John Cyril Cranko (15 August 1927 – 26 June 1973) was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet.
Life and career
Early life
Cranko was born to Herbert and Grace Cranko in Rustenburg in the former province of Transvaal, Union of South Africa. As a child, he would put on puppet shows as a creative outlet. Cranko received his early ballet training in Cape Town under the leading South African ballet teacher and director, Dulcie Howes, of the University of Cape Town Ballet School. In 1945 he choreographed his first work (using Stravinsky's Suite from L'Histoire du soldat) for the Cape Town Ballet Club.
He moved to London, studying with the Sadler's Wells Ballet School (later called the Royal Ballet) in 1946 and dancing his first role with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in November 1947.
London
Cranko collaborated with the designer John Piper on Sea Change, performed at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in July 1949. They created a season of ballet at the Kenton Theatre, Henley in 1952 and collaborated again for Sadler's Wells Ballet on The Shadow, which opened on 3 March 1953. This period marked a transition in Cranko's career from dancer to full-time choreographer, with his last performance for the Sadler's Wells Ballet taking place in April 1950. At 23 years of age, he was appointed as resident choreographer for Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet's 1950–51 season.
For the company's Festival of Britain season in 1951 Cranko choreographed Harlequin in April, a "pantomine with divertissements" to music by Richard Arnell, as well as the comic ballet Pineapple Poll, to the music of Arthur Sullivan (newly out of copyright) arranged by the conductor Charles Mackerras. Another collaboration with Mackerras followed in 1954 with The Lady and the Fool, to music by Verdi.
In January 1954, Sadler's Wells Ballet announced that Cranko was collaborating with Benjamin Britten to create a ballet. Cranko devised a draft scenario for a work he originally called The Green Serpent, fusing elements drawn from King Lear, Beauty and the Beast (a story he had choreographed for Sadler's Wells in 1948) and the oriental tale published by Madame d'Aulnoy as Serpentin Vert. Creating a list of dances, simply describing the action and giving a total timing for each, he passed this to Britten and left him to compose what eventually became The Prince of the Pagodas.
Cranko wrote and developed a musical revue Cranks, which opened in London in December 1955, moved to St Martin's Theatre in the West End the following March, and ran for 223 performances. With music by John Addison, its cast of four featured the singers Anthony Newley, Annie Ross, Hugh Bryant and the dancer Gilbert Vernon; it transferred to Broadway at the Bijou Theatre. An original cast CD has been released. Cranko followed the format of Cranks with a new revue New Cranks opening at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith on 26 April 1960 with music by David Lee and a cast including Gillian Lynne, Carole Shelley and Bernard Cribbins, but it failed to have the same impact.
In 1960, Cranko directed the first production of Benjamin Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the Aldeburgh Festival. When the work had its London premiere the following year at Covent Garden, Cranko was not invited to direct, and Sir John Gielgud was brought in.
Stuttgart
Prosecuted for homosexual activity, Cranko left the UK for Stuttgart, and in 1961 was appointed director of the Stuttgart Ballet, where he assembled a group of talented performers such as Marcia Haydée, Egon Madsen, Richard Cragun, Birgit Keil and Susanne Hanke. Among his following choreographies were Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare in 1962, set to music by Prokofiev, Onegin in 1965, an adaptation of the verse novel Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, set to music by Tchaikovsky (mainly piano music, including The Seasons and music from lesser-known operas), orchestrated by Kurt-Heinz Stolze, The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare in 1969 using keyboard music by Domenico Scarlatti, Brouillards in 1970, Carmen in 1971 (music by Wolfgang Fortner and Wilfried Steinbrenner)' Initials R.B.M.E. (music by Johannes Brahms) in 1972 and Spuren (Traces) (music by Gustav Mahler) in 1973.