No one ever thought that ballet could be as popular as football. But did anyone imagine that things could get so grim? In November 1996, the Midland Bank withdrew its 25-year support for Covent Garden and Birmingham Royal Ballet on the grounds that ballet had become too old-fashioned and narrow in its appeal. Today, ballet's image is of a middle brow, middle class, mostly female entertainment.
It began as an art for the elite. When Louis XIV danced the role of Apollo and founded the first aca-demy of dance, he was glorifying himself-the Sun King-and his kingdom. Successive Russian rulers did likewise when they imported French ballet masters to build Russia's Imperial Ballet Company. In the 20th century, ballet broadened its appeal yet retained its artistic integrity. New companies sprang up in Britain, Japan and the US, while the Soviet Russians exported ballet to eastern Europe, Cuba and China.
Now, however, the average Briton does not give a damn about ballet; increasingly the elite does not care about it either-opera is their culture. Ballet is becoming marginalised; and not for the first time. When Serge Diaghilev brought a Russian troupe to Paris in 1909 he caused a sensation, following 50 years in which ballet had been a frivolity for sexual gourmets. In Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Anna Pavlova drifted like an evanescent perfume, Vaslav Nijinsky hovered in the air; audiences rediscovered ballet as art.
The Ballet Russes soon settled permanently in the west and for 20 years produced some of the artistic landmarks of this century. It attracted an audience in its expensive seats that was certainly rich, smart and snobbish; but many others bought the cheaper seats.
Diaghilev's idea was to present a fusion of design, dance and music on stage. He commissioned Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring-the monumental apogee of 20th century music. Combined with Nijinsky's iconoclastic, turned-in movement, it famously provoked an uproar at its Paris premi?e in 1913. Diaghilev encouraged Bronislava Nijinska (Nijinsky's sister), who created Les Noces in 1923. Her terrifying avant-garde choreography was on a par with Stravinsky's choral score. Diaghilev's other choreographers included innovators such as Mikhail Fokine, L?ide Massine and George Balanchine. He commissioned composers such as Poulenc, Ravel, Prokofiev and Satie; and designers such as Picasso, Rouault and L? Bakst.
British ballet was born in the 1930s in the wake of the Ballets Russes. Two unusual women gave it life: Ninette de Valois started the Royal Ballet; Marie Rambert, the Ballet Rambert. They discovered and nurtured exceptional talents: the choreographers Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor; dancers such as Alicia Markova, Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann. The style was quieter, more English than the Ballets Russes, but it produced lively, often great work.
De Valois and Rambert also took the process of popularisation further, with extensive touring in Britain as part of the war effort. In 1946, when de Valois's company (then called Sadler's Wells Ballet) moved into the Royal Opera House, this was a recognition of its importance, endorsed by royal charter in 1956. The company became a world leader following its triumphant first New York season in 1949, when Margot Fonteyn danced The Sleeping Beauty, designed by Oliver Messel. Subsequent American tours were so lucrative that they helped to subsidise the Royal Opera. The cold war added to the glamour: Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov defected to the west and danced as guest artists.
During this period, ballet was intellectually respectable-as opera still is. It managed to be both popular and creatively stimulating. Newspapers appointed their first dance critics. In Britain and abroad, ballet was enriched by outstanding choreographers, from Massine to Kenneth MacMillan. In New York Balanchine moulded a new ballet language, affirming its traditional roots but breathing bold contemporary life into it. Thus the 20th century repertory of ballet is enormous, much bigger than opera's.
By the late 1970s, however, creativity was flagging. Where were the successors to Ashton and MacMillan who were going to keep ballet alive? Some people blame government stinginess in withholding subsidy to develop new talent and facilitate creative freedom. But the story is much more complicated; even in generously subsidised countries, good ballet choreographers are a near-extinct species. Check the list of the world's best ballet choreographers and you will find that most of them are dead-except for three or four, now all over 65. William Forsythe is the exception; and at 49, he is solicited for ballets by more companies than he can manage.
Younger choreographers seem to prefer contemporary dance with its unlimited, unrestrictive canvas. Consider Jonathan Burrows and Matthew Hawkins, who leapt over the Royal Ballet's constricting walls to become prominent in the contemporary world. The important talents in contemporary dance today are Pina Bausch, Mark Morris and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; and Jir?Kyli?and Christopher Bruce-fusion chore-ographers who blend ballet with contemporary techniques. Do young creators feel that tradi- tional ballet is outdated and irrelevant? Ballet is now in the embarrassing position of having to turn to contemporary dance-that newcomer, that upstart-for exciting pieces to dance.
Operating under ever tighter financial constraints, Britain's five ballet companies-the London and Birmingham Royal Ballets, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet Theatre and Scottish Ballet-increasingly pander to popular expectations. Rather than taking a long view and shaping public taste to a broader palette, companies opt for the same few familiar three-act ballets, the Swan Lakes and Romeo and Juliets. These sell tickets but still lose money because they are so expensive to mount.
The Royal Ballet, which should be providing a lead, instead communicates dullness and disarray. No one can deny its difficulties: it has to battle with insufficient subsidy (like everyone else) and with Covent Garden's bias towards opera. But the company also has itself to blame: another directorate might have found more imaginative ways round its problems, as have the Birmingham Royal and English National Ballets. Repertorial decisions made under Anthony Dowell and Anthony Russell-Roberts have often been misguided. They have lavished money on weak productions of the classics and caused box office death by putting novice choreographers on Britain's most exposed stage. They have overseen a decline in the company's performance standards. Darcey Bussell and Sylvie Guillem are the only names generating real glamour-a far cry from the galaxy of stars in previous decades.
This autumn, with its first on-the-road performances during the redevelopment at the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet tried to reach audiences deterred by Covent Garden's high prices and clubby atmosphere. It was a fiasco. The programming at the Labatt's Apollo in Hammersmith was unadventurous and audience-friendly; unfortunately, the prices were not. Faced with rows of empty seats, the Royal Ballet slashed prices-resulting in a loss of ?725,000. Rich Londoners and tourists might be willing to pay high sums for the Covent Garden experience; but no one wanted to trek out to unlovely West London right by the Hammersmith flyover.
The Royal Ballet goes next to the Royal Festival Hall for its Christmas season. Having failed to attract the adult population, it is now lowering its sights to children, with programmes such as Peter and the Wolf and the travesty of Ashton's The Tales of Beatrix Potter.
The more art panders to commerce, the more it divests itself of its future, its creative lifeblood. I am pessimistic about the future of the Royal Ballet and dubious about the future of ballet in general. Unless its subsidy is substantially increased, the Royal Opera House will remain a temple to privilege. Unless the Royal Ballet moves its home, or radically reforms its control structure, it will remain a costly recreation for the conservative few.
Perhaps ballet has simply reached the end of its lifespan. It is also fighting a fading image in other countries-even in Russia, where it is still at the centre of cultural life. Maybe China, say, or Japan, will give ballet the surge it needs, and kick it into the 21st century. Otherwise it will become a museum art like kabuki, exhibiting ancient curiosities.
