Select Writings by Clive Barnes
Last year Valerie Taylor emerged from the corps de ballet to dance the Fairy of the Woodland Glades in The Sleeping Beauty. All six of the Fairy variations are among the most searching tests of classical dancing in the repertory…
“Miss Moorman”
1968
It was, if I remember rightly, Naunton Wayne, who used to sing a song in a pre-war London revue with the refrain: “If you move it’s rude when you’re in the nude, but if you’re standing still its art.” Rudeness and nudeness, to say nothing of art and movement, have become talking points in New York during the past few weeks…
Jerome Robins at 70 is a genius standing alone on the prickly eminence of his success. Even that success itself is now a symbol of American dance, for Jerome Robbins at 70 has not simply become the greatest living classic choreographer, he is almost more significantly the greatest American-born classic choreographer who has ever lived…
As I write, the Festival of Jerome Robbins’ Ballets, given by Robbins’s former company, New York City Ballet, at the New York State Theater, is just about midway through. It has been wonderful, unique, and eye-opening…
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It is the American Ballet Theatre Fiftieth Anniversary Gala at the Metropolitan Opera House, and the flickering shadows of the past are falling tall on the ground. Fifty years ̶ no great length of time for human institutions yet, in the special circumstances of dance, long enough to embrace four or five nearly distinct generations of dancers…
Anyone who is surprised by the news that the 1990 Lyon Biennale de la Danse (to be held September 13 through October 6 in Lyons, France) is to play host to seventeen major American dance companies, plus the additional odd recitalist, has just not been paying attention to the contemporary facts of dance history…
There will be time to think of the future later; now we should pause on the past and wonder about the achievement. And it is indeed something to wonder about-how a poor black kid from Texas swiftly emerged as an enormous power in international dance, the architect of a major American institution.
“A Lost Leader”
1997
I’m sure it was a great festival-the Stuttgart company has been remarkably loyal to Cranko’s memory and faithful to Cranko’s worth. In a short time he build a company up from virtually nothing, but luckily it has been a short time long remembered, and his ballets have been kept fresh in the repertory…
When dance started out on its theatrical journey, moving from church to court, from ritual to ceremonial, it became, apart from anything else, a fine excuse for dressing up...
“A Word - Or Two - For Design”
2008
Then the curtain went up on the final ballet ‘La Sonnambula’ and an odd thing happened. The audience broke into spontaneous applause. Why?