ALL BAD BOYS DESERVE A FAVOUR

CONFIDENCE and maturity ooze from every pore of William Tuckett, RoyalBallet soloist, choreographer and onetime "Bad Boy of British Ballet".

Watching him rehearse his latest work for the company's season at Sadler's Wells, you can understand why. The ballet is a powerfully dramatic, tightly constructed and sexually loaded version of Henry James's thriller, The Turn of the Screw. Set to music by Andrzej Panufnik, the work has the flair of a man with a confident grasp of his craft.

Tuckett's leading female is Zenaida Yanowsky, one of ballet's most beautiful women and a dancer of extraordinary lyrical and expressive gifts.

She is also Tuckett's girlfriend of three years.

Following the critical and public success of his short and unpronounceable work, Puirt-A-Beul last October, there is a sudden buzz about Tuckett's name.

Perhaps, at last, we have a homegrown choreographer to follow in the steps of Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan and David Bintley.

"It's ironic you should say that," he comments wryly, "until I read the good reviews for Puirt-A-Beul I was about to throw in the towel. I thought it was time to find something completely different to do with my life." Ever since his first venture, Between the Sheets and I Am a Kenwood Mixer for Dance Umbrella, Tuckett, 30, has received nothing but a vitriolic Press.

He began his choreographic career in 1986 when still at the Royal Ballet School. His first work for the company in Birmingham, Those Unheard, was in 1989, followed a year later by Enclosure at Covent Garden. "Three years ago," he explains, "I did a piece called The Magpie's Tower for the company's Dance Bites regional tour. It received the worst reviews I have ever read for anything. The papers called it execrable, he must be stopped, this scandalous waste of taxpayers' money.

You could hear the writer going into a rant. You're talking about millions of people who read these papers and come to see your work with a negative slant, thanks to the reviews. And the critics today are so personal - why don't they review the work instead of slagging me off?

"When I read those reviews, I began to apply for grants to retrain for anything: minicab-driver, mounted policeman. I just knew I had to get out."

LUCKILY, while Tuckett was casting around for another role in life, the Royal's director, Anthony Dowell, asked him to create two more works for the next Dance Bites tour. "I thought, well, why not? It doesn't matter if they get panned, I'm on the way out anyway." The result was Puirt-A-Beul.

"Anthony," says Tuckett, "who has saved my life on more than one occasion, then offered me the chance do more work." The first outcome is The Turn of the Screw, which will be fol- lowed by an adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible when the company returns to the Opera House in December.

One strand of the plot that is unambiguous is Tuckett's peace of mind. "My confidence is building again and I know more what it is I want to do. And I do like being in a steady relationship.

"But most of all I really feel committed to my life as a choreographer, not, thank goodness, as a minicab driver.

I love what I do. I like the idea of drawing people into an illusion of reality." Let's hope Tuckett's next crop of reviews don't shatter his illusions all over again.

* The Turn of the Screw opens tonight at Sadler's Wells. Bookings, 0171 863 8000

Copyright 1999
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