The media star of the Royal
Ballet, Darcey more than deserves her place at the top. A classical
princess in the very best sense of the word, she shines in both Petipa and
Ashton - catch her as Nikiya in La Bayadere and as Ashton's radiant
Cinderella.
She is tall by ballerina standards (5'8") and this has
caused problems with finding a partner for her (on pointe she is well over
6 foot). However, over the past year and a half she has developed a strong partnership with
guest artist Igor Zelensky, which is still shaky in places, but luminous
elsewhere. Catch them as Romeo and Juliet - Darcey is one of the first
tall ballerinas to dance the MacMillan version and their balcony scene is
wonderfully passionate.
She danced Nikiya at the Kirov in St Petersburg in February 1998 at the
request of Zelensky, and the pair had to take nine curtain calls after
their first night! She guests worldwide, and won over the notoriously
finicky New York City Ballet audience in Balanchine performances. She
seems capable of embracing nearly all ballet styles and succeeding.
Darcey has an image as the "nice" girl of the Royal Ballet and many
people have difficulty with her performances in seamier roles. She and
Zelensky danced Manon together for the first time in the summer and were
not received with universal approval. That said, her dramatic abilities
are strengthening and future performances should be much stronger.
The Independent (26/10/96) included a review of peoples favourite
things. Bamber Gascoigne gave details of his favourite ballerina:
"I joined the board of the Royal Opera House in September 1988, when
Kenneth MacMillan was just starting to notice Darcey Bussell, in the
Chorus with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet. It's been fascinating watching
her develop and grow within the company. I don't think it's a requirement
for a ballerina to be lovely, but I do find her immensely beautiful.
Her beauty is of such a serene kind. It's crazy to say this about
someone whose craft is movement, but she has this amazing quality of
stillness; even on a crowded stage, your eye is always drawn to her. When
she does move, it always seems so incredibly sure. It's a calm based on
incredible physical confidence and control, particularly in the Rose
Adagio in Sleeping Beauty, that agonising thing that happens
almost as soon as the ballerina comes on. It's such a worrying moment, but
it's part of the appeal of ballet - that hire-wire fear. Whenever I've
seen her, she's done it with unbelievable ease. She's never disappointed
me, but then I'm a bit of a push-over".
Here is some more, this time from Twyla Tharp:"Leon [Wieseltier]
got totally hypnotised by celadon. He saw a few pieces at the Freer
Gallery and all of a sudden everything was about celadon, about the
spirituality of this colour and this glaze. And I got hooked into it, and
the second movement of "Mr. Worldly Wise," for the Royal Ballet in London,
is dressed in celadon, because Darcey Bussell -- have you seen Darcey
dance? She is beautiful in every conceivable way. Physically beautiful,
but also genuinely, spiritually beautiful. And she's a phenomenal dancer.
Darcey got this role called Mistress Truth-on-Toe, because she's simple,
pure, direct. She's so beautiful, you just give her the simplest thing and
say, fine, get back, don't get in her way, let her move. That's the beauty
of her."
Reproduced by kind permission of Ballet.co.uk
