Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Dancer with the Royal Ballet, touring worldwide for six years and learning stagecraft through constant performance.
Eight records
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What gave you this vocational urge to be a dancer? How did it start?
Well, you know, I'm a little bit ashamed to say that the thing was being evacuated in the war. I and the whole family went down to Dorking and we lived in a tiny little cottage there and the treat every maybe if we could afford it every month was to go to the picture palace and the person I remember most I know I should say Fred Astaire of course but the person I remember most was Carma Miranda and I had a burning desire to be Carma Miranda and wear a lot of bananas and fruits like that… Later of course I became much more conservative and I just thought shiny floors and feathers would be a good way to earn a living … when we got back to London after the war I played my parents into letting me learn to dance. I went to a local dancing school and nipped about a bit, but it wasn't really till I went to the Royal Ballet that it became serious school.
Presenter asks
What are the odds against becoming a soloist?
Oh, colossal … When I was at the [Royal Ballet] it was at Sadler's Wells when I joined … there were, I suppose, only about twelve boys altogether, of which I think by the time we got out and started to work with the company I think there were one, two, maybe two left out of that twelve. So not good.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.
Speaker 2
What gave you this vocational urge to be a dancer? How did it start?
Christopher Gable
Well, you know, I'm a little bit ashamed to say that the thing was being evacuated in the war.
Christopher Gable
I and the whole family went down to Dorking and we lived in a tiny little cottage there and the treat every maybe if we could afford it every month was to go to the the picture palace and the person I remember most I know I should say Fred Astaire of course but the person I remember most was Carma Miranda and I had a burning desire to be Carma Miranda and wear a lot of bananas and fruits like that which of course you never saw in the war to wear things like that on my head. Later of course I became much more conservative and I just thought shiny floors and feathers would be a good way to earn a living.
Christopher Gable
And uh so when we got back to London after the war I I played my parents into letting me learn to dance. I went to a local dancing school and nipped about a bit, but it wasn't really till I went to the Royal Ballet that it became serious school. Mm-hmm.
Christopher Gable
What was your first appearance?
Christopher Gable
First ever. Apart from walking on with the Bolshoi.
Christopher Gable
And and not counting the opera bella, you mean?
Christopher Gable
I was a peasant.
Christopher Gable
Lad, in Coppelia.
Christopher Gable
We sat around at the back and waved to everybody when they came on and looked very happy all the time, I remember.
Christopher Gable
What are the odds against becoming a soloist?
Christopher Gable
Oh, colossal. Are they? Yes, colossal. When I was at the um when I joined it was at South As Wells when I joined. When I when I joined there, there were, I suppose, only about twelve boys altogether, of which I think
Christopher Gable
Uh by the time we got out and started to work with the company I think there were one, two, maybe two left out of that twelve. Yeah. So not good. Now the life of a young dancer is a pretty growling one. A lot of work. Yes.
Christopher Gable
Every morning at the bar.
Christopher Gable
Oh, it's dreadful. It's a slog. And it's the it was the loveliest thing that ever happened to me, not having to do that any more.
Christopher Gable
Because the big thing about being a dancer is you have your ego gets a lovely lot of bolstering. You go on there at the opera house in the evenings and you finish your performance and they throw lots of flowers and you wade around the stage knee-deep in roses and things and they stand up and cheer for a quarter of an hour and you feel like a million dollars. Of course you do. It's wonderful.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Christopher Gable
And it's lovely to be blase about it because it's all happening.
Christopher Gable
Uh so your your ego is fed.
Christopher Gable
But then on the other side of the scales,
Christopher Gable
Come 10.15 the following morning. You're in class.
Christopher Gable
being really bad and having somebody tell you that you're a disgrace and you shouldn't be allowed on any stage anywhere. That's a very good balance to live with as an art as a creative thing. It's a good balance to have.
Speaker 2
But
Christopher Gable
You danced with the touring section of the Royal Ballet for a long time, didn't you? Hmm, six years. And that meant travels all over the place. Six years on tour. I'm very proud of it now. Looking back on it, I realize that it is when I learned any stagecraft that I have.
Christopher Gable
Because one of the qualities I suppose which I admire most in any entertainer is economy.
Christopher Gable
And the thing you learn from doing eight shows a week for six years is economy because you're so dead on your feet...
Christopher Gable
Uh come around the second year you get to be so tired.
