Why this new deal is rotten to the corps

IN 48 hours, the Royal Ballet may effectively cease to exist. By 10am on Thursday 29 October, the company that has achieved an international reputation for excellence in a brief 67 years, will face extinction. Its dancers will join the dole queue and in the West End there will be a sudden glut of beautiful part-time bar staff with long thin necks and bulging calves.

The company has been told that unless it agrees to the working conditions laid down by the new Royal Opera House board by close of business tomorrow night, it will be deemed as making itself redundant and after the statutory 12-weeks wait, dismissed.

Yesterday, in a last-ditch bid to salvage the careers to which they have been dedicated since childhood, a group of Royal Ballet dancers spoke out against their masters in spite of a management vow arbitrarily to sack anyone who speaks to the Press. To protect themselves, they have asked to remain anonymous. "The management wants to buy out our overtime, to scrap extra fees for filming and payments for infringement of hours," explains one corps de ballet dancer. "A couple of weeks ago they wanted to reduce their contribution to our pension fund, but they've dropped that one now." In return for giving up these entitlements, the dancers will receive a small increase in pay, which will bring the basic salary to GBP 18,000 - less than a temp typist. "With overtime, extra fees and other payments," points out a third-year corps de ballet member, "my annual salary has been between GBP 20,000 and GBP 23,000. In reality, I will drop up to GBP 5,000 a year." Even this is an underestimate of potential loss of earnings. With the probable effect of the proposed part-time contracts the dancer is expected to sign tomorrow, he will lose a lot more than that. "Our new contracts will run for 36 weeks only," explains another young dancer. "We have been made vague promises that one of the private sponsors will 'look after' us for 10 of the remaining weeks. And the management will try to find us work for the other six." Which, with hundreds of British dancers already out of work every year, appears at least unrealistic, at worst deeply misleading. Therefore, calculated on a basic GBP 18,000 for a 52-week year, 16 of which are not guaranteed, plus the extra payments that they will have to waive, the Royal Ballet's young dancers could lose up to GBP 10,500. The dancers will be expected to put in a minimum nine-hour day and work 14 consecutive weeks before qualifying for 48 hours off. This means working 66.5 hours per seven-day period, in spite of a European Commission directive, which became British law earlier this month, imposing a maximum 48-hour working week. And the 133-hour fortnight does not include performances. "There will be no free time during the 14-day period," says a company soloist, "and when we do a show, we'll work a 12-hour day. Dancers with young families will never see them - we are people with lives, too. We've been told that the ballet company will probably do Sunday performances in the new house, because we're cheaper to produce than the opera." THE classical ballet technique is one of the most rigorous and exhausting physical regimes devised by man. The 14-day stint, with a minimum of four performances a week, would be like asking rower Steve Redgrave to win Olympic gold every other day for a fortnight. "The injury rate is already almost unsustainable," comments a company coach. "The proposed savage workload will physically ruin quite a few dancers very quickly. We're not talking Morris dancing here." "Dancers the world over are known to be hard workers," says Bryony Brind, a former Royal Ballet principal and now Director of Dance of the Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick. "They'll put up with a lot because, contrary to popular belief, they really do love their work." "You would think the management would be grateful for the dancers' goodwill," comments a company member, "but this lot are not even aware of it. All they do is threaten to put on musicals in the new House instead of ballet if we do not sign on the dotted line by Wednesday." Already Tetsuya Jamakawa, one of the Royal Ballet's biggest draws, has returned to his native Japan, while popular stars like Viviana Durante and Irek Mukhamedov perform less and less. "Most of the top echelon, like Darcey Bussell and Johnny Cope have already received offers from abroad," says the dancer. "If the management don't try to understand the nature of a ballet company and nurture the excellence on stage instead of destroying it, they won't have a company left, anyway." "The dancers are completely demoralised," says one of the older company members. "We're sick of being bullied, sick of watching directors brought in on whacking salaries, then leaving after a few months with massive payoffs." Which is why the independence option is looking more and more appealing. "We are exploring the legal implications of refusing to sign the deal tomorrow," the older dancer explains, "and how it would affect our links with the Arts Council. If we were our own bosses, we could hire ourselves to the Opera House and the new Sadler's Wells Theatre, plus we're always being asked to go abroad - we could do that more often. We want to get the Royal Ballet out of the hands of accountants and give it back to the artists. Art, after all, is what we're about. We're not figures on a balance sheet to be exploited just to balance the books." When the dancers' complaints were put to the ROH, a spokeswoman said: "Negotiations between the Opera House and the dancers are still continuing. Therefore I cannot discuss any details of contracts."

Copyright 1998
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