New Talent is Welcome Here : The Royal Ballet of Britain is getting a reputation for being dancer-friendly, for home-grown as well as international talent. As a result, expect a new look and lots of drama

Everyone agrees that the Royal Ballet of Britain was revitalized after danseur noble Anthony Dowell took over as artistic director in 1986. Even so, the laurels have come with brickbats:

* Dowell was importing too many foreign dancers.

* He was letting standards slip in the works of Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan.

* He was changing the look of the company by bringing in Russian teachers in the company school.

Amid the charges, however, few people realized that under his direction the Royal was also becoming a haven for dancers who were disaffected with other companies and a nurturing ground for younger home-grown talent.

Buoyed by the success of this new group, Dowell simply shrugs off the negatives.

“Some of the critics in England feel this, but they do sort of live in the past,” Dowell said in a recent phone interview from Washington, where the Royal was dancing before its May 3-8 engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“But you can’t keep an art form frozen. Even though Fred (Ashton) created on certain people, he had other casts, who brought other things. We still try to preserve the line and speed, the use of the upper body--all he wanted. If it isn’t working, that’s someone else’s opinion.”

As for bringing in too many outsiders, Dowell said: “That sounds like I had a whole herd in. In fact, I brought in Irek (Mukhamedov), Zoltan (Solymosi), Sylvie (Guillem) is still a guest artist--and that’s it, really.

“But I grew up in a company (the Royal) that had guests in it. It seems terribly blinkered to me not to open the door to people who are very talented artists. It’s good for dancers to see and learn from them, and it’s interesting for the public as well.”

All three--former Bolshoi Ballet star Mukhamedov, the Hungarian Solymosi and Guillem of the Paris Opera Ballet--will be dancing in Orange County. Mukhamedov and Guillem are familiar to Southland audiences from previous appearances. But Solymosi will be new.

The 26-year-old Budapest native actually had no intention of ever joining another company after some bad experiences during his three-year stint at the Dutch National Ballet.

“Basically, I had personal problems with the director,” Solymosi said. “I decided to go free-lancing and did some open-end guesting in Munich and La Scala. I told myself I was never going to sign up with another company ever in my life. I did not want to sign with the Royal either. The first time I danced with them (in 1991) it was as a guest.

“Then I found some nice repertoire roles, like Rudolf in (MacMillan’s) ‘Mayerling’ and Basil in Baryshnikov’s ‘Don Quixote.’ I decided to sign a permanent contract. I haven’t regretted it so far.”

At least, not entirely. “They have a different style of dancing here,” he said. “The English school is so different from my Russian (training). In Budapest, we have the Vaganova school, which is real, pure Russian style. What I really find difficult is to place myself (according to the English style) in ballets. They give me corrections. Of course, they want me to look good. But that is what they believe in. I have my own school. Diplomatically, it’s difficult.

“But it’s worth it, “ he added. “I need the change. It’s important for an artist to have a wide view. You have to see and think through a lot of things. But for that you need to travel, to see different things, to decide what is good and not good, to refine your taste.”

Like other Royal dancers, Solymosi felt greatly influenced by working with choreographer Kenneth MacMillan before he died in 1992. “It was a great thing, a big part of my life to work with such an interesting choreographer,” Solymosi said. “Yes, he’s difficult to work with, but I didn’t care. Basically, great people are difficult to work with. If I’m interested in a role, a character and the piece that I’m doing, I accept it.”

MacMillan created his last ballet, “The Judas Tree,” Solymosi said, on Mukhamedov “and me. It’s one of my favorite roles.”

Mukhamedov, however, will be the only one of the two dancing the work in Orange County. Even so, Solymosi does not feel in the shadow of the great Russian.

“I worry about my own dancing,” he said. “That’s how you can get forward. Otherwise, if you worry about other people, it takes away from your own time.”

Leanne Benjamin, 29, who dances opposite Solymosi in “Mayerling,” also came to the Royal after unhappy experiences at other companies.

“This is my fourth company,” the native Australian said. “The first was Sadler’s Wells (now the Birmingham Royal Ballet). That was actually where I gained the most opportunity. Being very young and quite talented from the school, I had a lot of opportunities there. But it just wasn’t right.” Her technique and standards were slipping, she said.

“Peter Schaufuss had been trying to get me to join the Festival Ballet (later the English National Ballet) for years. I rang him one day after he had stopped asking and said, ‘I’m ready to come.’ ”

When Schaufuss moved to Berlin to take over the Deutsche Oper Ballet, Benjamin went with him. But things didn’t work out well there either.

“Berlin was very difficult for me,” she said. “The performances were very far and few. Opera takes preference over their ballets. I was on a two-year contract, but I left after one year and three months. I was really fed up with dancing.

“I stopped dancing for nine months before joining the Royal. I had a bit of an injury, so I stopped for quite a long time.”

MacMillan, who also had been director of the Berlin company from 1966 to 1968, understood her frustration and proved a catalyst in her career, as well.

“He persuaded Anthony to take me into the Royal,” Benjamin said. “He reset ‘Different Drummer,’ which he had done with Alessandra Ferri, on me. It was great. He lifted my inspiration, and I very quickly came back (physically).

“He wasn’t an easy man,” she added, “but he liked me. That made a huge difference. He was your typical artist. He couldn’t like everybody and be kind to everybody.”

Both Benjamin and Solymosi like MacMillan’s ballets for the opportunities they give dancers to express their “individuality.”

“That’s why I really enjoy doing his work,” she said. “With the classics, you need to have higher legs, bigger jumps, technically be better than the other person, although not lose the finesse and style. But standards are (always) rising. With his work, you can be totally individual, you can be unique.”

