Full speed ahead into a narrative-free future... Marianela Nunez in DGV (Danse a Grande Vitesse) at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Here's another thought on the significance of the Royal Ballet's White Stripes triple bill. Coming just three weeks before Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake opens for its Christmas run at Sadler's Wells, its success has produced a delicious reversal of box office wisdom. While audiences at the Opera House have been fighting over tickets for a programme of "difficult" abstract dance, "modern dance" choreographer Bourne is about to bring in the crowds with a full-length narrative work. Could this be a sign that the culture of dance is shifting? And in particular could it signify that the full-length story ballet is finally loosening its tentacular grip on British dance?
Since the second world war, audience demand for the two- or three-act narrative ballet has grown. To the special frustration of companies who tour widely outside London - English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet - the only consistent formula that moves tickets is a popular "literary" title coupled with the promise of period frocks. Wuthering Heights, Far From the Madding Crowd, Canterbury Tales, The Three Musketeers - there is barely a classic from the bookshelves that hasn't been put on pointe.
There are real dangers for dance in this trend. Firstly, that the quality of the choreography takes second place to the requirement of getting crowd pleasing costumes and characters onto the stage. Second, that the ballet fails to tell the story as clearly or as vividly as it first appeared in book form. And third, that dance comes across as a dumb, parasitic form of playacting.
Of course a huge amount of craft goes into the making of most of the full-length story ballets which flood the market. Distilling a plot down to a few significant scenes, creating character out of a few gestures are rare skills, and when they are brilliantly executed the results are profoundly satisfying. Ashton's La Fille mal gardee, MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet and many of the 19th century classics are works that merit greatness both as dance and as storytelling. So, too, does Bourne's Swan Lake - because, like all the best story ballets, it was created because the choreographer had a fabulous score to work with, and a vision he urgently wanted to stage.
But too few of the story ballets we see today can boast either of these inspirations, which is why so many look as if they have been churned out on a production line. Isn't it time for a concerted push to wean audiences off their dependency on narrative and fancy dress, and on to a more grown-up diet of pure dance? Isn't it time for choreographers, whose natural bent is towards storytelling, to be able to catch their collective breath, and figure out what stories are really theirs to tell?
