Peter Darrell: Scotland's Dance Pioneer ArtWorks Scotland

I wouldn't be here today, doing what I do, if it wasn't for him.

His legacy is originality,

invention and forward-lookingness

in an art form which is very backward-looking.

When Peter came to the studio, the whole studio lit up.

ROCK & ROLL MUSIC

Peter Darrell was the founding Artistic Director

of Scottish Ballet.

He died 25 years ago.

That's better. No, that's better. I can see you thinking.

Under his leadership, the company went from strength to strength

and gained a worldwide reputation.

I'll give you one more eight, and at the end of the eight,

we're ready for the other side.

Long leg and in. Long leg and brush, and brush and down.

His choreography was dramatic, innovative, ahead of its time...

but he and his ballets are in danger of being forgotten,

despite having inspired some of our best-known

and most successful choreographers.

My discovery of Darrell is connected with my discovery of ballet itself.

So it's quite a significant moment for me.

I loved dance from a very early age, but had never seen a ballet.

And what happened to be playing at that time

was Scottish Ballet at Sadler's Wells...

in Darrell's Swan Lake.

I bought myself a ticket, at the very, very top...

of the upper circle.

I'd had a couple of glasses of wine, I remember, beforehand -

not quite sure why, but I remember I was quite merry, a little.

And then watched this

incredible story unfold...

to this amazing music.

MUSIC: "Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky

I didn't know how radical it was.

My respect for Darrell was there right from the beginning.

To a lot of people, including myself, I thought ballet

was all about princes and swans...

not reality.

And I think Peter wanted to make work about the time in which we live.

That's my definition of an artist -

that you make work that reflects your time.

I think that's what he wanted to do and what he achieved.

I always will think he's a brilliant choreographer...

and nobody will ever take that away from me.

And I think, seeing his ballets, they've got to see he was

a brilliant choreographer.

He used the art of ballet to say...

things you couldn't express in any other way.

And it's a great shame they're not being produced now.

Exclusively for this film, Scottish Ballet are re-staging

the pas de deux from Darrell's ballet, Cheri.

Based on a novel by the French author, Colette,

it was a ballet he fought tirelessly to get off the ground,

and a story that touched him deeply.

And...

Arabesque in, turn.

Paul Tyers and Noriko Ohara have danced these roles

and are passing on their knowledge to a new generation.

After kiss, you're almost... "Oh, that's it."

You've just given up.

-I don't think so. You look at him, keep looking at him.

-OK.

Just have a quick embrace and that kiss,

so we can see what's happening.

You've got the final kiss...

You've got it.

You feel Owen turn his head,

so, Owen, you just turn your head away until you feel the emotional...

as she pulls away.

I come to Cheri totally new.

I didn't see the full production that Peter had created.

I've been in some rehearsals, and been so enthused to see that Peter

was about writing text.

It's almost like a play.

Not too fine.

I find that quite stimulating as a choreographer, myself...

to see how Peter invested the story right there into the movement.

I think that's wonderful.

OK. Brian, you OK?

And... THEY PLAY PIANO

Cheri is a passionate story of betrayal, fear of aging

and being alone.

Lea, an older courtesan and Cheri, a beautiful young man,

fall in love, but the relationship is destined to fail.

Peter was passionate about doing the ballet of Cheri...

simply because it...

resonated with Peter's own psyche.

In his choreography,

and particularly for the girls,

he had a marvellous empathy...

and it was the feminine side of Peter's psyche...

that made it work so well.

-Claire, I think you too much hang on to...

-OK.

It's not good. You just pass him.

He tries to sort of stop you.

Right. OK.

It's very special to have the original dancers

come and coach us in these roles.

They've been there first-hand, working one-to-one with Peter.

I can learn so much from them.

Claire! Your right hand goes everywhere.

You just go almost...

He's telling you a story, so every step...

is emotionally-driven, not technically-driven.

I think I was thinking, "Port de bras...

-You were thinking, "Port de bras".

-.."Step, step, turn out." HE LAUGHS

What is the most challenging in this is trying to convey emotion through movement.

