DIRECTING the disappearing dancers
AFTER their last performance of Cinderella at the Tsuen Wan Town Hall in February, Hongkong Ballet husband and wife Kitty Cheung and Asuka Mochizuki wearily boarded the bus hired to take the company home.
As always, the soloists settled into the front seat behind the driver. ''I've been doing that since I joined the Hongkong Ballet eight years ago,'' Cheung says. ''I tell the driver when to stop and let the dancers off. The problem is not all of the dancers speak Cantonese.'' That night a different problem presented itself. No sooner did artistic director Bruce Steivel arrive with his wife Amanda Olivier, than he demanded that Cheung and Mochizuki sit elsewhere. By then, says Cheung, she and her husband were eating a long-delayed meal and chose to ignore Steivel.
''He said 'move' again, telling us the front seats were for senior staff, not dancers. We reminded him we always sat there and he said: 'You're lying'.'' ''We said we would go home on the MTR and got off the bus. Bruce ran after us, screaming: 'If you don't get back on, you're fired. There will be no contracts next season'.'' ''In the end we got back on and sat in our usual seats. 'That's the last time,' Bruce said.'' Was that the incident the artistic director was referring to when, on May 14, he told the South China Morning Post, ''I had a problem back in February with two dancers who refused to take direction'', prompting him to note ''there's always one rotten apple in the barrel''? That was the day Bruce Steivel admitted six dancers had resigned and that he had fired five ''others'' - Cheung and Mochizuki, and corps de ballet members Doris Li, Allen Lam and Satan Yuen, as it turned out.
The American ex-dancer who succeeded Briton Garry Trinder as artistic head of the Hongkong Ballet 18 months ago, prefers not to discuss the bus incident, but claims that whenever there has been dissension in the company ''those two [Cheung and Mochizuki]have always been involved''.
Added to that, Steivel says: ''Asuka doesn't have a classical body and Kitty's a good little dancer, but too short and disappears on stage.'' Also deemed too short (''and very emotional'') are Doris Li, who joined the company four years ago and recent recruit Satan Yuen, while Allen Lam _ like Yuen, trained at the Academy for Performing Arts and hand-picked by Steivel _ ''is very capable, but basically a modern dancer''.
Leaving of their own accord are soloist Janine Ryan, coryphees (leading dancers) Miwa Horikawa and Shirley Loong, and corps de ballet members Annie Chan, Peggy Woo and Nicole Gaston.
To these departures can be added another three: local dancer Gary Chan, who according to a company member, had a ''big bust-up with Bruce just before The Nutcracker'', Briton Mark Heston and Japanese dancer Osamu Yamani.
''Osamu didn't even bother to put in his notice,'' says the dancer. ''He just sent a fax which said something like, 'I can't stand dancing in this company any more. Goodbye'.'' What provoked this contemptuous act? With more than a third of the 34-strong company going or gone and rumours running hot that several others are poised to quit, a better question might be: is Hongkong's only professional ballet company falling apart? OFFICIALLY it's in great shape. According to Steivel, box office has grown appreciably in the past 12 ''very successful'' months and he points proudly to the good houses and receptive audiences enjoyed by major productions including Cinderella and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Also successful was the Hongkong Ballet's first American tour in March, while the company's May 14 announcement that seven APA graduates, plus ''six other talented dancers from overseas'' had been recruited ''reflects the Hongkong Ballet's intention to constantly enhance its professional level by regular infusions of fresh talent''.
So much for the gloss. Behind the scenes, the talk is bitter and disillusioned, with the private consensus being that while Steivel is a good teacher, he is out of his depth as an artistic director and choreographer.
Shirley Loong typifies the gulf. ''A beautiful dancer until suddenly, she seemed to give up. I just can't understand what happened,'' says Steivel.
Explains Loong, who has decided to abandon dancing and study business management in Vancouver: ''I used to love ballet and felt it was a great art. Now it's become a job without challenge. The last production I was proud to be in was The Tales of Hoffmann.'' The lush Peter Darrell ballet was Trinder's swansong and won rave reviews _ a fitting farewell to the man credited with acquiring a world-class repertoire for the Hongkong Ballet, even if he did have trouble convincing the board that the expense was warranted.
In March 1992, the new broom swept in with Dance At A Glance _ Steivel's choreographic debut in Hongkong _ comprising three works: Fest Polonnaise, In Your Hands and Good Times.
At the time, criticisms of the works enraged Steivel. Today he admits ''it was my mistake to put three things of my own in the same programme'', but feels ''the technical side let me down''.
A more serious let-down came a year later, though you wouldn't have known it from a press release on April 28. Hongkong Dazzles US Audiences, read the headline. ''One of our most exciting projects yet,'' was how Steivel decribed the two-week American tour.
''The dancers felt they danced very well and felt good about themselves . . . in fact they received standing ovations in New London [Connecticut] and Stanford, California.'' If dance critics can be believed, what transpired in Stanford was, as Allan Ulrich of the San Francisco Examiner reported, ''a wholesale exodus from the auditorium'' after one of the three pieces, while ''the applause, at best, was muted''.
