini posts, which are largely in the form of links, according to descending order of age of those three dancers, beginning with Eileen Kramer, who will very shortly celebrate her 100th birthday.
Eileen Kramer
(left) Eileen Kramer in Gertrud Bodenwieser’s Indian Love Song, 1952. Photo Noel Rubie; (right) in Sydney in 2013 celebrating her 99th birthday
Early in October I received an unexpected email from a producer for Sydney not-for-profit radio station FBi Radio. The message was to let me know that Eileen Kramer, whom I had interviewed for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program in 2003, was appearing on an FBi Radio program called Out of the Box. She was to appear on the program with singer/songwriter Lacey Cole who had made a music video in which he sang his composition, Nephilim’s Lament, accompanied by Kramer dancing on a rocky promontory above Clovelly beach in Sydney. Here is a link to the radio interview, which was conducted by Ash Berdebes, and a link to the five minute video. [Update August 2016: the link to the radio interview is no longer available]
Dame Maggie Scott: A Life in Dance
Maggie Scott (right) and Sally Gilmour unpacking Ballet Rambert costumes, Melbourne 1947. Image from Dame Maggie Scott: a life in dance
I have updated the post onmy biography of Maggie Scott with links to recent media stories in which the book is discussed. Here is a link to the updated page.
Elizabeth Dalman
Elizabeth Dalman in From Sapling to Silver, 2011
It is a pleasure to be able to report that Elizabeth Cameron Dalman has been short-listed as a finalist for the ACT Senior Australian of the Year (2015). It is rare for a someone working in the dance area to be nominated in awards of this nature so congratulations to Elizabeth for once again putting dance at the forefront of public life. Dalman is one of four finalists in this category and the ACT Senior Australian of the Year will be announced on 3 November.
Press for October 2014 [Online links to press articles in The Canberra Times prior to 2015 are no longer available]
‘Wayward daughter delights.’ Preview of West Australian Ballet’s La fille mal gardée. The Canberra Times, Panorama, 4 October 2014, p. 15.
‘A Dame called Maggie.’ The Canberra Times, Panorama, 25 October 2014, pp. 10–11.
25 October 2014, Théâtre de la ville, Paris, Festival d’automne
Lucinda Childs made her hour-long work Dance, performed to music by Philip Glass, in 1979. The work was revived in 2009 and a filmed version from 1979, shot by visual artist Sol LeWitt as his part in the 1979 collaboration, was digitally remastered and used as an accompanying component in the revival. I didn’t manage to catch Dance in Australia when it was shown at the Festival of Perth in 2012, but the revival is currently touring in the northern hemisphere and I was lucky enough to see it recently at the Festival d’automne.
The title, as notes for the production tell us, was inspired by Merce Cunningham’s statement that dance is expressive only of itself, and by Gertrude Stein’s remark that ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’. Dance is indeed ‘about’ dance. There is no narrative and the work is most commonly regarded as an iconic piece of late minimalist art. But behind the facade of minimalism is a structural and visual complexity.
The work consists of three separate sections each about the same length—twenty minutes. In the opening section, the dancers—eleven in the company I saw—move across the stage from left to right, mostly working in pairs, with their dancing pushed along comet-like by the Glass score. At first they seem to be repeating the same movements—small jetés (grands jetés style but done sideways); small turns; and off-centre, tilted movements—but gradually it becomes clear there are many small variations and changes of tempo, punctuated by moments of stillness, or moments when the stage is briefly empty. The footage, projected onto a scrim, follows the dancers’ real-time movements, giving two views of the choreography. At times the footage seems to be super-imposed onto the dancers. Sometimes still shots from the film appear. Sometimes single figures are there. Sometimes the projections are above the dancers, as if the stage space is a two-storeyed structure. Sometimes the screen is split.
This technique, finely integrated with the performance, produces some interesting results, not only because of the visual complexity it produces, but because it shows the different styles of the dancers of 1979 and those of today. While the dancers on film appeared to be much more relaxed and loose limbed, I admired the precision of the present company, especially in the arms and carriage of the upper body. Their dancing seemed to me to be much more aligned with the mathematical, or highly ordered qualities of Childs’ choreography.
The central section, a solo originally danced by Childs, begins with a larger than life-sized image of Childs, almost pushing itself into our space. At first it seems like a still from the footage, but then Childs blinks! After a while the image disappears and the solo in real-time begins, with choreography more focused on ‘every day style’ movements—casual walking and swinging of the arms.
