Bronislava Nijinska’s “Les Noces” - first scene: Nijinska’s 1966 staging for the Royal Ballet

1; 2. These photographs of the original 1966 Royal Ballet production of Bronislava Nijinska’s “Les Noces” (1923), taken by Donald Southern and Houston Rogers, have brought back waves of memories. The Nijinska “Noces” ended the first programme of ballet I ever saw at Covent Garden (April 2, 1974), with Svetlana Beriosova as the Bride, as in these photos. It was regularly revived until 2012, not every season but never with more than ten years between its returns to the repertory; some seasons, I saw every performance.

Up to the 1980s, it was known to be the ballet that senior régisseur Michael Somes supervised with greatest zeal, insisting on even more bending of the torso than in Frederick Ashton’s ballets and on the combination of fiercely percussive attack with rigorous ensemble precision. When the Royal celebrated its half-century in 1981, it ended a packed, diverse programme with the final scene of “Noces” - ending not on an upnote but with a celebration of one of the company’s rarest crown jewels. After Somes left the company, there were revivals where its power had been somewhat diminished, and yet I well remember that the impact of the 2004 revivals (spring and autumn) had everyone reeling, with the 2012 one its equal. (Why has the Royal Ballet under Kevin O’ Hare not revived it?)

Since the 1980s, I have seen revivals of this Nijinska masterpiece by five ballet institutions from four other countries: the Oakland Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Paris Opéra Ballet, the Maryinsky Ballet, and the Juilliard School. All apart from the atrocious Maryinsky version were good (the Paris staging had the best account of the Stravinsky score) - but none have approached the really phenomenal power of the Royal version, because of the collective full-bodied force with which it showed society as a colossal and frighteningly impersonal machine that processes human individuals.

The ballet’s most famous image is the pile of female heads. This is one of the most quoted images in all choreography: you can see it in ballets by Frederick Ashton, John Cranko, Justin Peck, and Alexei Ratmansky. Only in the Nijinska “Noces” do its implications register fully: this pile of unmarried women is a conveyor belt on which this Bride is topmost in this scene; the image returns at the ballet’s close with a new woman at the top of the pile. Presumably because of some accident at the 1966 dress rehearsal most of the woman here are laughing; it’s fun to notice that the unsmiling face three from the bottom of the heap is that of Monica Mason.

These two photos show the first of the four scenes of the Nijinska “Noces”, focused on the Bride, the ritual braiding of her hair in plaits for her forthcoming wedding, and the supervision of her parents. Memorably, it introduces us to this ballet’s singularly drilling rhythms and the pathos whereby the Bride is put through the bridal mill. Beriosova has never been surpassed or equalled in my experience (just the planes of her face are ideal) in the role created by Felia Doubrovska. The gesture with which she stands with arms open, each hand carrying a super-long plait, marvellously shows the quality of resignation she epitomised here.

Wednesday 3 February

1. Svetlana Beriosova, 1966, Royal Ballet, first scene of “Les Noces”. Photo: Donald Southern.

2. Svetlana Beriosova as the Bride, 1966, Royal Ballet, first scene of “Les Noces”. Gerd Larsen, left, is the Bride’s mother; Ray Roberts, right, the Bride’s father. In the pile of heads, Monica Mason is third from bottom. Photo: Houston Rogers.