BNP: Ballet Not Politics
15 January 2007
Written by 
Every now and then the theatre world gets its knickers in a twist over acts of alleged immorality or political transgression - placards come out, factions form and everyone finds themselves feeling more Brechtian than they’d like to admit. But it never lasts. The cries of ‘truth’ and ‘freedom’ soon turn to whispers and apologies and we all shake hands and go back to pretending that the theatre is a nice safe environment, the bright pupil in the front row; think Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Bezhti in 2005, condemned by the Sikh community as an act of blasphemy and stopped in mid-run at the Birmingham Rep; think the Peter Handke ‘affair’ in 2006, whereby a misinformed newspaper article sent shock waves of demonisation through Europe’s cultural nerve centres, with stories of Handke delivering a pro-Milosovic speech at the latter leader’s funeral - he was even supposed to have ‘caressed’ the coffin! Whatever actually happened, the media story at the time was enough for the Comedie Francaise to ban his work from its repertoire…so it goes; and now most recently the media has turned to a less likely source for its dose of controversy, less likely but perhaps one that has long been overdue: the English National Ballet.
This time it’s the story of Simone Clarke, a ballet dancer by day and BNP supporter by…by weekend? And so the witch hunt begins: the ENB is blamed for political insensitivity and possibly for harboring extremism; audiences feel disillusioned after paying ‘hard-earned’ cash only to find out they’ve been ‘goose-stepped’ to romance, and perhaps most uncanny of all, 30-odd members of the BNP don airs of high-culture and sit in support of the ballerina, making for one of the most radical ballet audiences ever. Then the curtain falls and the dust settles. Time to put thinking caps on, make grand gestures in the air and set about formulating an analysis: that’s the worst part, hearing the cogs grind to the tune of: “hold on a minute, isn’t she entitled to her own beliefs?” Or better yet: “She’s not racist - she’s going out with someone who is not of her own race.” (Source.) And soon we begin to work our way beyond the froth, down towards the murky depths, and we realise that a taboo is beginning to surface, that ballet might not be a political vacuum after all, that its old persona of leotards and tutus is precisely that, an old persona; that it too, like the theatre, like any other cultural body has a political edge, a blunt one perhaps, but cutting nevertheless and sooner or later someone is going to want to wield that sword.
So I’ve got my thinking cap on and I’ve just completed a grand gesture and I’m feeling sort of serene, then a thought bursts my bubble: what do I really know about Simone Clarke? And the answer of course is nothing. Once again, I’ve taken the bait of a media-initiated meme and I’m transmitting it now to whoever had the courage to read this far. But what troubles me most, is that this, like the other incidents of its kind, will be swept under the great carpet of theatre history and we’ll have missed the chance for a little revolution. Now give me another slice of that trifle!
————
Photograph by Astrokitten reproduced here under Creative Commons license.
Re Peter Handke, here are a number of site focusing on his work in particular, and several on his controversial connection to Yugoslavia + Milosevics.:
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com
+ 12 subsites, to prose, drama, film, etc
among them
http://www.handkeyuo.scriptmania.com
http://www.handkelectures.freeservers.com [dram lecture]
http://www.kultur.at/lesen/index.htm [dem handke auf die schliche. in german]
http://begleitschreiben.twoday.net/stories/2504464/
[three part interview with lothar struck about handke, in german]
http://www.artscritic.blogspot.com [the handke/ milosevic controversy an American exposition]
–
MICHAEL ROLOFF
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
http://roloff.freeservers.com/about.html
http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/
http://www.artscritic.blogspot.com
SCRIPTMANIA PROJECT MAIN SITE: http://www.handke.scriptmania.com
http://www.handkelectures.freeservers.com
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com
“MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!” {J. Joyce}
Insofar as media furores are no use to man nor beast, you are entirely correct. However, you (like subsequent media attention) skirt over the issue that someone with a Cuban partner of Chinese extraction is capable of arriving at the decision that the BNP is the party for her, not only to the extent of voting for them, but of becoming a card-carrying member.
Whether she should be allowed to keep her job and/or hold such beliefs (did anyone actually get as far as finding out what her precise beliefs are? No) is a blind alley (she should and she is, no matter how regretable). The real issue here is how on earth she can believe that in the first place. The most fascinating part of the initial Guardian investigation (which unearthed the fact of her membership) was the lengths to which the BNP is apparently going to attract middle-class, professional members, by claiming not to be a party of out-and-out racists.
That Ms Clarke is quoted as saying she didn’t even fully understand the entirity of the BNP’s promotional literature rather suggests that she will never become one of the great political thinkers of our times, or even some sort of doggedly-ideological, sub-Redgrave type.
Surely the issue here is the shock ocassioned by the realisation that ballet dancers, who are undoubtedly capable of participating in great art, need not have anything of great substance between their ears. And that, save for extensive physical training, this Clarke woman would never have been of concern to the chattering classes in the first place, were it not so. Had this been some pram-faced loon from Dagenham (as a majority of the other women featured in the article were), I doubt very much that readers of the Guardian would lose any sleep over her BNP affiliation (indeed, they may well patronisingly expect it). It’s only when it comes into their own orbit that they sit up and take notice. Rather suggesting that the BNP has got it about right when they calculate that modern democracy (or at least the media’s coverage of it) doesn’t seem half so concerned with actual numbers of actual people holding actual views, as it does with single sensational examples. In this, the Guardian appears to have unwittingly done the Party a huge favour by raising both its media profile and the tone of debate which surrounds it. Hardly a resounding victory for good sense by anyone’s standards.
@ Michael Roloff, thanks for all the Handke links.
@ David C, I really appreciate the lengthy comment you\’ve left here. It\’s great to see that someone actually cares. I was rather hoping you might have your own patch of web space that I could visit, but I couldn\’t find a link…please do post it here if you hae one.
I agree that Clarke\’ political antics, do seem inane, but I do maintain my point about not knowing anything about her, and therefore this entire post, to its own detriment, was and is feeding off a fragmented, speculative, and probably somewhat fictional media source.
However as the old saying goes, we compare ourselves among ourselves, blogs bounce off other blogs, news sites feed off other news sites and these structures are cyclical ad inifinitum, its only the form that changes.
I suppose part of me wants to see the theatre in a constant state of upheaval, but such a paradox is of course impossible and ultimately pointless.
[…] Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, has demanded that Channel 4 admit that it mishandled the situation and called for its chairman, Luke Johnson, to be censured. It’s true that the episode has revealed some murky things about the relationship between TV programmes and the big celebrity agents but this isn’t what Trevor Phillips is talking about. So why censure C4? Because it showed racism? Because it brought some nasty people together and showed the result? Racism is a feature of current Britain. This sort of attitude is about two things (a) making you feel better about your own latent prejudices by identifying someone more racist than yourself, (b) a belief that if you ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening, racism will go away. The first is dishonest; it suggests that London Theatre Blog may be right when it claims that under the radical protest lies a rather more conservative view that everything’s really alright; the second claim is not true and has never been true. […]
Oh my goodness! Do we not live in a Democracy? Do we not have the right to freedom to vote for who we like and think what we like? Who cares who Simone Clarke votes for? The BNP are as entitled to state their case as New Labour or David Camerons bunch. The kind of Witch hunt mentality that arises whenever someone involved in the “Arts” is found not to be an “Auto-leftie” is simply mind-blowing. Remember Stalin and Chairman M. (Those charming denizens of the ‘left’)??? They were lefties don’t you know.
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