Attitudes.

On October 29, 1992, the audience at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was in a festive mood. It was The Royal Ballet's long-awaited revival of Sir Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 full-evening ballet, Mayerling, with Irek Mukhamedov making his debut in the leading role of Austria's dissolute Crown Prince Rudolf. But during the final curtain calls it was announced from the stage that, unbeknownst to the cast, MacMillan had died from a heart attack during the ballet's second intermission. The choreographer was a couple of months short of his 63rd birthday. It was a sudden and tragically premature end to a choreographic career that had left its mark both in his native Britain--he was a Scot born in Dunfermline--and the United States, where he was closely associated with both American Ballet Theatre and, later, Houston Ballet.

Now, following the tenth anniversary of his death, an "International Celebration of Kenneth MacMillan" has been called for, and productions of his work, particularly Manon, are scheduled worldwide. Here in the U.S., ABT is reviving his popular version of Romeo and Juliet, the Houston Ballet is giving Manon, while San Francisco Ballet is mounting a new production of his engaging Scott Joplin ballet, Elite Syncopations.

MacMillan is generally rated, particularly in Britain, among the important choreographers of the past century--not quite in the Fokine, Balanchine, Ashton, Tudor, Robbins hierarchy, but not too far below. But how important that is might be somewhat questionable. Certainly, although a sizeable slice of his career was based in the U.S., and his four U.S. world premieres have never been seen outside America, he has never been as eagerly accepted here as in Britain. It possibly has something to do with the fact that his work tends to have a strongly dramatic slant and, in classical ballet at least, American taste, nurtured by Balanchine and his adherents, tends towards purer dance forms; dance, if you like, largely as an end in itself.

It is obviously impossible to give a definitive assessment of an artist a scant ten years after his or her death--and in ballet, reputations can be peculiarly volatile. I can recall when Leonide Massine was generally regarded as the choreographer of the twentieth century. But he now would probably qualify, along with Michel Fokine, as the most unjustly neglected. Dance reputations are haphazard things.

I watched MacMillan's career from his debut as a dancer in 1946 with the Sadler's Wells Opera Ballet, his debut as a choreographer with the Sadler's Wells Choreographic Group in 1953, to his final work, The Judas Tree, and his posthumous dances for the Royal National Theater's Carousel, both in 1992. At the beginning I was a great admirer, but my admiration trailed off somewhat midway during his admittedly brilliant career.

He was a dazzling dancer technically--he danced roles such as the peasant pas de deux in Giselle and Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty--but suffered badly from stage fright, so I imagine it was with some relief that he retired from dancing to concentrate on choreography. His first ballet, Somnambulism, was an eye-opener; with one leap he had almost put himself in contention with his friend and near contemporary, the already established John Cranko. Set to jazz music by Stan Kenton, it started a whole series of enormously effective ballets, from his Danses Concertantes (1955) to Symphony (1963) and Song of the Earth (1965).

Internationally, however, he is best known for his full-evening dramatic spectaculars: Romeo and Juliet (1965), Anastasia (1971), Manon (1974), Mayerling (1978), Isadora (1981), and The Prince of the Pagodas (1989), all works that shared something of the same sensibilities as his Sadler's Wells choreographic contemporaries Peter Darrell and Cranko.

At the end of last year I found myself at Covent Garden watching another revival of Mayerling, this time with Robert Tewsley and Jonathan Cope as the crazy Prince, both of whom gave fine dramatic performances. It's a great role for a dance actor, as its originator, David Wall, proved nearly twenty-five years ago. So, once again I found myself trying to come to terms with one of a sequence of ballets admired by many people whose taste I often share but which has consistently left me comparatively cold. Why?

I think of myself as a London-born New Yorker, so I have become too New York in my taste to appreciate the strong dramatic and theatrical element --think of Ninette de Valois and Robert Helpmann--that has always run through British ballet. But I think my difficulty runs deeper. For example, MacMillan's way with a corps de ballet is extraordinarily primitive; he never learned the basic secret of employing large numbers onstage. Furthermore, to me his choreography, although often inventive, is not particularly expressive--dancers are expected to overlay their own emotions, often simply facial expressions, upon the movements. British-schooled dancers tend to be remarkably good actors. It's their dance tradition. Thus, when you see the Kirov Ballet or even American Ballet Theatre dance Manon, the result seems far less dramatic.

So perhaps I am going to have to beg to differ with many of my friends and colleagues over these MacMillan "spectaculars." However, I do hope the emphasis on this particular MacMillan genre will not draw too much attention from his other works. I think San Francisco is making a marvelous choice in taking Elite Syncopations, a brilliant, fun ballet. Why has no American company yet staged Song of the Earth, and why doesn't ABT revive Danses Concertantes, or give us Solitaire?

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to DANCE MAGAZINE since 1956.