words yvonne teh

bc finds out why the HK Ballet changed the colour of the French flag

“I’m not stuck on flags in particular,” John Meehan says in his surprisingly small office overlooking a studio of dancers practising pliés and port de bras. We are in the HK Cultural Centre ostensibly talking about HK Ballet’s contribution to Le French May, but the conversation drifts off to wine and sex when I challenge the ballet’s company’s Artistic Director to name the first five things that come to his mind when he thinks of France. With a laugh he excuses himself by blaming French movies – “When I was young they were the racy ones” -– and goes on to also list fashion, food and, finally, “egalitarianism – because I have just finished watching something about Robespierre.”

And so with égalité – and liberté and fraternité – we are back to le tricolore, the blue, white and red symbol of France and inspiration for the HK Ballet’s Tricolor, a ‘mixed bill’ of three ballets drawn from the repertoire, each reflecting one of the flag’s colours in its title. The ‘red’ of the trio, George Balanchine’s Rubies, is obvious, not only for the colour of the gemstone but because Meehan originally intended to stage Balanchine’s three-part celebration of the Golden Age of dance, Jewels, for Le French May. In the end, out of the three Diamonds, Emeralds and Rubies, the last was the only survivor of that idea. Perhaps less obvious is Serge Lifar’s Suite en Blanc (and the supplementary White Swan Pas de Deux) for white and, even more obscure, Antony Tudor’s Jardin aux Lilas (Lilac Garden) standing a little off colour for blue.
 
Meehan tells me that the legendary Russian ballet impressario, Sergei Diaghilev, was the first to excite audiences with ballet mixed bills in Paris about 100 years ago. “You saw so much more,” he says. “You didn’t see just one story, you saw three. You didn’t see just one or two lead dancers, you saw many more. You heard different varieties of music, you saw different kinds of design. So it was a real feast!” And that, presumably, is what he is laying out with this programme of three stylistically very different ballets and four lead ballerinas – guest artists Tan Yuan Yuan and Sofiane Sylve along with the HK Ballet’s Faye Leung and Jin Yao.

Mentioning Diaghilev makes Meehan’s choice of Rubies even more compelling as Balanchine was, of course, part of the great Russian’s famous troupe, the Ballets Russes, based in Paris. But that is not only why Meehan is so enthusiastic about Balanchine’s masterwork. Composed by Igor Stravinsky as marriage of jazz and dance, it is a “ballet with a real twist” which makes enormous demands on the dancers. “It looks like it’s totally extemporaneous, that people are just making it up on the spot!” says Meehan. “The counting is so crazy! The rhythm of Stravinsky’s music will change very quickly. So the dancers need to be totally on top of that because it’s got to look like the dancers know when the music is changing.”

Suite en Blanc, on the other hand, Meehan describes as a good, old-fashioned ballet. Although this work and the lively Rubies date back to within just 30 years of each other, the choreographer, Kiev-born Lifar, most wanted to show off the technique of his company, the Paris Opera. So, Meehan says, he used neo-classical motifs. Suite en Blanc has parts for over 30 dancers in contrast to Rubies’ 15 (and Jardin aux Lilas’s 12). “It’s a very big ballet,” he points out. “It’s got most of the company in it. And there’s some very, very showy dancing, some spectacular dancing.” The work is a favourite of the Australian Ballet and, Meehan, who originally hails from Brisbane, laughs as he signs it off as “a big, fabulous dessert. It’s like a Bombe Alaska!”    
 
Finding a ballet for the colour blue was the most difficult. In choosing ballets that would programme well together, Meehan had to make sure they neither repeated each other nor were too discordant. He knows of a couple of ballet titles that mention blue – including one by Suite en Blanc’s Lifar – but they are not performed very much anymore and, in the end, he did a bit of mental colour mixing and blue became lilac.
 
In that way he could honour the choreographer Antony Tudor, whose centenary year this is, by staging his Jardin aux Lilas. “It was important for me that we put him into this programme,” admits Meehan, “I actually worked with him and I dance in his ballet.”

Outside of such personal considerations though, the 58-year-old ballet man – who self-deprecatingly suggests, “I’m so old that I have a personal connection with everyone!” – thinks Tudor is under-rated and his strongest works, of which Jardin aux Lilas is one, are quite extraordinary.

“In a way, the ballet is secondary to the story and the music [by Ernest Chausson],” says Meehan, noting that the choreography is strikingly spare. “What’s interesting about the piece is how the story fits the music, and how you feel for the woman as she says goodbye to the person she really loves.” In an age where ballets are more and more about bodies and less about people, this, he says, focuses on people and ensures that emotion and drama, rather than sheer technique, make it enthralling.
 
At one point in our conversation, Meehan had talked about how ballet’s attraction ultimately “comes down to aesthetics. I mean, to see a grown woman in a tutu standing on point is something you either love or not love.” At the same time, he emphasizes that even while the perfectly poised ballerina may well be the archetypal image of his dance form, that is not all ballet is. The Tricolor programme may not be cutting edge, yet it contains enough to convince people that ballet can be far more diverse and entertaining than they often imagine. On top of which, says Meehan, “When anything is done well, it’s always surprising how good it can be.” 
 
The HK Ballet will present Tricolor from June 13 to 16 at the HK Cultural Centre’s Grand Theatre. The evening performances of this Le French May programme will commence at 7:30pm while the June 14 and 15 matinees will begin at 2:30pm. Tickets are priced from $1,000 to $150 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.