DANCE : Royal Ballet Revitalized by Dowell’s Guidance

A decade ago, the consensus on the Royal Ballet was that it was in the doldrums. Artistic standards for the premier British company had dropped, and the company was beset with financial and management problems.

All that seems to have been turned around, though. It’s a revitalized Royal that is touring the United States these days, critics say. The company’s engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa through Sunday is part of the Royal’s first U.S. tour in eight years.

Credit for the change goes to Anthony Dowell, who took over the Royal in 1986 after more than three decades of setting the standards for male dancers as a member of that company.

“Every company goes through ups and downs,” Dowell said in a recent phone interview from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, where the company was finishing its season before it would travel to Miami, Austin, Tex., and Costa Mesa. “It’s not possible to keep it at a peak all the time. You’re dealing with human beings.”

Dowell, 48, credits the company’s renewal to his policy of inviting into the company international artists such as Sylvie Guillem, formerly with the Paris Opera Ballet, and Irek Mukhamedov, formerly of the Bolshoi Ballet, as well as to nurturing younger dancers.

For the Orange County performances, Mukhamedov is dancing, but Guillem isn’t. “Sylvie Guillem is a resident guest artist, Dowell said, “but is still a guest artist. With her scheduling,” the Orange County dates “just didn’t work out. It’s as simple as that.”

Dowell said that bringing in the guests “did cause unrest” in the troupe because “when another star appears on the horizon, all artists can tend to feel threatened.”

“It doesn’t make me that popular in certain circles, but as director, I can’t please everyone all the time,” he said. “The other dancers need to learn to use it in a positive way.”

Of the younger dancers, Dowell said he feels he is “blessed with good crop of talent that’s now just starting to blossom.”

Although some critics have focused on Viviana Durante and Darcey Bussell, Dowell said that he doesn’t “want to single anyone out.

“There’s always someone who feels left out if they’re not mentioned,” he said. “I like the dancers to be discovered.”

Not all of the past five years has been rosy for the director, however, as he is quite willing to admit. Several times he called his position “this impossible job.”

For one thing, Dowell has been accused of being a remote and reticent director. “Dancers are probably the ones who say that,” he said. “Certainly, there I am wearing the director’s hat. That can’t help but change you in their eyes. You’ve become the director and are controlling their lives.

“In an ideal world, I would have gone away from the company and then come in (as director). That’s in an ideal world. Life is not like that.”

He also has been accused of mounting repertory that still permits him to continue dancing.

For instance, in Orange County he is dancing Kulygin in “Winter Dreams,” a role choreographer Kenneth MacMillan created for him. “I asked him if he were sure there was no one else to dance it,” Dowell said of MacMillan. “He told me, ‘Anthony, there is no one else I want to do it.’ It was pleasant (the ballet) was so well received. Maybe it broke through that barrier.”

Nevertheless, he has passed on to other dancers many roles he made famous.

Perhaps worst of all, however, is the charge that Dowell has diluted the English style of ballet by bringing in guest dancers trained in other traditions and by shifting the training of the company more toward Russian-style bravura.

“I don’t think that in fact there has been a major change, because that’s where our basic language comes from,” he said. “That’s how I was taught. We all use the same vocabulary.”

Besides, he added, “I believe the way people dance is strongly influenced by their own nationality.”

“But another strong influence, if a company is fortunate, is having a strong (choreographic) creative force,” he said. “Dancers are molded by how the creative force wants them to look.”

Even there, however, Dowell has been attacked for favoring a select few choreographers, among them the young (34) David Bintley, resident choreographer at the Royal. Dowell said it is a matter of husbanding resources.

“There never was a glut of choreographers with any great creative force or talent; that’s what makes them special,” he said. “They’re rare breeds. What is hard now is that most of the major choreographers are with their own companies. They’re loath to take the plunge, to come into the midst of a new company and create for them . . . .

“And with the logistics of our time in the (Royal) Opera House . . , there are not that many slots for new ballets. If I am blessed with a resident choreographer, I’d rather they did their works for us rather than having them go elsewhere.”

From Dowell’s point of view, the real danger for the future is that “the younger dancers are not that interested in . . . why they’re there on stage” in terms of dramatic motivation.

“You have to catch the bug of this business to be really part of it,” he said. “If there’s a natural talent, I try to nurture it, try to pass on all one felt. But generations change. One tries to find a language to communicate with them. But life in all aspects has changed.”

Still, he is not altogether unsatisfied. “Yes, starting this year, I’m starting to see things that are pleasing to me,” Dowell said. “But it would be wrong to sit back and say, ‘I’ve done it.’ I will continue to fight for what one believes in--in stretching the dancers.”

* The Royal Ballet of Great Britain will dance “Swan Lake” and other works through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $20 to $65. Information: (714) 556-2787.