Take your partners

LAST week Anthony Dowell, artistic director of the Royal Ballet, publicly confirmed his resignation, an event openly discussed among the dancers in the company for the past six months. Dowell, 56, has held the position since October 1966, and will leave the Royal Opera House in 2001. So who's brave enough to take it on? This is a spiky job, after all, a post which carries with it the reputation of British dance.

Two names are bandied about as front-runners: David BintIey, 41, Britain's most gifted ballet choreographer, at present director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and the charismatic Russian star Irek Mukhamedov, 39, who until a few months ago was a resident member of the company - and had been since he defected to London in 1990.

"I would bring to the Royal Ballet," says Mukhamedov, "my experience of a huge personal repertoire of international choreography, like Nureyev brought to the West, as well as all I have learned working with two great companies for nearly 20 years." Mukhamedov was made principal male dancer of the Bolshoi ballet in 1981 at the age of 21. With the Bolshoi he earned international acclaim not only for the acrobatic virtuosity of his technique, but for his dramatic power and magnetic intensity. Upon joining the Royal Ballet, Mukhamedov curbed his flamboyant style to cope with the choreographic subtleties of Ashton and MacMillan, forming a close working relationship with the latter, while adding to the range and depth of his interpretation. "My main objective," he says, "would be to restore the company's pride. The dancers are the most important thing in any company and they must keep in their souls a pride in what they are doing. That pride has gone at the Royal Ballet. The dancers must not be ashamed any more when they raise a toast to the company. "We need to start - from the first lesson at the junior school - to raise standards and develop the unique styles and traditions of the Royal Ballet. I would like to bring back former dancers to pass on their experience, as well as expect current principals to work with young dancers. I would like the dancers, and all the other workers in the organisation, to see me as a protecting wall they can hide behind, so that they can get on with being a team and producing good work." Mukhamedov performed with the Royal Ballet during its recent tour of Japan where former company star Tatsuya "Teddy" Kumakawa has formed his own company, persuading a clutch of RB male dancers to join him. According to company sources, the five defectors, principals William Trevitt and Stuart Cassidy and soloists Michael Nunn, Gary Avis and Matthew Dibble, took Mukhamedov out for a drink and told the surprised Russian that they would all come home if he took over from Dowell when the company returns to Covent Garden later this year. David Bintley, born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, is one of the most successful men in British theatre. A product of the Royal Ballet system, his irrepressible creative talent has produced more than 30 hugely popular works in Britain including Hobson's Choice, The Snow Queen, Still Life at the Penguin Cafe and, most recently, Nutcracker Sweeties and Edward II. They are filmed for television, win awards and fill theatres the length and breadth of the country. North America, Hong Kong, Europe and South Africa clamour for them. From 1986 to 1993, Bintley was resident choreographer at Covent Garden. In 1995 he was appointed head of Birmingham Royal Ballet. In 1988, the late Frederick Ashton, the Royal Ballet's founding choreographer, wrote to Bintley saying that he left the future of British ballet in his hands. Bintley still has the letter. "I want to make it quite clear at the outset," says Bintley emphatically, "that I don't want anyone thinking I'm chasing the job. I'm not - I've got a job here in Birmingham. I think Irek would be eminently suitable for the post, it needs someone who's saying what he's saying. But it's a huge, thankless task, like the England soccer team manager - if it works it's fantastic, if it doesn't, it's the end of you, it's more than rock bottom. "It seems fairly obvious that I could do the job, I've got the pedigree, for heaven's sake. And I'm used to the flak. But it's a big beast, and it's still growing. It's all a question of whether they want me, or whether they want me to do what they want. I could never fit into anybody else's ideas because I would never believe in what I was doing. If they want me they'll ask me, it's as simple as that, but I can't say at this moment whether I want them." Mukhamedov also feels that the Royal Ballet needs two men or women at the helm. "Perhaps David Bintley would be interested in working in tandem with me?" he suggests. "We come from different directions and we would spark ideas off each other. I am certain that the combined wealth of our experience would be a great benefit to the Royal Ballet." "It's a great idea," comments Bintley, "that two people as characterful and opinionated as Irek and myself could work together. I'm flattered that Irek thinks so highly of me that he thinks I should be in there with him. It's a great idea, but I don't think for a minute that it could work. It didn't work in the Seventies for John Field and Ken MacMillan and I don't think it could work now. However, if Irek gets the job and wants to invite me in, that could be a different thing." MEANWHILE, back at the Royal Ballet's headquarters in Talgarth Road, W14, the dancers are flexing more than their thigh muscles. Last Christmas, in the middle of the Opera House's two-year closure for renovation, strategies by a hard-nosed new management to bring changes in working conditions and swingeing pay cuts were fiercely resisted by a newly formed dancers' committee. "We are determined to have our voice in this debate too," said a campaigning dancer yesterday. "The appointment of an artistic director is vital to our futures. No longer can we risk having management decisions imposed on us like children. They must listen to our views as well as everyone else's." Among the faded, sagging sofas in the company green room at the top of the ballet school's oak staircase there is a growing feeling that Mukhamedov is the man to breathe new life into a moribund company - an opinion reflected on the fans' ballet website yesterday, where the voting page on the Royal Ballet directorship is accessed by 55 countries. Mukhamedov had 32.9 per cent of the vote, Bintley 25 per cent, Sylvie Guillem 9.2 per cent and the others, including Derek Deane, Wayne Eagling and Maina Gielgud, barely registered on the scale. For years the younger, radical Royal Ballet dancers have complained about the company's lack of leadership. What on earth would they say if both the main contenders land the top job?

Copyright 1999
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