Yes!

Trying to have the subtle nuances of...

love and guilt and shame and lust.

Trying to clearly portray them to an audience that is readable.

PIANO MUSIC

I feel like I want to be able to portray the character the best I can.

There's obviously a lot of challenges,

cos many great ballerinas have performed this role.

To me, it was one of the brilliant ones to dance,

and at the end of it, you were absolutely totally drained.

Absolutely totally emotionally drained.

The amazing thing about Peter was...

he gave you the base, he gave you the core.

And then you used that core,

and it was wrong, then you'd go back again and mould it - do it WITH him.

Good. There's something technically wrong, you know, about...

the end of the kiss - of when you look.

What are you actually thinking, Paul, there?

You go into the kiss without thinking, obviously.

As an artist, he made me,

by giving me the confidence and allowing me to grow.

I had a feel for the stage

and delivering what I believe Peter wanted to be delivered.

Remember that everything up to here is building,

up to that kiss.

We have to think, "When are they going to kiss? "When are they going to do it?"

Trevor, where can we pick that up? PIANO PLAYS

Make sure you're not hiding those eyes.

Who else would have the...courage just to do that,

to say what he wanted to say?

Just a simple bourree round, Cheri, and it says it all.

He didn't need all these great, grand gestures

and legs up round your ears...

huge leaps and things.

A little bourree round him says it all.

And how young we looked.

Peter Darrell was born in 1929 and brought up in London.

From very early on, he was interested in the stage.

At the age of 15, he started his ballet career. He trained

with John Cranko, Frederick Ashton, and Kenneth MacMillan,

who all went on to become some of the foremost choreographers

of the 20th century.

I was a student at the Royal Ballet with Cranko and MacMillan -

we were all there together.

In fact, we were original members of the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet,

as it then was.

We were a great influence on each other.

All three of us were great friends.

His father used to drive up on a Saturday night

after the last performance, to Sadler's Wells,

and into his car would pile

Ashton, MacMillan, Cranko and Darrell.

I can remember his father telling me...

He often wondered,

supposing he's had a smash.

The whole of the choreographic talent of the country

would have gone.

Darrell gave up dancing to pursue choreography.

He freelanced for several years, creating ballets

and working on West End shows and musicals.

His big break came in 1957 when friend and colleague

Elizabeth West approached him to set up

a company together in Bristol... Western Theatre Ballet.

The beginning years were really nice. They were super.

We wanted to do something different then, and it WAS different.

We started a classical company with contemporary themes.

And it was gloriously exciting.

OK, kids. Can you come over a minute?

Now, then, you know the difficulties at this stage - you were here

last year. It's a bit small,

not as bad as some we've been on.

We better have a run-through for positioning.

There's Peter, looking absolutely lovely.

-There we are doing class... the Ballet.

-That's me!

-We loved Peter. He was such a lovely man.

-He was, yes.

-And such a talented man.

-Yes.

We absolutely worshipped his choreography and his talent.

-It was a pleasure to work with him, wasn't it?

-It was.

Tremendous fun we had, remember?

We were doing very innovative things, new in the theatre,

because we were part of the whole new scene that was happening.

There was musique concrete, there was John Cage,

there was Harold Pinter,

there was John Osborne -

all these things were happening in young theatre.

We were kept together because we felt it so vital.

APPLAUSE

We all worked for each other, had the same aims.

We were desperate to make this company work.

It was hard,

because there were many times when we were out of work.

Do you recall the touring in Scotland?

-The one-night stands?

-Taking little coaches.

Yes, the lack of washing facilities,

-the lack of food.

-Hot water.

Lack of hot water, yes.

You played in Stornoway and you were changing in the ladies' loos

-at the town.

-That's right.

They closed them and that's where you changed.

A really hand-to-mouth, wasn't it, existence, really?

ROCK GUITAR MUSIC

The Beatles had just come up at that time.

-And they were hugely big.

-Huge.

And he cleverly set a ballet to Beatles music.

Right, right bang-up-to-date.

It was absolutely spot on the moment, for the time.

