Word: cranko
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...moment of intensive, moving theatricality-the visual and emotional high point of John Cranko's Traces, which was given its American première last week at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House by the magnificent Stuttgart Ballet. Traces is the portrayal of a woman who has escaped from totalitarian horrors but has yet to come to terms with those past agonies. Her present is visualized by some amiable bourgeois friends and a courtly but uncomprehending lover (Heinz Clauss...
Traces grandly illustrates one particular strength of Cranko's inventive -sometimes too inventive-choreography: his gift for narration and characterization. He may, in fact, be ballet's finest storyteller. Two other Cranko works, which had their U.S. premières last week-and which will be repeated later during the Stuttgart Company's six-week American tour-displayed, in varying degrees, his flair for abstract dance...
Mature Genius. Based on two sensuous scores by Scriabin, Poème was created for Fonteyn by Cranko, an admirer of hers since their days together at Britain's Royal Ballet. There is something basically appealing about a tribute from one artist to another, and the principal role would seem to be tailor-made for the mature genius of Dame Margot, now 52. She plays a turn-of-the-century operatic diva who meets and dazzles a younger man (Egon Madsen) at a cocktail party. Then, in a swirling dream sequence, she recalls the four great loves...
This conventional theme might serve for a Tennessee Williams playlet. It might even be turned into a decent ballet, but not as Cranko has tarted it up. Poème inconsistently wobbles between crude parody-guests at the party flounce offstage in a way that was clearly meant to be amusing-and lush sentimentalism. The four lithe male dancers who play the diva's lovers are coyly dressed in skintight body stockings and continually swirl enormous Art Nouveau capes about themselves like pretend matadors at a gay beach...
Dame Margot still conveys expressive wonders with her exquisite arms, but she clearly is out of step with the acrobatic Cranko style, and her miming of anguish and passion looks rather like a put-on. Poème, in short, is less a tribute to her glamour than an unintentionally cruel exploitation of her age and fading skills...