Halloween Special: Clowns of Ballet

Michel Fokine’s ballet Petrushka, set to Stravinsky’s score, was one of the Diaghilev Ballet Russes’ greatest hits. Petrushka is one of three puppets who perform in a show run by a cruel magician. The poor floppy-limbed clown is in unrequited love with the ballerina doll. He’s more tragic than terrifying, but his ghost does get to give his master a good scare at the end.

In the Christmas party at the start of The Nutcracker, the mysterious, slightly sinister Herr Drosselmeyer brings a selection of life-sized toys to perform for the children. While they’re not, strictly speaking, clowns … this one comes close enough for us.

Poor old Pierrot, in the commedia dell’ arte-inspired ballet Harlequinade, can’t cut a break. Defied and tricked at every turn, he’s tied into knots – almost literally, as his trailing white sleeves wind around him.

The carnival in Act II of John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet is a brief moment of relief before a whole lot of tension and tragedy … but even as the clowns cavort, there’s something unsettling in that tinkling festive music. It’s no surprise that about ten minutes later, they’re loading a body on to a bier. (Not their fault! In fact, the clowns nobly step in because there’s no one in that Montague-heavy crowd who will lift a Capulet corpse.)

John Neumeier’s Nijinsky examines the life of the great dancer, and the fracturing of his mind, through the roles that made him famous. As Nijinsky’s mental collapse accelerates, the forlorn figure of Petrushka appears to dance on a battlefield of fallen men.

Another Cranko ballet, another clown. In The Lady and the Fool, the sad clowns Moondog and Bootface are sleeping on a bench when they’re discovered by La Capricciosa, a masked beauty who whisks them off to a ball. Love wins the day, and La Capricciosa leaves her rich suitors to run away with the clowns.