The mere existence of this programme is a wonder. Several years ago, I wrote about Kenneth MacMillan’s early works for my MA dissertation, arguing that Laiderette and House of Birds contained expressionist elements that began a thematic golden thread, stretching through much of his subsequent repertoire. It was an academic point since these works had not been seen for decades and were presumed “lost”.
Step forward, Viviana Durante, who spent many years at The Royal Ballet, dancing in at least a dozen MacMillan ballets, including the creation of key roles in Winter Dreams and his last work, The Judas Tree. Durante has now formed a pop-up company, here comprising leading dancers from The Royal Ballet, Ballet Black and Scottish Ballet, with her first venture being the revival of Laiderette (MacMillan’s third work), a pas de deux from Danses Concertantes (his fourth work) and an excerpt from House of Birds (number 5). So, in one evening, three of MacMillan’s first five works were once more wholly, or partially, revealed.
The ballets were performed in the reverse order of their original creation, beginning with a fifteen-minute extract from House of Birds, which premiered at Sadler’s Wells on the 26th May 1955. It was a cast-off idea – originally considered by MacMillan’s close friend, John Cranko –to make a ballet on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale (Jorinda and Joringel) about a boy and girl who fall foul of a witch with a predeliction for turning children into caged birds. MacMillan altered this Hansel and Gretel allusion, to a pair of young lovers, and here the roles originally danced by Maryon Lane and David Poole were revived by Lauren Cuthbertson (beguiling in a beautiful patterned white tutu, designed by Royal Ballet wardrobe assistants, Rossella D’Agostino and Tjasha Stroud) and Thiago Soares. There is just enough of their dancing to show that, even this early in his career, MacMillan was capable of creating romantic, lyrical pas de deux, with shades of movement that, a decade later, would capture the greatest love story of them all in his seminal production of Romeo and Juliet.
The predatory Bird Woman was portrayed by Sayaka Ichikawa, essaying the tremulous, threatening movements of birds stalking the ground, before the man wrecks her plans to enchant his beloved, thereby setting the scene for their poetic duet of reconciliation. House of Birds was filmed for transmission by the BBC on the 16th September 1956 and one senses that there is enough both on film and in old notations to completely restore this important ballet.
The duet from Danses Concertantes was little more than a brief filler, to refresh the palette and change the mood, between the two larger-scale pieces. It has personal relevance to Durante because it was the one work of this early MacMillan trio that she had danced, herself. First performed on the 18th January 1955, at Sadler’s Wells, MacMillan’s first commissioned work received such critical acclaim that it determined his retirement from dancing (at 26) to concentrate solely on choreography.