Bryony Brind

in conversation with Patricia Linton

BRYONY BRIND: The very first performance I ever saw was Swan Lake with [Svetlana] Beriosova, and then the second one was [Margot] Fonteyn with [Rudolf] Nureyev, actually, in The Sleeping Beauty. And I remember writing to her, and she actually wrote back to me! It was very exciting, but I didn’t sit down the whole of the performance of Swan Lake at all. Mummy kept saying, “Sit down! Sit down!”, and I didn’t. I was absolutely mesmerised. And when the flowers were thrown at the end, that was it. I said that’s what… I want… the only reason I want to be a dancer because I wanted flowers thrown at me.

PATRICIA LINTON: You’re just joining the company September [19]78. It was full, still, of stars from the 1960s. How did you find it?

BRYONY BRIND Well, I was quite enamoured, really. I mean my eyes grew bigger than my face looking at everybody. And, actually, the first class walking in when you were standing next to people like [Natalia] Makarova and Merle Park and even Fonteyn as well, [I] was just… I was so starstruck and didn’t spend a minute when I wasn’t in the rehearsal room with my nose glued to the window watching them all. So, consequently, I became rather a competent tea lady, ‘cos they all wanted tea from the canteen.

PATRICIA LINTON: Were you aware of the legacy of Fonteyn?

BRYONY BRIND: Oh, without a doubt. And I think one of the enormous things that I remember about watching her dance were her eyes. She had the cheekiest, most fantastic eyes and especially in The Sleeping Beauty… [sings] dee-da-dee-da-dee-da etc… I mean she was just… they just became… they just lit up, you know? They were wonderful! And I think the charisma that came out of her with those beautiful, beautiful cats’ eyes that she had.

PATRICIA LINTON: Did you have a particular inspiration at that particular time?

BRYONY BRIND: No, just the fact that I was there was. And… It was rather like a dream, and I just still had that sort of workaholic feeling, you know? Watching and trying to learn and listening. And I was told it was a good idea just to learn a couple of these solos just in case – you never know. Which is what happened to me in the first case when in The Four Seasons when Vergie Derman was off, Deanne Bergsma was off, they were all off and they needed… must have been [the] Winter [section], mustn’t it?

PATRICIA LINTON: This is a Kenneth MacMillan ballet?

BRYONY BRIND: Kenneth MacMillan, The Four Seasons. Must have been Winter. Anyway, I mean, I hadn’t done anything else and I was suddenly… Kenneth just suddenly said, “I’ll have her to do it tomorrow night”. Then I had to do a crash course in learning that. That was terrifying going on in that, I have to say.

PATRICIA LINTON: So, in fact you were totally immersed in it right from the start?

BRYONY BRIND: Absolutely completely and utterly mesmerised by the whole thing. I lived, ate, slept, even in the holidays. You know, there wasn’t a day I didn’t do exercises when we went home. Didn’t stop. Didn’t stop in my own way.

PATRICIA LINTON: So, you were doing corps de ballet roles?

BRYONY BRIND: Yes.

PATRICIA LINTON: Beginning to learn solo roles?

BRYONY BRIND: Yes.

PATRICIA LINTON: And then when you’re in the corps de ballet you did Swan Lake.

BRYONY BRIND: Yes. Yeah. That was a bit strange, actually, because Gerd Larsen and, um…

PATRICIA LINTON: Jill Gregory?

BRYONY BRIND: Yes, Jill. They were always moaning that, you know, my leg was higher than [other] people, you know, at the corps de ballet. I had to lower my legs. It’s awful, because I’ve always danced with just sort of stretching everything to the fullest. And I never really, kind of, you know… if it was higher, then it was higher. And if it wasn’t, then it wasn’t. It was just the way I felt that whatever I did, I did to the utmost. And then they said that I had to, because my legs were much thinner than anybody else in the corps de ballet, that I had to wear three pairs of tights. Which, to me, defeated the purpose because I used to sweat it so much, my legs probably got thinner having to wear as many pairs of tights. I was jolly uncomfortable; I can tell you that.

And then this bombshell came out of the blue when I was in the canteen. And Derek Deane, who had been making cups of tea for… for a rather long time came up and punched me on the arm and said, “We’re dancing Swan Lake together next season”. And I said, thinking, “Well, we do every other night”. Anyway, thinking it [was] this. He said, “No. Take a look, take a look at that.” And the throw-away was… then there it was: 21st of March, Brind /Deane. Must be a misprint!

PATRICIA LINTON: Did you know the ballet already? 

BRYONY BRIND: No, no. No, I knew Swan Lake, Act II the solo because I’d done that at my school performance. But other than that, I didn’t know anything at all. So, I really learned from scratch. Michael Somes was my primary teacher for it. Coach. And he insisted I had half a glass of Guinness and a Mars Bar before I started. He said it would be much easier when you haven’t had the Guinness… really?! But no, he was the taskmaster. He really took me through it. I mean it was, it was… he was fantastic, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for the way that he… he didn’t let up on anything.

PATRICIA LINTON: What was special about how he prepared you?

BRYONY BRIND: One of the things which people used to rant and rave at me when I first got into the company was that I wasn’t “English” enough. I looked too “Russian”. Which thwarted me because I thought, well, I couldn’t be more “English” because I spent my whole training at The Royal Ballet School. Everything I’ve done has been training to be “English”. Just, my limbs were long. I think I extended, you know, extended probably a bit too high. Other than just having an arabesque like that, that I would take my arm a little higher and my leg would go up, much to my chagrin because quite often my tutu would then get hooked onto my headdress, because, as Michael said, “Told you so, it’s far too high. Can’t you be more ‘English’?” And it’s stuck in my head.

