Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A dancer and choreographer who became a star of Ballet Rombert, created 'Cruel Garden', and revived the company by bridging modern and classical dance.
On the island
Eight records
It's such a great number. It builds wonderfully. It was made, I think, late at night when everyone was a little bit tired in the studio. You can hear the the girlfriends of the stones i in one of the booths sort of joining in. It was almost ad hoc really in the way it was made and it has that kind of spontaneity.
Mondestrunken (from Pierrot Lunaire)
Mary Thomas and the London Sinfonietta
I remember when I first heard it, I hated it. I couldn't think of it in terms of music. So working every day to this score was a profound musical education. And by the time I was performing on stage, uh I loved the score and I saw the poetry uh and the beauty in it.
Prologue (from West Side Story)
I took my wife to see it on our first date when we were sixteen years old. I think it's probably for me the greatest musical that has ever been made.
Each Afternoon in Granada a Child Dies (from Ancient Voices of Children)
Jan DeGaetani and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
I've chosen this piece not only because I love the score and it was a very successful piece for me, but because it brought me into contact with Lorca, the work of Frederico Garthio Lorca, and therefore put me in touch with Lindsay Kemp and that created Kruhlgarden, which we later made in 77.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18Favourite
Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra
The reason is not only because uh this second piano concerto is a wonderful piece of music, but it was music used by Walter Gore for a piece called Winter Night. And when I was a student at the Rombert School, and we were given free tickets to see the company at Wimbledon or Sadler's Wells, etc., this was one of the pieces being uh performed, and I thought it was a great ballet.
Sicuriadas (from Ghost Dances)
I think the creation of Ghost Dances was an important moment, both because it was probably one of my most political pieces, and it also turned out to be one of the most popular pieces I've ever made.
Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet
Kyung-Wha Chung, Radu Lupu, Osian Ellis and the Melos Ensemble
when my wife was sixteen years old we were both at the Rombeau School and uh one of the students choreographed a piece uh that uh starred my wife and it was the first time I I I'd seen Marian dancing uh on stage. And she was beautiful, and this will keep me in mind of her until I'm rescued, I guess.
Christina Clarke and the Early Music Consort of London
It's a song about a woman who's lover or husband has gone away on the Crusades. And again it's about a woman being left alone, and my sympathies are more with this woman than with the man going away.
In conversation
Presenter asks
8:01How hard did [Marie Rambert] push?
Rombert never knew any half measures. She was um ruthless. She didn't know the word tiredness. She did not know the word tiredness in in relation to herself. She dedicated her whole life to dance.
Presenter asks
8:55Would you go as far as to say if it hadn't been for her you wouldn't be where you are today?
Oh, I think that's certainly true.
Presenter asks
14:04Did you fit in easily [at the Rambert Ballet], or was it difficult?
I did not fit in easily. I had an accent that was different to everyone else's. I found myself being sort of rather aggressive to sort of cover my shyness. But one sticks in there and just the daily instruction in dance was so satisfying that made everything worthwhile.
Presenter asks
16:34Why do you think they all wanted to mother you and look after you?
The keepsakes
The book
Well, I I decided on uh a sort of teach yourself French book, the most comprehensive one you can find with a big dictionary, because uh I love to come back from the island bilingual. Instead of just knowing a little bit of many different languages, enough to get by in a hotel, a restaurant, etcetera, I love to uh speak another language well.
I wish I had that answer. Uh I think I've always been attracted and uh sort of enjoyed the attentions of uh strong women, if you like.
Presenter asks
25:21Isn't that what your dance Swan Song is about, is the torture of being a dancer?
It's about two things. I used the experience of a dancer's daily sort of gruelling regime as a metaphor for the interrogation and torture of a victim. So it works on sort of two levels. W it is about a political act of terrorism, if you like, uh an interrogation and torture. But it is also about being able to let go, and I've drawn an analogy between me being able to let go of my dancing career, saying, Well, it's all over, it's behind me. Now I don't have to go through this any more letting that go, and also uh paralleling it to the freedom that the prisoner finds in death, if you like, or escape at the end of the dance.
“I lived with this music for thirty years, and I I didn't think I could ever really do a piece. Yes, it is. Uh I used to bop around to it, but it wasn't until, you know, twenty-five years later that I thought, well, maybe I could assemble some of these wonderful songs into uh a score for a ballet which has certain themes which lock it all together and make it one particular piece.”
“I wish I could still do it, but it's very difficult when you've reached your fifties. Uh you know, I try to keep up with them. I I do class most days, but uh the body just does not answer in quite the same way.”
“Maybe I should have turned down some of the opportunities and done less and spent more time at home, and I have regrets, but it was so difficult to know at the time what I should be doing and what I should have left. And I do regret that I didn't spend more time at home with my wife and children.”