Christopher Gable
That anything that isn't strictly necessary you start to eliminate. So you begin to get an eye for what is important and what isn't. And all the fussiness and the mess that you start off with when you're very young and you want to prove that you're the greatest thing that ever hit the stage. All of that begins to drop away and you start getting left with the bones, which is so looking back at it now, it it was the most useful, the best time for me. Yes. And overseas travels, of course. Oh, the world. I never went to Russia and I never went to
Christopher Gable
Japan, but I went pretty well everywhere else. We did eight months in Australia, New Zealand, we did
Christopher Gable
The whole of Europe, South Africa, where I met my wife, uh
Christopher Gable
Oh, America, of course.
Speaker 2
And of course w when the performance is over, then the day isn't over, there are still the presentations and the parties and Receptions
Christopher Gable
All that has to be gone through. Particularly in America. But but uh generally speaking everywhere. Obviously the Arts Council and the the embassy people want to it's a big prestige thing when the Royal Ballet arrive and they and they they want to meet you.
Speaker 2
Very a
Christopher Gable
And all of that. And so usually after the performance there was some kind of
Christopher Gable
Celebration. Very tiring. Um because one has to
Christopher Gable
It's it's amazing, but one gets asked the most extraordinary questions. I mean, I I can understand that hundreds of people have never seen a ballet, but you know, if I could tell you how many times I've been asked whether it hurts to go on your points.
Christopher Gable
And in the end you begin to say yes, it's awfully painful because of course it is, but men just never do it, but but but I mean, you know, that's what they want to hear.
Speaker 2
And a
Christopher Gable
Odd, isn't it? They don't I I they've well, they've never seen a bad day, obviously.
Christopher Gable
You were doing very well indeed. You were still in your mid twenties, and you decided to give up dancing wife.
Christopher Gable
Basically the short answer to that is I thought I had a greater potential as an actor.
Christopher Gable
Uh I had always my reputation had been made as being um an interpretive dancer.
Christopher Gable
And I thought, I'm 23, 24, I don't want to spend the next 15 years trying to jump higher than anybody else or spin more times because if I did that I'd I'd be a, you know, a candidate for the Olympics. That's what they do, that's a pure athletics, I don't want to do that. I thought, why am I wasting this energy doing that when I could use all my energy in trying to think why people do what they do, which is ultimately the most interesting thing in the world.
Speaker 2
That
Christopher Gable
I I'm interpretive, that's what interests me. What was your first acting role after you gave up dancing?
Speaker 2
Uh
Christopher Gable
I did Dorian Gray, an evil, degenerate man.
Christopher Gable
Who could look?
Christopher Gable
blonde and romantic all the way through. So I thought my appearance won't be against me, and it will give me a chance to see if I can act tall and how well this experiment is gonna work. Oh, you did this at the Palace Theatre, whatever, didn't you?
Speaker 2
I did and uh Then you played in Regents Park in Sirano de Bergerac?
Christopher Gable
Mm.
Speaker 2
You've done a lot of work, and very valid work, for that controversial director, Ken Russell.
Christopher Gable
Yeah.
Christopher Gable
Uh
Speaker 2
What was the first?
Christopher Gable
Yeah.
Christopher Gable
I played the part of Eric Femby in the Delius film.
Christopher Gable
The Song of Summer. Which was a tremendous success. Then you had you did two of his feature films. You are music lovers, you were. I did The Music Lovers and I did Women in Love before that. Mm-hmm. Uh a non-speaking part in Women in Love and then The Music Lovers. And then we made Strauss for the for the BBC between that. Richard Strauss. Richard Strauss, which upset everybody and they never show it. It's banned. They showed it once and then they asked a lot of questions in the house and then it and then it was never shown again.
Speaker 2
And then it would
Christopher Gable
And the
Speaker 2
And then um the boyfriend.
Christopher Gable
And then the brief contract. Now, had you ever done any tap dancing before? Had that come in the Royal Ballet School curriculum? No, nowhere near.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Christopher Gable
Uh no, I'd uh I'd shuffled around a bit, I suppose, in the early days before I went to the Royal Ballet School. But uh I'd I'd never done any. I went along to lessons. Twiggy and I went and had lessons together. We tapped away for a bit.
Speaker 2
Again.
Christopher Gable
We uh oh it was it was great fun. Tap bouncing thoroughly to be recommended. It's great fun.
Christopher Gable
You've been doing quite a bit of Shakespeare lately. You had a year at Stratford. Hm. I did. What did you play?
Christopher Gable
Well, the interesting one of the year was Lysander in the Dream, because I was in Peter Brooke's production of The Dream, uh which is now I think very well known. It's they've done it at the Aldrich and it's going on a world tour and everything.
