Music: Surgery for Persephone

Igor Stravinsky’s attempt to describe his Persephone was not too illuminating: “A nose,” he said, “is not manufactured; a nose just is. Thus, too, my art.” In the case of Persephone, the nose is neither ballet nor oratorio nor melodrama. A curiously hybrid work, it was first performed by the dancer Ida Rubinstein in 1934 and calls for a tenor, a chorus and full orchestra, and a leading lady who declaims a French text by André Gide while she dances. Persephone’s score ranks with Stravinsky’s most tautly constructed music—in his best neoclassic style—but as a stage piece, the work has never caught on. Last week in London. Britain’s Royal Ballet tried to bring Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, to new life—in an ambitious new version by Chief Choreographer Frederick Ashton.

Ashton regards his treatment of Persephone as “my most complex work so far.” and it proved to be a radical transformation from the gentle, classically oriented manner of such Ashton successes as Cinderella and Sylvia. The choreographic style was severe, angular and so stylized that it sometimes seemed Ashton had turned to ancient Greek friezes for his inspiration. The dancers in the corps de ballet frequently were presented in profile, in friezelike groupings; at other times, they marched flat-footed with hands on one another’s shoulders, or with arms raised and palms held flat. The legendary quality of the production was reflected in the bulrush-brown and sea-green jerkins and the heavy curled Grecian wigs of gleaming copper and grape designed by Greek Artist Nico Ghika.

Title role of Persephone was danced by Lithuanian Ballerina Svetlana Beriosova. heiress apparent to Margot Fonteyn as the company’s prima ballerina. Actually. Persephone’s “dancing” proved to be little more than occasional rhythmic movements, far less important than the recitation of Gide’s text, which Beriosova accomplished in a mellifluous voice with the aid of a microphone concealed in the neckline of her dress. The ballet’s best dancing parts were reserved for Pluto (Keith Rosson) and Mercury (Alexander Grant). Dancer Grant appeared nearly naked wearing white briefs and a rigid, long-bobbed gold wig and performed some extraordinary contortions, including a sort of sideways hopscotch interrupted by seconds of statuesque immobility on one foot.

Last week’s Persephone settled none of the old arguments. The Daily Telegraph still insisted that it “falls between several stools.” while the London Times found in Ashton’s work a “vital and pugnacious originality of invention.” But few viewers, after they became accustomed to the deliberate jerkiness of the choreography, were bored—suggesting that Ashton’s plastic surgery may have returned Persephone to the stage where it belongs.