Lynn Seymour: In Her Own Words

Lynn Seymour, who has died at the age of 83, left her native Canada for London in 1954 after winning a scholarship to the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet School. At the Royal Ballet she emerged as the foremost dramatic ballerina of her generation, creating leading roles in Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, Anastasia and Mayerling and in Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons and A Month in the Country.

In 1979 and 2008, she spoke to me at length about her work for my books, Striking a Balance (1982) and Never Far from Dancing (2014). In celebration of her remarkable life and artistry, here are excerpts from those interviews.

* * * * * *

“I joined the [Sadler’s Wells] Touring Company, which was wonderful. It was so busy, and one could improve as one went along. The first year I had just the classical repertoire to learn, which was hard enough—I was so weak I could hardly stay on pointe. The only thing that was on my side for those big roles was youth; you’re sort of fearless then. […] I’ve never believed in myself that much that I thought I could do those things, until I was presented with them, and then I had to.  I was much more conscious of getting things together technically, because they didn’t come naturally to me. I probably have to work harder than most people just to keep from muffing turns and all that sort of thing, and that makes you much more aware of what you’re doing. Much, much, much. […] But, you don’t make a conscious personal choice to develop along different lines just because your technique is weak. You don’t suddenly decide “to act.” No. Actually, I think this acting business is a lot of balls. I don’t feel that I do act. I couldn’t act as a straight actress; no talent that way at all. It’s just dancing that does it; it’s the dance itself. It’s not “acting” in inverted commas—it’s the way you dance it.”

I asked her about the important influences on her dancing.

“One of them is Rudolf Nureyev. […] Rudolf took it upon himself to show me what classicism was, because I didn’t know. He showed the world, actually, not just me. Well, me and the world, but I was a willing slave to his ballet mastering. […] He thought that if you cheated you weren’t being true to the classic—that’s why he was so exacting. I thought, ‘I’ve got to learn this because I like breaking the rules,’ but you need to know what the rules are first so that you can do it more efficiently. I like playing around with those premises but I didn’t realize what the basics were.

“Rudolf was there to teach me about the purity and the fundamental beauty of the classical technique, the simplicity, and how it should be honored. This is why he and Margot [Fonteyn] got on so well. He could see it in her; her simple way was so direct and she was such an honest worker. Here I have to talk about Margot, because her influence was in the class, not on the stage, because she would gather all the elements…She was given an enchaînement and before she practiced this exercise, she would, in her head, fix up the head, the arms, the eyes…how it would be presented onstage. So when she came to do the exercise, she was trying already to make it a stage-worthy presentation. […] That takes a lot of…concentration, to make it how it should be as a finished product, to make the whole thing work as one, all the time, and she was marvelous at doing that. I used to just look and look and try and emulate and emulate.

“The other thing about Rudolf is his generous heart, which can’t be overlooked in our profession. He was one of the only people who not only criticized me harshly but also loved my work and talked to me about it and would tell me the good and the bad. […] If he thought it was lousy he wouldn’t mince words, but if he thought it was really worthy he would always say so. They were the happiest times in my career, working in the studio with Rudolf.”

In 1979, I also interviewed Christopher Gable, who shared in the creation of Romeo and Juliet as Seymour’s partner. He described what happened:

“When Paris is dead and Romeo is alone to grieve, as he must, there’s that attempt to make her dance, to make her love, to make the arms work again. […] He tries very hard, and it’s only when she can’t dance that it really impinges on his brain that she is dead.

“And then Ken had a wonderful idea: ‘When you’ve tried and tried and tried and it won’t work,’ he said, ‘then I want it to be just like a big piece of dead meat on the stage.’  A gorilla at London Zoo had a baby—did you read about this?—and didn’t know how to look after it, and it died. But they couldn’t take it away from her. She dangled it around and played with it sometimes, and it didn’t do anything, and she kept walking around with it. It bashed onto chairs and things, but she just kept pacing and wouldn’t let it go.

“Well, that was the image I had in my mind. I used to drag Lynn around the stage, and she’d just let her legs fall apart, all open and exposed and vulnerable and ugly. I think she’s the only one who does that; all the other ballerinas make pretty shapes on the floor.”