Do we need Ballet Ireland?

Ballet Ireland has set itself up to fill the gap left by Irish National Ballet, writes Michael Seaver. But are small-scale Nutcrackers and Sleeping Beautys really what we need? Will the real Irish ballet please stand up?

Globally, ballet is in crisis. The Bolshoi, Boston Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, Australian Ballet and English National Ballet are just a few of the many companies that have suffered financial or artistic turmoil recently. Falling box-office receipts are putting pressure on boards of directors who then blame the artistic directors for not attracting audiences. The venerable Royal Winnipeg Ballet has employed a hire-then-fire solution which has led to there being three artistic directors and three executive directors in the past eight years. Scottish Ballet has taken more drastic measures and has reinvented the company as a contemporary troupe.

In Ireland, the emergence of Ballet Ireland and its classical ballet productions is thought to have filled the lacuna left by Irish National Ballet, which was axed by the Arts Council in 1988. However, in the international context, questions need to be asked about what company model best serves the development of ballet in Ireland.

Ireland has always been uneasy around classical ballet. When W.B. Yeats approached Ninette de Valois to set up a ballet school at the Abbey in 1927, it was to train dancers in stylised movement for his dance plays. Although he was unsure as to the exact form of movement, he was clear that it should not be overly balletic. Yeats abhorred classical ballet and many claim that the Old Man's views in the prologue from The Death of Cuchulainn perfectly mirrored his own: "I spit upon the dancers painted by Degas. I spit upon their short bodices, their stiff stays, their toes whereon they spin like peg-tops, above all that chambermaid face."

Whatever about Yeats's artistic foibles, ballet posed a more fundamental problem in the new Irish state. The church saw almost all dance forms, ballet included, as morally dubious. When Anna Pavlova's company visited Cork in 1929, several priests denounced its performances. With nightly audiences of no more than a dozen, the company was forced to write to England for money to return home. Years later, a tutu-clad Swanhilda performing for Joan Denise Moriarty's Cork City Ballet was described by one priest as "a semi-nude female figure that has offended against all normal codes of decency". So how could ballet position itself in this moral climate and how could it become relevant to the culture of the new state? A clue lies in a review of de Valois's Faun by an Irish Times writer in 1928: "Mr [Harold] White's music is built on Irish airs and the choreography is the work of an Irish woman for all her French name; the dancers are Irish; the orchestra is Irish . . . There could be no mistaking the verdict of the audience who saw the first Irish Ballet".

An "Irish" ballet could find a place in our culture long before a Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty and the integration of traditional Irish dance forms and ballet became a crucial issue as theatre dance developed. Joan Denise Moriarty's first works for Cork City Ballet were based on Irish themes and featured music by Irish composers. Her most successful production, The Playboy of the Western World for Irish National Ballet, was based on Synge's play and featured music by The Chieftains.

Policy makers were also more comfortable with ballets expressing "Irishness". Successive Arts Council reports, such as the The Dancer and the Dance (1985) report by Peter Brinson and the Arts Council's first Arts Plan (1995-1997) yearned for the development of an Irish theatre dance style that interacted with traditional dance forms. When debate around a national ballet company re-emerged in the 1990s, many believed that any company's relevance lay in its ability to "be Irish". Patrick Murray, who had worked with Moriarty at Irish National Ballet and was a member of the Arts Council at the time, said the company should be creating works with Irish composers and Irish choreographers that were relevant to Irish society. "Take The Playboy of the Western World," he said. "That was the one chosen by New York and Paris. It wasn't a cut-down Nutcracker with a scratch orchestra."

Cut-down Nutcrackers are now what are on offer. Ballet Ireland has emerged in the past four years as ballet's standard-bearer, producing a Swan Lake and now a Sleeping Beauty along with its Nutcracker. The company directors, Gunther Falusy and Anne Maher, previously directed Wiener Ballett Theatre and Ballet Ireland has reproduced that formula, down to recycling costumes from its old productions. Touring their performances extensively, to tape and often in non-proscenium spaces and small venues such as St Michael's in New Ross, falls a long way short of the normal scale expected for these classic works. The company will also produce more performances in Britain than in Ireland: Sleeping Beauty has 23 Irish performances and 34 British.

The Arts Council seems willing to embrace this vision and awards of €31,743 in 1999 and 2000 were followed by a three-year commitment of €665,000 from 2001 to 2003. The multi-annual award followed an extensive media campaign where Anne Maher suggested there was "a very real agenda against classical ballet in Merrion Square". Although the Arts Council has had an uneasy relationship with ballet, few think there is any agenda.

"Certainly I have no experience of it," says Alan Foley of Cork City Ballet, "but what is prevalent is an opinion that ballet is somehow dead, or at least a tired art form." This kind of thinking is fuelled by the lack of variety in the ballet repertoire in Ireland. Both Ballet Ireland and the visiting Christmas ballets in the Point Theatre present a constant fare of Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. This makes it easy to stereotype ballet as merely fairy tales and pretty costumes.

The reality is that innovation within the ballet vocabulary is thriving in many of the more economically viable middle-scale companies in Europe. But making ballet more contemporary is not the only way to develop the art.

Looking back through historical reconstructions of early ballets has re-invigorated thinking and broken old performing habits, rather in the same way as the authentic performance movement did to classical music.

So should we still aspire to having a full-time national ballet company in Ireland? "I don't think the audience is there to sustain that type of company," says Alan Foley. "A healthy dance culture should have all forms of dance but a full-time classical company certainly wouldn't be viable", agrees Catherine Nunes of International Dance Festival Ireland. "It would have to introduce more contemporary ballets and then there is also the whole issue around the lack of vocational dance training. When you add it up the resources needed for such a company are huge and it's difficult to see where that money can come from." Certainly the experience of Opera Ireland, which had to be bailed out by a one-off grant by the Arts Council earlier this year, points to the financial realities around resource-hungry art forms.

Anne Maher believes the Ballet Ireland formula can provide a full-time ballet company for Ireland. Next year it hopes to employ 10 full-time dancers although with income of a little over €200,000 from the Arts Council and €100,000 which she hopes they would make on box-office revenue, this seems optimistic. She also believes it can deliver an expanded repertoire although this is to be provided by allowing company members to choreograph new works rather than commissioning established choreographers.

Developing ballet is not that easy. It is multi-layered, needs honest appraisal and demands professionalism at every level. Early training, vocational training, professional opportunities, audience development and building resources are interdependent. Neither the Arts Council nor the ballet community seems to be strategically nurturing all these elements. Indeed, as certain contemporary companies thrive, there isn't even a vision of what ballet needs for the future.

A national ballet company is still regarded as the measure of success but it would be a shame if we ignored the lessons from our past and from the present international trends. This may mean re-evaluating certain yardsticks so that ballet can honestly find a place in Ireland's physical expression of its culture.

• Sleeping Beauty opens at Draíocht on Thursday and tours to National Concert Hall, Dublin; University Concert Hall, Limerick; Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny; Siamsa Tíre, Tralee; Glór, Ennis; Opera House, Cork; and Town Hall, Galway