David Bintley on his Sylvia reworking

22 October 2008

'It's one of those pieces of music that everybody knows,' says David Bintley, Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, 'especially if you’re interested in ballet at all. I had an old record with the Coppélia suite on one side and the Sylvia suite on the other, and it was great music. Great music, but a silly story!'

In 1993, David sought to address the faults in the story of Sylvia that had hindered the efforts of so many choreographers before him. The resulting ballet was a bright and breezy affair, but the plot was still not tight enough for David's liking. After over 15 years, he is finally reworking the ballet before it returns to the stage in spring 2009.

'I always intended to bring the piece back,' reveals David. 'I've been watching it over the years, planning what stays in and what comes out. Everything that I think was good and positive about the piece will remain, including a lot of the choreography.

'This is part of the reason why now is the right time to do it again,' he explains, 'because it's bloody hard. I made it on Miyako Yoshida, and literally at one point I was thinking "can I find something that she can't do?!" So it really became a monster role. Some other dancers had a crack at it, but no-one really came close to Miyako. But I think this time round we'll have a lot more people who are up to it. Sylvia is far and away the biggest role in the ballet and I think we have a few girls who will really have a good go at it, Nao Sakuma in particular.

'Also, I think we have a much better corps de ballet. Unusually, for me, this is very much a women's ballet, with a vast group of huntresses who have the two best and biggest corps pieces. When I initially made the piece the Company wasn't very strong in terms of its volume of men, so I made it pretty much on the women, and that remains the case apart from the leading roles and a handful of pirates.

The ballet is based upon the story of a young man, Amynta, and a nymph, Sylvia, who fall in love. As in all the best mythological tales, they then find themselves beset by a host of challenges: Sylvia's 'boss' Diana disapproves of their union, Amynta gets promptly shot by an arrow, and Sylvia is randomly kidnapped by the hunter Orion, and later, pirates. All great ingredients for an adventure, but possibly a little scattershot. With David's earlier version of the ballet going some way to streamlining the convoluted plotline, his main focus this time round will be on further developing the characters.

'I originally wanted to provide characters that have real warmth and can really warm the audience,' he explains. 'I didn't do that entirely successfully in the first version I did, but this time I think I'll get closer to that, and make it a sparkling comedy with heart!'

While David still feels there is room for improvement, he is happy with the work already done on the ballet. 'On the whole, I was very happy with it,' he says of the 1992 version. 'We've not done it again until now more by accident than design because we’ve just had other fish to fry.'

'It's very interesting what the difference is between something being perceived as a success and not,' the Director ponders. 'And often that can be very small. I think that Beauty and the Beast is a far, far tighter ballet for the tiny 10% or so that I've changed since the opening night. These ballets are so big, that they all become a entire labour of love - you wouldn’t embark on something that takes such a chunk out of your life if you didn't have such a strong belief in it!

'Unless you really made a mistake and there was some fundamental flaw in a new ballet, they should all be looked at again - they cost a lot of money! So while 75% of this show will remain the same, it is the 25% or so that I'll be reworking which will make a big difference to the ballet as a whole.'

David openly admits that with a piece of such scale, you can never know how it will look until the day you finally get the dancers, sets, costumes and musicians all together in the auditorium for the first time. Often this is only a few days before the ballet opens, and so pressure can be high.

'When something's entirely new, you can't ever possibly tell how the final product will look,' he says. 'And you get so involved personally that you can lose perspective. You can end up nervously looking round at the people around you and testing the atmosphere - and sniffing for that first feeling of gloom, which is the worst smell in the world!'

Ultimately David says the success of a piece relies on one thing.

'There is a broad consensus on a piece, which may or may not include the critics as to whether or not it works,' he explains, 'which is what an audience thinks of it. They're the ones that kept Beauty and the Beast going despite the fact that I was unhappy with certain sections of it for quite a long time. They liked it, and they kept coming back, and they supported it, which gives you the momentum to keep persevering.

'It was De Valois who said that to me – she quite pragmatically said that if something doesn't work, then of course you keep working at it. There are some things that admittedly are never going to work and it might not be worth the time, obviously. But I do believe that you shouldn't squander the resources that you put into a piece - not just the physical things like the sets and costumes, but the time and effort as well.

'That's why I've kept Sylvia there in storage all this time, because I've known that at some point I wanted to bring it back, and I absolutely think that this is the right time to do that!'

ENDS