Buckle at the Ballet

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For sixteen years, from 1959 to 1975, Richard Buckle's articles in the Sunday Times were the most eagerly awaited and passionately perused ballet criticism in the English-speaking world. Before that he had written for the Observer and for his own magazine Ballet. Although most of the pieces included in this book are from the Sunday Times, a few date from as far back as the mid-1940s: this anthology is therefore the harvest of thirty-five years' ballet going. The qualities which brought Buckle a wide readership beyond the specialist circle of balletomanes were undoubtedly his wit and humour. Most weeks his column could be relied upon for a laugh, for some unexpected burst of fantasy or for an unexpected comic twist to a shrewd opinion. Yet Buckle himself always counted it a blessing that he was not tied down to writing a humorous article every week, for the enforced jocularity of the professional comedian soon grows wearisome, and after a year or two nobody wants to read him any more. Everyone always wanted to read Buckle. In addition, Richard Buckle had a knack for putting his finger on a ballet's strong point or weak spot, for extracting the essence of a work and expressing it in evocative prose. Prose, however, is not all this book contains. Buckle's 'occasional verse', some of it published for the first time, also finds a place in this book. The author can parody Shakespeare in blank verse as well as he can write heroic couplets and ballads, or can encapsulate the book of Genesis in a limerick. Perhaps Buckle's most important work was as a talent-spotter and prophet of new forms. He was the first to champion Balanchine when the New York City Ballet came to London in 1950, but this did not prevent him from acclaiming Martha Graham's very different kind of dance four years later. For a quarter of a century, as editor and exhibition designer, Richard Buckle worked with some of the outstanding artists of the day, and some of them have illustrated this book.