Christopher Gable
And working with Peter Brooke was, in retrospect, a wonderful experience.
Christopher Gable
While it was happening again, awful, so many of these things are awful when they're happening. Peter Brooke has an incredible. Oh, at that time, he had an incredible rehearsal technique which I'd never come up against before, which was that.
Christopher Gable
If you went in and did what you did the day before, he said, don't waste my time, I saw that yesterday. And if you did something new, he said, if you're going to change everything as soon as it's right, then we're never going to get anywhere, you're wasting time. So really, whatever you did was wrong.
Speaker 2
Really, whatever you
Christopher Gable
Um, it was nerve-wracking to say the least, but... What was he aiming at?
Christopher Gable
He was aiming at getting actors to dig around and think, are there any possibilities I haven't thought of yet? You see, an actor, it's too easy for an actor to say, well, I played a young romantic chap who was in love with such and such a girl three plays ago, and it worked quite well. I'll do that again, and it'll work. Peter Brooks' technique is never to go back onto a winning formula, make it new, find something else, look around in yourself and find something new every time. It's a wonderful thing to do as an actor. Scary, but wonderful.
Presenter asks
When the performance is over, then the day isn't over, there are still the presentations and the parties and receptions?
All that has to be gone through. Particularly in America. But generally speaking everywhere. Obviously the Arts Council and the embassy people want to … it's a big prestige thing when the Royal Ballet arrive … and they want to meet you … one gets asked the most extraordinary questions … how many times I've been asked whether it hurts to go on your points. And in the end you begin to say yes, it's awfully painful because of course it is, but men just never do it, but that's what they want to hear.
Presenter asks
You were doing very well indeed. You were still in your mid twenties, and you decided to give up dancing. Why?
Basically the short answer to that is I thought I had a greater potential as an actor … my reputation had been made as being an interpretive dancer. And I thought, I'm 23, 24, I don't want to spend the next 15 years trying to jump higher than anybody else or spin more times because if I did that I'd be a candidate for the Olympics. That's what they do, that's pure athletics, I don't want to do that. I thought, why am I wasting this energy doing that when I could use all my energy in trying to think why people do what they do, which is ultimately the most interesting thing in the world … I'm interpretive, that's what interests me.
Presenter asks
You've done a lot of work, and very valid work, for that controversial director, Ken Russell. What was the first?
I played the part of Eric Fenby in the Delius film … The Song of Summer. Which was a tremendous success. Then I did The Music Lovers and I did Women in Love before that … a non-speaking part in Women in Love and then The Music Lovers. And then we made [a film about] Richard Strauss, which upset everybody and they never show it. It's banned. They showed it once and then they asked a lot of questions in the house and then it was never shown again.
Presenter asks
You've been doing quite a bit of Shakespeare lately. You had a year at Stratford. What did you play?
Well, the interesting one of the year was Lysander in the Dream, because I was in Peter Brook's production of The Dream … and working with Peter Brook was, in retrospect, a wonderful experience. While it was happening again, awful, so many of these things are awful when they're happening … If you went in and did what you did the day before, he said, don't waste my time, I saw that yesterday. And if you did something new, he said, if you're going to change everything as soon as it's right, then we're never going to get anywhere, you're wasting time. So really, whatever you did was wrong … He was aiming at getting actors to dig around and think, are there any possibilities I haven't thought of yet? … an actor, it's too easy … to say, well, I played a young romantic chap who was in love with such and such a girl three plays ago, and it worked quite well. I'll do that again … Peter Brook's technique is never to go back onto a winning formula, make it new, find something else, look around in yourself and find something new every time. It's a wonderful thing to do as an actor. Scary, but wonderful.
“I had a burning desire to be Carma Miranda and wear a lot of bananas and fruits like that which of course you never saw in the war to wear things like that on my head.”
“The life of a young dancer is a pretty gruelling one … Every morning at the bar … Oh, it's dreadful. It's a slog. And it was the loveliest thing that ever happened to me, not having to do that any more.”
“Come 10.15 the following morning. You're in class … being really bad and having somebody tell you that you're a disgrace and you shouldn't be allowed on any stage anywhere. That's a very good balance to live with as an art as a creative thing.”
“One of the qualities which I admire most in any entertainer is economy … the thing you learn from doing eight shows a week for six years is economy because you're so dead on your feet … anything that isn't strictly necessary you start to eliminate. So you begin to get an eye for what is important and what isn't.”
“Why am I wasting this energy doing that when I could use all my energy in trying to think why people do what they do, which is ultimately the most interesting thing in the world.”