It was called Mods & Rockers.

BEAT MUSIC

Mods & Rockers was just such great fun.

And we could chew gum and blow bubbles...

Cos I was a rocker.

That was a big shock to me.

It was one of the first things I did when I joined the company.

I thought, "Here I am, training to be a classical ballet dancer,

"and I put on leather boots

"and I get on the stage and do the twist!"

I thought, "Gosh, what will my mother think?"

My mother came to the performance

and said it's the best thing she's ever seen!

She absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it.

She says, "You're in the right company."

HARMONICA PLAYS "BAD TO ME"

Then we did that television that Peter did.

-The... Houseparty?

-Houseparty.

Houseparty was made in 1964.

It was one of the first ballets to be commissioned for television.

He sort of sat us down and gave us a rough outline -

it wasn't going to be a ballet, as such.

It was going to be more acting onscreen.

It was the time when there was the scandal of the Christine Keeler.

Yeah. You were like Christine Keeler.

He said to me originally

that I was going to be that kind of a character.

A sort of glamorous character who fell apart at the seams.

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

-Every single move was for the camera.

-Yeah.

Camera angles,

so it was a highly advanced film technique we were doing, really.

It was, again, Peter latching onto the mood of the moment.

-Very controversial.

-VERY controversial.

Quite a lot of the works were really controversial, that we did

in Western Theatre Ballet.

That's really why we enjoyed working with him, didn't we?

-He took risks.

-Yeah!

And we went along with him.

I admired its non-use of ballet technique.

It was all very contemporary.

There was some...gay relationships suggested in it.

Quite subtly in some ways,

but very obviously, that was what was going on.

I thought it was an astonishing piece for its time.

It really is

very, very powerful, meaty stuff.

Peter liked to tell human stories,

and the conflicts...

or liaisons between people

were very important in these early dramatic works.

In 1969, the Arts Council asked Peter Darrell

to move his Western Theatre Ballet north

to set up the first Scottish Ballet company.

Peter Darrell announced that we were going to become Scottish Ballet,

and we were going to live in Glasgow.

I went, "Not Glasgow, Peter! Why can't we go to Edinburgh?"

He said, "Because we are going to Glasgow.

"That is the hub of the artistic side of Scotland."

And that was it.

He felt there was such an opportunity there to expand,

taking dance and ballet to a whole other audience.

Over the next two decades, Peter Darrell created a company

for Scotland with a diverse and ground-breaking repertoire.

Peter's achievement, of course,

was the creation of a national ballet company,

which Scottish Ballet became.

And not just national, but international.

And he... With the choice of the right sort of repertoire,

the choice of his dancers,

he achieved all of that.

MUSIC: "The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky

I didn't know what they were wanting. They'd never had a permanent company.

Of course, our repertoire was mainly one-act ballets -

we'd only got about one full-length.

I realised then, at the beginning, that what we must do,

as a national company, was to bring the classics in.

But I also thought that it was pointless to do,

for our size and type of company,

a replica of the kind of performance you could see from the Royal Ballet,

which visits, or Festival Ballet.

So, in a way, all the classics we've done, I've styled

in an individual way,

to suit what we do and our style of dramatic presentation.

MUSIC: "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky

In his version of The Nutcracker, the real innovation Peter Darrell

brought to the ballet was using children on stage.

MUSIC: "Waltz Of The Flowers" by Tchaikovsky

I think I was probably 11 years old, and my mother read in the paper

that the Scottish Ballet was looking for children

to be in The Nutcracker.

I was very keen and went to the audition. I can't remember the audition at all.

But I remember the experience of being in Nutcracker

with Scottish Ballet, playing Fritz.

It was very much like being in an extended family.

There's a very good rapport between the dancers.

I was completely fascinated by it.

I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

There was a great camaraderie in the company.

For example, I remember on the last night,

just the sort of jokes that were going on onstage,

I would never allow in my own company now -

but just the sort of things people would do.

There were sweets we had to eat, and somebody put pepper in them.

Just silly things like that, which...

to be included in that was great fun.