''Ballet doesn't get more tepid than this,'' Ulrich said of Vicente Nebrada's A Handel Celebration. Faring better was Choo San Goh's Unknown Territory, though Steivel's Good Times was ''alarmingly dated'' and ''painfully naive''.
Steivel is not too bothered by his more caustic critics - ''they always put down visiting companies to protect the San Francisco Ballet'' - but concedes the tour was badly timed and organised.
''Originally, I wanted to take a full-length work and a triple bill,'' he reveals. ''When things got cut down, we should have pulled out.
''I wanted to go because I'm American and this was our first American tour. My ego got in the way; my mistake.'' Steivel's candour is disarming and unsettling. It's hard to know what to make of this artistic director who, in a letter to the South China Morning Post last August, vigorously defended two male recruits as being ''no shorter than the company norm'', yet has now sacked one for not being tall enough.
And what about Kitty Cheung and Doris Li? If they're too short, where does that leave principals Stella Lau and Anthony Huynh - both tiny dancers - and several girls who are only marginally taller? Steivel maintains that ''talent, that star quality'' makes the difference. That doesn't wash, says a company member. ''Not everyone in a company can be a star. It's also a fact of life that most Chinese dancers are short and slight in build, and that's especially true of the girls. If anyone stands out because of her height, it's Tania.'' The corps de ballet member in question is Steivel's 18-year-old daughter _ the tallest girl in the Hongkong Ballet. Also contributing her talents recently was wife Amanda Olivier whose Pieces of People was performed last November.
Olivier's choreographic debut with the ballet is not remembered fondly. ''We had to work in a different studio at the Cultural Centre . . . and it had a terrible floor laid on concrete,'' recalls a dancer.
''That was bad enough, but Amanda had us repeating everything again and again, and the men suffered a lot of injuries. All the time it was 'No talking, pay attention', as if we were kindergarten kids, not professionals.'' Of deeper concern is Olivier's position as head of ballet at the APA. ''My job and Bruce's are entirely separate,'' she says. ''We don't cross wires and I don't discuss my affairs with him.'' Olivier's stance begs the question: is her fear of arousing charges of nepotism working against both the Hongkong Ballet and its chief source of young talent? After all, who is in a better position to advise and guide the artistic director? THE man who had that management responsibility hit the headlines last August. Anthony Wraight, it transpired, had defected to the Soviet Union in 1956 when he was with the Royal Air Force, and been jailed for three years following his return to the UK.
Wraight's departure left a vacuum which won't be filled till September when Darwin Chen, Secretary of Buildings and Lands, comes in as executive director.
Dancers' salaries and other remunerations are likely to be near the top of the list marked Grievances. When Bruce Steivel arrived, he introduced the pecking order generally used by only tradition-bound giants such the Paris Opera Ballet.
Overnight, the dancers became principals, soloists, coryphees and corps de ballet. Furthermore, each rank had three levels of seniority reflected in salaries.
''When I joined,'' Steivel says, ''there were two categories - local and overseas - with the foreign dancers not only getting a housing allowance, but more pay than the locals. True, the allowances were small, but we scrapped them. I don't accept that just because you're local, you should be expected to live with your family.
''The salary structure was even more complicated than it is now and often unfair. You had situations like a foreign corps de ballet member making as much as a local soloist. As for the three levels, I felt there had to be room for initiative.'' In practice, say dancers, the system has bred deep discord, with promotion and pay influenced more by favouritism than ability or years of service.
''Overtime has been a big problem,'' notes a member. ''We had a meeting about that with Bruce on the last day of Cinderella and he got very angry.
''He said: 'This is not a democratic company.' It was a very upsetting meeting. Maybe that's why he was in such a bad mood on the bus.'' Someone with intimate knowledge of the Hongkong Ballet is Roger Bushby Sansom, technical director during the tenure of Wraight's predecessor, Michael Coad. As Sansom sees it, a deliberate hierarchy is not only unsuitable for a company the size of the Hongkong Ballet, but has destroyed the old camaraderie.
''In my time,'' he recalls, ''everyone pitched in and senior dancers never minded joining say, the corps, if an extra body was needed. Now the attitude is: not my job.
''For real dedication you couldn't beat Doris Li, Kitty Cheung and Stella Lau. Those three routinely stayed behind learning as many roles as they could and Garry always knew he could depend on them if someone was ill or injured.
''I feel very sad about what's happened. My feeling is that the company has missed its chance. By now, the Hongkong Ballet should have been the regional leader and touring regularly. I also believe that if another classical company were to open in Hongkong it would succeed immediately.'' In the absence of a local rival, a neighbouring one which has made no secret of its desire to be Asia's No 1, has been quick to swoop.
''The Singapore Dance Company has invited me and Asuka to join and we've accepted,'' says Kitty Cheung. The word is that others will be heading for the Lion City before long.
