Letter from London.

Editor's note: Letter From... is a new feature in which Dance Magazine correspondents from around the world will try to give you an idea of what it would be like to attend dance on a regular basis in their respective countries. In addition to being Dance Magazine's London-based correspondent, Jann Parry is also dance critic for the London Observer.

LONDON--IT was the hottest summer in Britain since records began. Sales of ice cream and suntan lotion soared; umbrella vendors went bankrupt; impresarios and managers of unairconditioned theaters panicked. Reduced-price tickets were readily available for most Kirov Ballet performances at the Coliseum (as hot and humid as a Turkish bath) and for the Royal Ballet at the Opera House in Covent Garden (which seemed like a furnace). No better case could have been made for National Lottery money to modernize both theaters in time for the twenty-first century.

The lottery was introduced in November 1994 to make funds available for public buildings housing the arts, sports, and leisure activities, as well as for charities and other worthy causes. There was a predictable row after the announcement in July that the first large tranche of lottery money would go to the Royal Opera House--55 million [pounds]. As the arts editor of the Times, Richard Morrison, commented in his weekly column: "In a few months the lottery has almost succeeded in doing what the KGB could not do in decades: start a class war in Britain."

The argument against the lottery, much rehearsed in the national tabloids, is that working-class people are paying more than they can afford in lottery tickets so that rich people can indulge in upper-class culture. Nobody really believes this, but the argument enables a lot of pent-up steam to be let off. It was bad p.r. by the government and the lottery organizers to announce major allocations to the arts before those to charities (which are more complex to administrate), but the row would have happened anyway.

The Royal Opera House is a favorite tabloid target. Seat prices--almost three times as high for opera as for ballet--are alarmingly steep, so the assumption is that only toffs can afford to go there. One downmarket newspaper sent two "ordinary" people to a performance at the The Royal Opera House in order to reveal the true price of even the cheapest seats. The huge putative bill included the hire of formal evening dress, as well as the cost of champagne and smoked salmon sandwiches. In fact, most opera-and balletgoers during the long hot summer, knowing that the theater has no ventilation, were wearing shorts or shift dresses and drinking water or soda.

One of the best things, apart from airconditioning, that lottery money will do for Opera House patrons is break down the present apartheid between the amphitheatre (the upper part of the House) and the more expensive orchestra and balconies. At present, the upper and lower sections have separate entrances and bars, preventing people in the cheap seats from mingling with richer patrons during intermissions. The ROH's development plans will do away with this segregation and open the foyers to all audience members--and about time, too.

Building work on the site around the Opera House is due to start in January 1996. The theater itself will close in the summer of 1997 for eighteen months and is scheduled to reopen in the autumn of 1999. As I write this, no decision has been made on where the ballet and opera companies will go during the closure. An announcement was expected in October. The options have been a purpose-built theatre constructed on waste land near Tower Bridge, or the soon-to-be refurbished Lyceum Theatre in Covent Garden, which is too small to be ideal.

Meanwhile, the Coliseum, home of English National Opera (ENO) and occasional host to English National Ballet (ENB), is also due to close before the next century. It leaks, it stifles, its backstage areas are a slum--pity the poor Kirov, performing there for the five stickiest weeks of the summer! ENO, however, is conducting a feasibility study, with the aid of lottery money, to assess whether to abandon the building for a possible new theater on the South Bank of the Thames, to be funded by Andrew Lloyd Webber and built to his specifications. If ENO moves out, the Coli might be free to become London's full-time dance theater, housing local as well as visiting companies.

Sadler's Wells, once the home of the young Royal Ballet and then of its touring company, has ambitious development plans to transform itself, thanks to lottery money, into a house properly fit for dance. Sadler's Wells has been promised 30 million [pounds] in lottery money, contingent on providing 10 million [pounds] from its own coffers. And the South Bank Centre intends to restructure two of its concert halls into theaters that could accommodate dance. Needless to say, no single authority is masterminding all these possible conflicts of interest. We're bound to end up with the usual muddled British compromise--but at least we'll have air-conditioning in some of our theaters, old as well as new.

