Dancers from virtually every major opera house in Europe tripped into Stuttgart. They came not to dance but to huddle in the wings and watch the latest creations of Württemberg State Opera Ballet Director John Cranko, who has built a reputation among dancers and audiences alike as the most creative young choreographer in all of Europe. At the conclusion of last week’s annual Ballet Festival, the burgeoning army of Crankophiles was more enthusiastic than ever.

For openers, the company staged its pièce de résistance, a robust rendering of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, followed by a lavish, streamlined Swan Lake featuring nothing less than the reigning tandem of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who had volunteered their services and spent one week of intensive rehearsals mastering the myriad refinements of Cranko’s interpretation. But the creation that stirred the most frenetic response from the crowd was the première of a handsomely preened and plumed production of Stravinsky’s Fire Bird, grounded in the Fokine tradition but soaring to new heights on the wings of Prima Ballerina Marcia Haydée’s fluttering, levitating flight through a lush forest primeval.

All & More. For Cranko, 37, a spare, gentle man of steely determination, the festival was one more step toward realizing his vision of expanding the horizons of his company “to encompass and incorporate all known dance forms and then add some more.” A native of South Africa, Cranko first became hooked on ballet while working as a puppeteer in Cape Town, soon pulled other strings to land a job in 1947 with London’s Sadler’s Wells Theater Ballet as a dancer and sometime choreographer. Five years later, critics were calling him “the young hope of British choreography.” Later, as a choreographer with the Royal Ballet, he carved a reputation for uncommon versatility and invention. But always he nurtured a burning itch to discover and develop a new “pattern of movement and expression which already is deeply ingrained into the matrix of our artistic experience and potential.” He longed for his own ballet company, and when he got an invitation from Stuttgart five years ago, Cranko leaped at the opportunity.

Since Noverre. The fruits of his Stuttgart efforts first appeared on the international scene at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, where his achievement was hailed as “staggering” and “beyond praise.” Yet for all the lavish encomiums, Cranko is the first to admit that he and his relatively small company still need five or more years of maturing before they are ready to lay claim to the authentic “Stuttgart style” label some critics have already begun to discuss in glowing, enthusiastic terms. But one thing is already certain: not since the city’s celebrated Ballet Reformer Jean-Georges Noverre set out two centuries ago “to smash the masks, to burn the wigs, to present a spirit which ranks high in the realm of the creative arts” has old Stuttgart seen so much style.

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