Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Dancer with the Royal Ballet, touring worldwide for six years and learning stagecraft through constant performance.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:09What 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
1:30What 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.
Presenter asks
4:16When 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
5:13You 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
6:34You'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
7:40You'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.”