PATRICIA LINTON: Did you feel you had to change anything?

BRYONY BRIND: No, but I find that I found it quite difficult to draw myself in. Because my total feeling about dancing has always been to open up, and to give as much as I possibly could. And to hold back in any way, whether it be extensions, whether it be anything to do with not being yourself, just being out of yourself and working away into the audience’s hearts, really. I mean, I think that was the most important thing that I ever felt about doing anything. So, I found that quite hard to discipline myself to think “90 degrees”.

PATRICIA LINTON: And you found you had to do that?

BRYONY BRIND: Well, he was very adamant that, you know… For instance, in the pas de deux, Second Act, after the turns, that it was two very slow ones, (which all changed when I did it at the end of my career because everybody was going, four, and then going into an arabesque up there)… two really slow ones into a perfect 90 degrees.

PATRICIA LINTON: And then which did you prefer?

BRYONY BRIND: Well, I suppose I probably enjoyed my freedom with my expression more at the end, but I was… I was being taught and I was… I was doing what I was told.

PATRICIA LINTON: So, you were being prepared at this early stage by a man.

BRYONY BRIND: Yes.

PATRICIA LINTON: Would you like to, at any point, to have been prepared by a woman? And, if so, who?

BRYONY BRIND: Well, I did have Gerd… Gerd Larsen took a few rehearsals, and I was absolutely bowled over when she said to me, “Now,” she said, “Margot Fonteyn is coming in tomorrow to watch, and make you more ‘English’”. And she [Fonteyn] came in and I was made to do the whole thing. She didn’t say anything at all. I could see a couple of little tears coming down her [face] and she looked at Gerd and said, “What do you want me to say?” And Gerd said, “Well, she’s not doing it right,” and she said, “She is. She’s doing it exactly right for her.” And I just… I couldn’t believe it.

But then she started saying, “Well, you could actually move a bit more across that to that side of the stage.” But nothing technical, nothing expression-like, nothing like that, that she’d say to criticise me in any form or fashion. Just little things to think about that might just help, you know?

She said that, you know, you [as Odette] were spellbound by Rothbart, you know, so when he was in your presence you were just completely under his spell; and that was quite interesting to think about, actually, because it’s quite easy to portray the relationship between the Swan and Rothbart as being when she has broken the spell she’s, she’s back to a princess and full of hatred for the man. But, of course, as soon as he’s there, she’s not. She’s under his spell, so, in fact, there’s almost a love affair going on between the two of them. And also, as I was talking about her eyes and things like that, the sort of playfulness in the Third Act solo. Playing with the prince and chatting up everybody else around as well to try and convince everybody, because that… that play is so important.

PATRICIA LINTON: And the response from other people on the stage.

BRYONY BRIND: Because if you draw them in with you, then you’ve got everybody thinking, “Oh my God”. So that means, yes, even if you are doing technical mistakes, it’s not quite working out as you wanted to. So that was an absolute… That was a magical day for me that that happened.

PATRICIA LINTON: It was a sensation, that Swan Lake, and sort of, really set you on your meteoric rise.

BRYONY BRIND: It was. It was an extraordinary afternoon, actually. I don’t think expected by anybody. And so, having fallen down the stairs, on my… when I was carrying all my make-up and costumes up for my ten minutes to have a rehearsal on the stage, and I was carrying them back down again to the corps de ballet room, I slipped on these stone steps and landed on my coccyx and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t move at all. I was hurried off and obviously X-rayed and that sort of thing, that I was told I had stay in bed and everybody was… there was no way she’s going to be able to get out of bed and do this.

PATRICIA LINTON: How many days before the performance?

BRYONY BRIND: This was about four days, four days. So, anyway, I was determined, absolutely determined to do this performance because I thought, “I don’t care if I never dance again”. Thinking it was rather like my school performance. You know, it was my one chance to do a principal role on the Royal Opera House stage. The absolute temple of the place. So, there was no way… So, I had doctors standing by with injections and things like that, which I’d said there’s no point injecting me, I’m not gonna feel anything in. I’d rather have the pain and get along, get on with it and do. They said, you know, “Well, it’s here, if you want it”. And I’ll never forget standing in the wings coming off my first entrance and Stephen Jefferies, who’d been rehearsing, and was absolutely pouring with sweat. He shook his head and I went “Urgh”. And he punched me and said, “Make the most of this, it gets worse”, and I thought, “Can’t be worse than this!” My butterflies! Standing there! Absolutely not knowing what to do! Anyway, I came rushing on for the “huddle” and I took my corner too sharply. And I just went – whoosh – straight back onto my coccyx, jumped back up again. Sort of stars in my eyes, protecting my swans!

But anyway, I got through the rest of the performance, and it was amazing, and just to this day we’ll never forget the curtain calls. God knows how many curtain calls I did. And then the curtains just stayed up, really. And then they closed and then they came to the front. Then all the lights came up, and everybody was standing in ovation, and I had so many flowers. I can’t tell you because people had heard that I like flowers thrown at me. Well, it was daffodil time. The daffodils that came raining! Literally! It was, it was wonderful!