In the final section the dancers work in fours and the floor patterns they create are square, or take on the form of a parallelogram, in contrast to the horizontal lines of the first section. The work comes to a climax superbly, with a quartet of dancers demonstrating the strength of the company’s technique—those fouettés sautés with arms whipping into stretched second position were beautifully executed. Then in a surprise move, which I probably should have expected, the work came to an abrupt end.
I was curious that the film showed Dance being performed on some kind of a floor cloth marked out in squares, large and small. Some had dark borders, others had lighter ones. It was like one of those puzzles that asks, ‘How many squares can you see in this drawing’? I assume this was Sol Le Witt’s work but I can’t be sure. I wondered if the original production was performed on this squared design, or whether it was created just for the film. But all in all Dance was a totally fascinating collaborative work full of intricacies, and splendidly performed.
18 October 2014 (evening), Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
The prospect of four works by Frederick Ashton on the one program is something that fills those not brought up in an Ashton environment with anticipation. Of the four works on the Royal Ballet’s recent program, Scènes de Ballet, Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan, Symphonic Variations and A Month in the Country, I had never seen Five Brahms Waltzes and had seen the others on only one previous occasion each.
Symphonic Variations, led by Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov supported by Yasmine Naghdi and James Hay and Yuhui Choe and Tristan Dyer, perhaps moved me most. What clarity and fluidity those six dancers brought to the work. It was a breathtaking performance where everyone was a star, although perhaps it was Muntagirov, with his elegant bearing and his exceptional technical accomplishments, who attracted my attention most. But the ballet as a whole was beautifully danced to an elegant rendition by pianist Paul Stobart of Cesar Franck’s SymphonicVariations. And I had forgotten how fresh and entrancing Sophie Fedorovitch’s decor is—a spring green, box-like space with fine black lines weaving a flowing pattern across the backdrop and flats. It was a sensational twenty minutes of unstoppable beauty of movement. No in depth analysis can ever do it justice.
Five Brahms Waltzes was danced by Helen Crawford, replacing an injured Lauren Cuthbertson. The sense of gravity and weight in her dancing in the first and second waltzes contrasted nicely with her performance of the third waltz in which she manipulated a soaring rectangle of silk. Equally impressive was the contrast between a somewhat fierce fourth waltz and the gentle fifth with its rose petals falling liberally from her arms. I loved too the contrast between those light skips à la Isadora and the lower, almost crouching poses with fists clenched that appeared every so often. It was a finely thought through performance.
Scènes de ballet, which opened the program, was distinguished by the presence of Sarah Lamb as the ballerina. The quality of her dancing was especially noticeable in her main solo with its loosely swinging wrists and arms and lyrical movement of the whole body. But this ballet really needs to have every performer dancing with exactness. I missed straight lines, equal spacing and sameness in height of legs. The geometry of the work falls apart without such precision. And it was a disappointment to see Steven McRae, who partnered Lamb, begin with such promise—those sharp turns of the head and the pride with which he held his upper body were mesmerising—only to falter often as the work progressed.
The program closed with A Month in the Country and I found myself swept along by a strong performance from Zenaida Yanowsky as Natalia Petrovna and by Ashton’s ability to define characters through movement. The young, the old, different levels of society, everything was there in the choreography.
It was a real pleasure to see four quite different Ashton works brought together in one program but it was curious to see how those little runs on pointe kept appearing over and over. I was almost waiting for the next one by the time we reached A Month in the Country.
I am pleased to note that my biography of Dame Margaret Scott, Dame Maggie Scott: a life in dance, is now available from Australian book shops and from the publisher, Text Publishing, Melbourne. It is also available as an e-book from the usual suppliers. Further details and a link to e-distributors are available on the Text page.
Many thanks to all those who have supported me in this venture.
Michelle Potter, 22 October 2014
THE LAUNCH: Australian Ballet studios, 10 November 2014
Above: (l–r) David McAllister, Maggie Scott and Graeme Murphy speaking at the launch of Dame Maggie Scott: a life in dance. Below: Book signing at the launch
Read another account of the launch (and opinions on other matters) on Shane Wombat’s post of 12 November 2014. The lady in the wheelchair in Mr (or is it Ms?) Wombat’s book signing photograph is Lucy Henty, Maggie’s much admired secretary and bursar in the early days of the Australian Ballet School.
MEDIA: [Update October 2018: most audio links are no longer available]
Listen to an interview with Maggie Scott recorded by Jon Faine on his Conversation Hour for Radio 774 ABC Melbourne at this link [Link no longer available]. Maggie’s voice begins at 23:22 mins. This is a particularly interesting interview for its engagement not just between Maggie and Jon Faine, but also between Maggie and Faine’s co-host, oncologist Dr Ranjana Srivastava, and his other guest on the program, former President of the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia, Jim Beggs.
