Anthropology Archive

The Reservedness of the English Ballet Style

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In the essay 'Notes on the English Character', E.M. Forster (1996[1926]: 13) reflects on the incompleteness of national characters, especially the English character:

But the English character is incomplete in a way that is particularly annoying to the foreign observer. It has a bad surface - self-complacent, unsympathetic, and reserved.

Perhaps the English need foreigners to release them. This seems at least to have been one explanation to the legendary partnership between Russian Rudolf Nureyev and English Margot Fonteyn. Their extraordinary rapport on stage created expressive yet exquisite dancing, which would in fact not have come about unless there had been a personal and a professional exchange going on. Neither of them ever danced with anyone else in the way that they danced with each other. Still, the national contrast of their dancing was important aesthetically.

This ties in with the notion of national ballet styles. According to this view the English dancers are unanimously distinguished for dancing 'magnificently, but slightly reserved' by non-English ballet people in Stockholm, New York and Frankfurt, the other places in this multi-locale study. English choreographer Ashley Page described the English ballet style as 'more reserved' than the 'powerful' Russian style, while the Russian dancer Irek Mukhamedov who worked with the Royal Ballet during my field study, found the English style 'all clean, completely closed, like squeezed orange juice' !

Darcey Bussell, prima ballerina at the Royal Ballet, told me that in comparison with the American speed and especially the 'quick footwork', the English style was characterized by 'a more contained feeling, but I think we're getting stronger and more confident'. Other Royal Ballet dancers talked about their style as 'very precise and controlled' but also 'refined' and 'more fragile, more detailed' (than the Russian). A Finnish dancer who had a Russian training but was in the process of learning the English style, since she had recently been accepted into the Royal Ballet, was thinking about ballet styles and said:

It comes out in the culture and the history. The Russian style is more over the top, the English more conservative. If you can imagine English people compared to Russian: the English are very simple, reserved but very aristocratic. You have to look like you're very calm. The Russian style is more temperamental, more free in a way.

So 'reserved' comes back frequently both in Forster's rendering of the English character and in the discourse (and practice, if I may add that from my observations) about national ballet styles in the transnational ballet world, also by English dancers about themselves. Most of the time, however, the 'reserved' epithet, or something similar, is combined with a respectful reference to a perceived grandeur of the English style such as 'magnificent' or 'aristocratic'. The renowned New York critic Edwin Denby (1986: 467), for instance, described the Royal Ballet in the 1950s as 'discreetly majestic'. But Judith Mackrell (1997: 56), dance critic and correspondent during the 1990s in London, has a somewhat different emphasis when she talks about the English style. Although she too relates to 'the native temperament of the dancers' she sees the English style as 'detailed, lyrical and neat' , not reserved or grand. Mackrell attributes the tendency of English dancers to move in a small way to the fact that - the English live on an island! She does add, however, that the English style was first worked out on small stages in the 1920 and 1930s, which is a less entertaining but probably more credible explanation for the comparatively small movements of English dancers.

I have not said yet that the basic steps in classical ballet are the same everywhere, and that they have French names. There are, however, only five national ballet styles, but obviously many more nations, which means that the national styles spread from centres to peripheries often within political domains such as the Commonwealth. Apart from the British and the Russian styles, there are the French, the Danish and the American national styles. (There is also an Italian style which is not connected to the idea of nationalism, possibly because Italy never really has been a nation.) The national styles are on the whole identified unanimously and are complementary from different vantage points in the ballet world. The national ballet styles have all evolved out of the work of prominent choreographers and ballet entrepreneurs who have had resources to build ballet schools. Since the ballet world has always been transnational, there are influences between the ballet styles such as a Russian line in the British style, which the New York Times critic

Anna Kisselgoff (1983) brings up in an article where she objects to the connection between ballet styles and national personalities, defining them all as stereotypes. Kisselgoff suggests that ballet styles have mostly been fashioned by individual choreographers who tend to relate to the national setting they happen to work in, whether they are natives or not. In an interview, Kisselgoff talked about the preference of the British audience for story-telling ballets rather than abstract ballets which, on the other hand, work very well in America. In the article Kisselgoff (ibid.) writes about another Russian heritage of the Royal Ballet, the one originating in Sergei Diaghilev's modern company, the Ballets Russes. One of the dancers of that company was Ninette de Valois who went on to set up the Royal Ballet. It is interesting to note in this context that Ninette de Valois (who died in 2001) was not English. The founder and Grande Dame of the Royal Ballet, this company which thrives on an exclusive and sometimes arrogant Englishness, was in fact Irish! Or Anglo-Irish, to be precise. She was born Edris Stannus, the first dance she learnt was an Irish jig, and she kept her fondness of Ireland (de Valois 1959). It is common that ballet people change their names, either to an Anglicized form when they move to England or the United States, usually from Russia. But also many English dancers who work in England take on what is considered a more marketable or prestigious name in the ballet world.

Not only the form of ballet, the quality of the execution, is thought of in national terms; so also are the contents, the stories. There are national themes in many ballets, especially in modern and contemporary productions, often drawing on mythology, folk legends or literary work from the country of the company and/or the choreographer. These productions are especially important on transnational tours, as signature pieces, in order to acquire or cultivate a reputation.

Anna Kisselgoff's (1983) dismissal of national ballet styles as stereotypes is unique in the ballet world. Her article appeared in a collection which very few dancers seem to have read. The assumption that dancers express their national character or temperament when they dance is firmly grounded among dancers, choreographers, coaches, agents and other critics. Although top dancers and ballet companies are able to market themselves transnationally by way of the national ballet styles, with increased transnational mobility - such as tours, visits, competitions, galas and stays abroad to train or work with another company for a while -comes a contradictory awareness that ballet styles are not dependent on passports, but on training systems. Good dancers can learn to change styles, even switch back and forth between different national ballet styles, and between ballet styles and so-called choreographic styles, meaning those styles that contemporary choreographers such as Siobhan Davis and Matthew Bourne in Britain develop. Young dancers at the Royal Ballet talked about the growing mixture of styles, either approvingly as 'crossover' or disapprovingly as 'mish-mash' .9