Said Solymosi: “I believe in the dramatic roles. Those are my main interest. I’m not crazy about technical things. To live your life to be able to do two more pirouettes . . . to worry, worry, worry about your arabesque--that’s too narrow for me.”

Cuban dancer Jose Manuel Carreno, 25, spent about 2 1/2 years at the English National Ballet, where he went after winning the Grand Prix at the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Miss., in 1990. And he, too, wasn’t entirely happy there.

“I did a lot of things there, but there were so many problems,” he said. “They changed directors all the time. So when I got this opportunity to join the Royal Ballet, I accepted it. Going to England, working in America or in England, had been one of my dreams. For the Cuban people, the political situation is so hard. So this is what I tried, to first get to England to develop. Now I am still here. I feel very happy here.”

Well, not entirely, as it turns out.

“When I was in the English National Ballet, it was a mixed company,” he said. “There were so many Italian and French people, and Cuban and Russian. It was very mixed. I really enjoyed that. The character and the atmosphere were great.

“Now in the Royal, I feel it’s a little bit harder. Almost all of them are English. I really can feel this difference in character. But we get along. It’s like a balance. In one way, I feel strange. But in another way, if I am learning, I feel OK.”

Carreno has two uncles who dance in the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, where he spent four years as a dancer. The youngest of two younger brothers also is studying dance. “Another dancer is coming,” he said.

Carreno will dance with Benjamin in Ashton’s “Thais” and “The Dream.” Although both he and Mukhamedov “dance the same roles,” he does not feel in his shadow or short-changed in dance opportunities.

“I have my temperament; Mukhamedov has his temperament,” Carreno said. “We dance how we are, even if we’re both doing the prince. That is where the difference between dancers is--just in how you are, the charisma, the temperament that you have. We can learn from each other. Even when I see Sylvie (Guillem), I can learn from her too. It’s good to see other people like Irek or Sylvie.

“Everything they give me, I take the opportunity and do it,” he said. “Maybe in 10 years I cannot say the same. But I think this is my time and my opportunity. I am getting what I want.”

Adam Cooper, 22, trained mostly outside the Royal Ballet system but felt the impact of Dowell’s decision to import Russian teachers when he entered the school at age 16.

“It was difficult,” he said. “For me, personally, it was a big adjustment because my classical training hadn’t been that. One of the biggest differences for me was the virtuosic element--huge allegro steps that I hadn’t done before, basically things like that.

“The level was so much greater anyway coming in from outside the system. Whoever I had been taught by, it would have been a great adjustment for me.

“But one of the good things, when I was at the school at my year, there were more of us from outside the Royal Ballet system than came in from the lower school. So we had a great atmosphere within the class. We all wanted to prove that we were as good as them, and I think we did.”

In fact, while he was a student, Cooper said, he “never thought I would be a classical ballet dancer. I didn’t think that was my best thing. I always thought I was better at modern dance than classical. Getting into the Royal Ballet (two years later) changed that opinion. And getting the roles I have done.

“I’ve been extremely lucky. Kenneth took a liking to me early on and gave me solo roles to do in his ballets when I was just 18. That gave me a tremendous boost and a lot of publicity.”

He said his rapid advancement to principal status--he will dance Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux” with Guillem--also got a boost from his height. “I’m about six foot,” he said. “That was another reason I’ve got on so quickly. I’m tall.

“People like Darcey Bussell and Sylvie, if one of their partners goes off, which has happened, they call on me. That’s how I started dancing with Sylvie. I did my first ‘Swan Lake’ with Darcey.”

Getting such major roles at his young age, he admitted, “was a shock. It was a great shock. But I don’t think too much about getting worked up about it. I put my mind to what I have to do and do it. I’ve never been that nervous about doing it--yet!”

Bruce Sansom, 30, came up through the Royal school before the Russians arrived, joining the company in 1982. He will dance Dowell’s role--Beliaev in Ashton’s “A Month in the Country”--in Orange County.

Like Cooper, Sansom, too, didn’t envision “getting as far as I have done, but then you never know how you are going to grow up and how your body is going to change and how you’re going to adapt to changes.

“I was very late to develop physically,” he said. “I was very slender, very slight. I was very immature physically. I hadn’t grown into my body, but also mentally I was immature in the lack of experience, but that is what all dancers suffer from.”

Still, he believes that his career has progressed steadily, “for which I’m grateful. By the time the foreign dancers started dancing in the company, I had been a principal for several years. So that wasn’t really a problem. I had done a lot of the repertoire that I still do.”

Even so, he believed he needed wider experience than he was getting, so he was a guest dancer with the San Francisco Ballet for a year in 1991. “I had reached a point where I wanted to see other dancers and work with other people,” he said.

“(The Royal) didn’t mind at all. It was a wonderful time. What I really enjoyed (about) working in America was the incredible enthusiasm that the dancers had.”

The oldest of the five dancers interviewed here, he feels the pressure of time in a way that they don’t. “There are certainly things I’d like to dance again which haven’t been in the repertoire for a while--MacMillan’s ‘Song of the Earth,’ very definitely. If we don’t do it again soon, I’ll be too old. It’s a great ballet. That goes for a few other works as well.

“In a sense, we all know there is an end to it all, but there’s a fascination in that as well--that you are convincing in what you’re doing regardless of your age. I don’t feel uncomfortable. It is a youthful vocation and will continue to get more and more so. But until you can see a 20-year-old giving as mature a performance as a 35- or a 40-year-old, then it’s not a problem. There’s room for both, and both can learn from each other.

“That’s what was so successful about the imports, the foreign dancers. You could sit back, watch and learn from them. Hopefully, they do the same in reverse.”