Listen to an interview with Maggie Scott recorded by Philip Adams for ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live at this link.
For those who read French, listen to an interview with Penny Hueston, Senior Editor, Text Publishing, for SBS Radio at this link. [Link no longer available]
Read the mention of the launch of the book by David McAllister at this link. [Link no longer available]
The Australian Women’s Weekly, December issue, suggests the book would make an ideal Christmas present.
REVIEWS and COMMENTS
‘Impeccably researched … a fascinating biography of a major luminary.’ Sydney Arts Guide, 29 November 2014.
‘A fascinating, multi-faceted read, not the least for [a] great insight into Australia during the 1940s.’ The Examiner (Launceston), 13 December 2014.
‘…a fitting tribute to an outstanding woman of influence.’ The culture concept, 19 December 2014.
‘…[among] the best memoirs of 2014 … gorgeous archival photography.’ The New Daily, 23 December 2014.
‘There are peaks and troughs to the Life, with Michelle Potter truly excelling in the political lobbying involved in the setting up of the Australian Ballet…’ Limelight, February 2015.
‘… a most welcome and important record of a remarkable woman … a substantial book, and a valuable addition to our dance history.’ Dance Australia, February/March 2015.
18 October 2014 (matinee), Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London
None of the works on Birmingham Royal Ballet’s triple bill program, Shadows of War, focuses on war itself. Rather the focus is on the effects of war on humanity. Of the three works, I have to admit that I was especially interested in Robert Helpmann’s Miracle in the Gorbals, first performed in London in 1944. Archival photos from the National Library of Australia’s various collections relating to Helpmann have always aroused my interest. It was a ballet with a name that I really didn’t understand. Well Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production turned out to be a fascinating restaging of the original, with choreography by Gillian Lynne, ‘after Helpmann’. Lynne appeared in the original production and remained a close friend of Helpmann throughout his life.
Robert Helpmann as the Stranger in Miracle in the Gorbals, Sadler’s Wells Ballet, 1944. National Library of Australia
There are aspects of this restaging that look dated, which is hardly surprising given that the work is 70 years old. The obvious themes of the evils of prostitution and power of Christianity (or religion), the latter shown via the return to earth of a Christ figure (the Stranger, played originally by Helpmann), seem a somewhat melodramatic way of developing the universal themes of love, betrayal, forgiveness and so forth.
But the strength of the production lies in the strength of the collaborative elements of the original. Edward Burra’s front cloth is a powerful opening image. A huge ship’s prow appears to jut out into the auditorium. It represents the shipyards along the river Clyde in Glasgow where the story is set in slum tenements, the Gorbals. The image is instantly arresting, as is the commissioned score by Arthur Bliss, which reflects so clearly the changing moods and events of the story.
To write down, or explain the narrative is complex but, in fact, the story, in which a mysterious stranger brings a woman back from the dead and reforms a prostitute but is eventually killed by the town’s jealous minister, is instantly understandable as we watch events unfold on stage. And here the collaborative nature of the original comes to the fore again. The libretto was written by Michael Benthall and focuses strongly on developing characters without going into extraneous detail. When Arnold Haskell saw Miracle in 1944 he wrote: ‘With rare skill [Benthall] avoided the pitfalls of novelising his story. Everything that he put down could be made clear in balletic action and was discussed in detail with Helpmann.’ And so it was with the Lynne restaging.
The balletic action is very much in the mode of dance-drama rather than ballet per se. In fact the action was sometimes quite static, often relying on group poses or dramatic stillness. Every dancer gave a powerful performance. Apart from the leading players, Elisha Willis as the Prostitute, César Morales as the Stranger, Iain Mackay as the Minister, and Delia Mathews as the Suicide, standouts for me were Michael O’Hare as the Beggar and three Old Women played by Ruth Brill, Jade Heusen and Marion Tait.
Kenneth MacMillan’s La fin du jour opened the program. This work, which dates to 1979, is danced to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, and examines the lifestyle of a certain class of people in the inter-war years. It left me a little cold, although I enjoyed the second act, the adagio. Here MacMillan’s skill at using stillness as a choreographic tool was clearly evident as we watched the dancing of two women, each partnered by five men in different combinations with none leaving the stage throughout the scene.
The triple bill closed with David Bintley’s Flowers of the forest. It was a joyous series of dances in the Scottish mode. Bouquets to the gentleman who executed double tours en l’air ending in a full plié in 5th position. Wonderful.