But, when I came to work with Scottish Ballet many years later

as a choreographer,

a lot of the dancers were still there.

I was learning something about loyalty...

and about what a company is.

PIANO MUSIC

Michael Clark was 22 when Peter Darrell gave him

his first opportunity to choreograph for a major ballet company.

Immediately attracted by the talent that he had,

not only as a performer himself, but as a choreographer.

And could see something completely new in what he was doing.

The biggest talent, I think, I've seen in a long time.

Three, four, one, two...

I'm sure his work had a huge influence on mine,

because it was the first work I had ever really experienced first-hand.

Peter was definitely a mentor, and I wouldn't be here

doing what I was today if it weren't for him.

MUSIC: "The Classical" by The Fall

MUSIC: "Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky

Matthew Bourne's hugely successful Swan Lake,

now in its 17th year, was inspired by Peter Darrell's own version.

I think I was 19 when I saw the Scottish Ballet's Swan Lake.

It was very much about the prince figure, himself,

and about this...

person who couldn't be who they wanted to be,

and how they found this release through the image of a swan.

That is in no other version, that I've seen, so strongly

as in Peter's version.

The thing that's most striking about it was the final image...

of...

a dead prince...a suicidal prince, I believe.

On the ground, at the end, with the swan above, looking down on him

from some sort of heavenly place.

It's exactly the same in my version.

And that isn't the normal ending to Swan Lake,

so something about that image really stuck with me.

So, the first one that I saw

became the most significant one, and that was Peter's.

MUSIC: "Swan Lake Finale" by Tchaikovsky

I think a lot of companies that have their director

as choreographer work very well.

It's a sort of "family" feel you get out of it.

You get a knowledge of how they actually live and work every day,

obviously, being with them.

It helps the choreography enormously.

I really don't like working outside my company all that much.

CROWD HUBBUB

Look at you! Douglas! Oh, my goodness, I haven't seen you for ages.

Members of Scottish Ballet, when Peter Darrell was

Artistic Director, have gathered to honour him at a reunion in Glasgow.

It was just a big party -

it was lovely. We all danced together

and it was great - it was one big family.

Peter was kind of the head of it.

He made ballet accessible to people.

His philosophy was, "You can't expect the audience to come to you,

"you've got to go to them."

He built the audience that Scotland have got.

He was one of the handful of people who changed the way

that ballet looked.

There was a time when even the great choreographers of the mid century

had a sense of fairies in the wings somewhere.

Peter did away with all that, brought ballet into the modern world.

He was enthusiastic,

he encouraged you.

He never got angry.

He just wanted more and more, and he gave you that feeling of,

"I want to try and try for you."

I just thought he was a lovely person to work for.

PIANO MUSIC

A little bit of apprehension,

but I think that's healthy.

I really would like to be loyal to his vision,

and do justice to the work.

I want to do it exactly how he would like me to do it.

I'll hopefully perform it so you'll be able to see that.

How I would have done it or how Noriko would have done it

is not important - it's how you would do it.

Take on board everything we've given you - all the information...

and then it's yours.

Finished today?

Finished? I hope so. The lights are going out.

OK.

-Thank you, Paul.

-OK.

Peter Darrell was very ill for the last few years of his life

but carried on running his company until a few days before his death.

He died at the age of 58.

This company - it's my baby,

and I want to see it go on, I want to see it grow.

And I think it will...

..along the lines that it's been built,

because they are strong and sure lines.

And proper lines... that are right...

for the culture of dance within Scotland.

PIANO MUSIC

It's a difficult question

as to why we don't see more of Peter's work today.

I would say it's up to Scottish Ballet, in many ways,

to keep Peter's name alive,

through revivals,

and I think we can learn so much from revivals.

The founder of Scottish Ballet, Peter Darrell's work

has to be kept alive - it has to be kept in our consciousness

for this generation and future generations.

If it's done with care and attention,

and I believe that's Scottish Ballet's responsibility,

is to make sure those qualities are in place for revivals,

then I think there is a life

for Peter's work, definitely.

APPLAUSE

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