It has been more than four decades since Kenneth MacMillan choreographed Mayerling, one of his most enduring ballets, but his wife Deborah still has vivid memories of the creation. “Total neurosis on the part of Kenneth,” she recalls. “He was always in a state when he was making something.”
Mayerling (1978) is a seamy beast of a ballet centred on Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, who died with his teenaged lover in 1889. MacMillan steeped himself in the history and Liszt’s music, but built the choreography in rehearsal. “The only preparation he ever did at home was listening to the scores,” Deborah says. “Over and over and over – he knew the music inside out. I never saw him make diagrams or notes.” Did he test steps at home? “God no, he was sitting watching television. He never got up and did anything.”
MacMillan died in 1992, during a revival of Mayerling by the Royal Ballet. The sumptuously involving work has become one of the company’s jewels, offering dancers vividly expressive opportunities. But without MacMillan to oversee it, how do you preserve the ballet’s spirit? Can you maintain the beating heart when its creator is no longer present?
“Kenneth never expected it to be set in aspic,” Deborah maintains. “Every single cast has to find their own way through.” Yet knowing how far to interpret is a delicate art. “I feel very protective,” she admits, “because as time has gone by the assumption is that certain bits are up for grabs. People forget Kenneth was very specific what those characters were about.”
Edward Watson is perhaps the most celebrated recent Rudolf, his anguish almost palpable. MacMillan died while Watson was still a student, but he had seen David Wall, who originated the role, teach dancers including Jonathan Cope (later his own coach), and immersed himself in the story by visiting Vienna. Wall offered a stamp of approval. “He rang me and said: ‘I’m happy, you’re doing it your way.’ It was nice to have that little blessing.”
Watson himself is now in the position to pass on information and blessings – having retired from performing last year, he is coaching several of this season’s principal casts as a new generation tackles Rudolf. “I don’t ever want to dictate. It’s how I found my way into the role: go for it, show me what you’re feeling, and I’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. It always comes back to the steps and the story they have to tell: that’s my main responsibility.”
That story is a searing one: Rudolf, running from responsibility, loses himself in sex and drugs. “I got better in the role as I went along,” says Watson, “finding the sadness within his situation, rather than immediately revealing him as this mad monster.” Rudolf confronts the women in his life in complex pas de deux: mother, bride, mistresses past and present. “You have to hand yourself over to the choreography and to the person interpreting each character, ready for what happens in that moment.”
Mayerling makes punishing demands on a dancer’s stamina. “I made that mistake early on,” Watson admits, “I gave it all away in like the first 15 minutes and then I thought I was going to die. Now I advise people to pace themselves. Remember you’ve got two more acts to go – don’t give everything away.”
Despite putting such a memorable stamp on the role, Watson is happy to hand it on. “I thought I’d be more prickly about it,” he says. “But I’ve realised I am so proud of being part of that work, and of the fact that it has a life beyond me.” Deborah agrees: “It’s the most incredibly generous thing – people who do really good coaching are handing over something that they might have felt at one point they owned. They want somebody much younger to do as well as, if not better, than they did. That’s a wonderful culture to be part of.”
A notator sits alongside the coach in rehearsal, because for Deborah the ballet bible is the Benesh Movement Notation, which records movement like a musical score. It’s more reliable than memory or even film. “Nothing happens without the Benesh notation,” she declares. “The minute Kenneth saw it was an accurate way of writing down every single movement, it freed him up. I encourage ex-dancers to learn notation because they then have the authority to say: don’t do that, do this. The bottom line is: don’t watch the old videos until you’ve learned the steps.”
So the people now passing on Mayerling feel protective of the ballet rather than possessive? “Exactly. That’s it in a nutshell,” Deborah says. “It’s about taking care of the information,” Watson adds, “a huge responsibility. Particularly with MacMillan, because it looks so free, as if they’ve just come up with it in the moment. But his genius is that it was carefully worked out to make you believe that. Musically, technically, there’s a huge amount of precision.”
Deborah, famously no pushover, is with her daughter Charlotte, the final arbiter of the afterlife of MacMillan’s ballets (“I have the row if the row is to be had”), but she enjoys seeing them through new eyes. “It’s the only way these ballets will stay alive,” Deborah says. “If they’re taught as if they were in aspic they’ll die.”
“You can read the imprint of the original creators on ballets which have lasted,” Watson concludes. “You want to be honest to the DNA of it. It looks different on everybody’s bodies, but if the intention is there and honest that’s all you can hope for.”
