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Commentary The National Ballet Thirty Years On JAMES E. NEUFELD At twenty-five, the National Ballet of Canada seemed to have come into its own. Its special anniversary season was exciting, primarily because the company was functioning as a whole, with a remarkable degree of technical proficiency and a striking unanimity of spirit. Major productions of the classics were generally in good repair and the acquisition of a significant Ashton repertoire was just beginning. The company's silver anniversary appeared to herald the beginning of a silver age. That kind of excitement has proved difficult to sustain and the company approaches its thirtieth season this year with a little less exuberance and extroversion . Perhaps a somewhat chastened spirit is appropriate to the occasion. The company, after all, has suffered some real blows in the last five years. The most significant was probably the beating it suffered at the hands of the London critics during its Covent Garden debut in 1979. That appearance should have placed the ·international seal of approval on the mature company; instead, the critical response (as distinct from the popular one) suggested a premature entry into the big leagues by a company not yet secure enough to make the transition. The full justic~ of that evaluation could be debated only by someon-e who saw the London season, and I did not. But because the shock to the company's morale could be seen in performances on its return, the overall experience requires careful evaluation. The National, after all, is our own company , and its domestic reputation and performance matter far more in the long run than its international stature. Yet the company and its public have now passed the point where its mere existence is sufficient cause for wonder and rejoicing. The twenty-fifth anniversary was surely the last time to exult over the creation of the company ex nihi/o in the Canadian cultural wilderness. It is time now to talk about the nature of the company, its achievements and weaknesses, and the course by which it might fulfill its role in the Canadian cultural scene. Thirty is an age for careful stock-taking and for planning ahead. The question of the company's overall purpose and sense of direction makes the logical starting point for such evaluation. Though that purpose may change over the decades, it must remain clearly articulated if the company is to function as a national standard for dance and not just as the entrenched establishment. To justify its name and its heavy demand for public Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 16, No. 2 (Ete 1981 Summer) subsidy, the National must maintain a distinct identity, not just a place at the head of the line. That identity and sense of purpose seem to me to have become somewhat blurred over the past five or so years. Celia Franca brought with her a clear sense of purpose, inherited from Ninette de Valois and the newly triumphant British school of ballet: to maintain the classics of nineteenth-century ballet as the cornerstone of a performance tradition that would gradually develop a modern, classically-based component as well. It wasn't the only way to build a ballet company, but it was the one Franca knew and in England's Royal Ballet it had an eminently successful prototype. It meant, first of all, training a company that could dance Giselle, Swan Lake, Coppelia, La Sy/phide, Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty and make of them the basic vocabulary for its own and its audience's choreographic expectations . Thereafter, it meant adding and creating twentieth -century works that spoke the same language, albeit with a different accent; it meant creating new dance with a constant awareness of the traditions of the old. Franca's artistic policy tied our national company irrevocably to the classical tradition in dance, reaching back through England's Royal Ballet, through Diaghilev's Ballets Russes to the court of imperial Russia and the traditions of the Mariinsky Theatre. Whether today's audience realizes it or not, when Swan Lake is danced in Toronto or Vancouver, the choreographic standards invoked come from turn-of-thecentury St. Petersburg. This tie with the past and...

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