The Festival Hall, part of the South Bank arts complex, was filled this summer with people dancing: workshops, classes, performances, and parties. Ballroom Blitz, a monthlong dance season, is now in its tenth year, with some 20,000 people passing through its doors this August. The summer's splendid sunsets were a bonus for outdoor performances on the roofs and terraces. Indoors, ENB's performances of Rudolf Nureyev's Romeo and Juliet and a triple bill were undersubscribed, suffering from the heat and the rival attractions of the Kirov and the Royal Ballet across the Thames.

The Kirov's five-week season spanned July and part of August--a financial gamble by the British impresarios Victor and Lilian Hochhauser that seems to have paid off. Houses were full the dozen or so times I attended performances (the Kirov is an addictive company), though there weren't the queues round the block of previous visits. The first performances to sell out were those of The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, last seen here when the Bolshoi first visited London in 1956, and the Saisons Russes program of Michel Fokine ballets (familiar to London audiences, though not in the Kirov's new productions).

Fountain and the Fokine bill were the only novelties among a round of all-too-familiar classics. Audience fatigue had clearly set in by the time Sleeping Beauty bowed, as the Royal Ballet found when it returned from its two-month tour of the Far East and the West Coast of the United States in July, and unwisely fielded its Auroras, yet again, in competition with the Kirov's. However, the Kirov profited from the usual insatiable demand for Swan Lake, with the chance to see two tall young Russian debutantes, Anastasia Volochkova and Uliana Lopatkina, essaying Odette/Odile.

Almost all the first nights in the season, however, featured Yulia Makhalina, as much disliked by British critics this year as in the Kirov's 1993 visit. We found her performances to be mannered and self-regarding: she paid little attention to anyone else onstage, including her partner, and even less to the orchestra. She managed to be both willful and dull, more concerned with the height of her leg than with making sense of her role, or of the ballet as a whole. Ballet-lovers here--most of us, anyway--infinitely prefer Altynai Asylmuratova, the Kirov's equivalent of Margot Fonteyn. She announced during the season that she was about to leave the company to dance with Roland Petit's Ballet National de Marseille. It's only a seven month's leave of absence, but her fans went to her every performance here, fearing that we might never see her with the Kirov again. Irina Shapchitz (who made her debut as Aurora in London in 1993, but who was confined to soloist roles this time) also left at the end of the season, for Bonn Ballet.

Igor Zelensky, now a member of New York City Ballet, danced two unscheduled performances of La Bayadere, to rave reviews. He is still a member of the Kirov, according to its management, and is welcome back at any time. The Danish dancer, Kenneth Greve, who had been contracted to partner Makhalina in London, went home before the season started. While his absence was attributed to injury, rumor had it that the Kirov's male principals, their pride affronted, didn't see the need for his presence.

Kirov addicts who couldn't get enough of their favorites in performance satisfied their craving either by attending a Sunday afternoon master class (which raised 15,000, [pounds] plus 20,000 [pounds] worth of medicines, for an AIDS charity in St. Petersburg) or by shopping at the trendy new Tesco in Covent Garden. The supermarket, in a building formerly occupied by Moss Bros., famous for the hire of evening dress, is the place to be seen--and to see dancers, singers, and actors buying food between performances. After Kirov matinees, the aisles were filled with stargazing fans watching slender, damp-haired Russian dancers stock up their baskets with yogurt and mineral water, before hurrying back to the Coli stage door.

When the Royal Ballet returned from its summer tour abroad, its performances were viewed with fresh eyes by dancegoers who had grown accustomed to the Kirov style and long, lean physiques. Darcey Bussell's London debut as Giselle (she had first danced the role on tour in Japan) was well received, though it was generally felt that her physicality is too robust for a plausible Giselle. Sarah Wildor, small and slight, danced a sweet, pastel account of the role--she still has a long way to go technically, and in spite of a growing reputation she doesn't yet draw audiences.

The house was overflowing, however, for senior ballerina Lesley Collier's final appearance with the company, as Giselle (at age 48), with Irek Mukhamedov as Albrecht. It was a tremendous performance, deeply moving in its own right, as well as an emotional farewell for Collier, after thirty years with the company, twenty of them as a principal. As she took her curtain calls, the stage filled with flowers from fans, friends, and colleagues. The tabloid press should have been there to witness the warmth of "ordinary people," paying tribute to a ballerina they have known and loved over the years.