Marginal Man

I found myself brooding about 'Marginal Man' at the Opera House last night. This was during Kenneth MacMillan's My Brother, My Sisters.

The sociologist Robert Park first used the phrase to describe people who had ties to two distinct cultures while belonging fully to neither. The marginal man, Park wrote, "lives in two worlds, in both of which he is more or less of a stranger."

Ballet's guiding spirits in the twentieth century were marginal in this way: Diaghilev (Russia/France), de Valois (Ireland/England), Ashton (Peru/England), Balanchine/Stravinsky (Russia/America). I was unsure how MacMillan fitted with the others, although I am certain that marginality is important to an understanding of him (marginal in class and sexual senses certainly, and he experienced exile for what it was).

While one doesn't have to be a marginal man to be highly creative, perhaps this needs qualification in the context of ballet? Geraldine Morris argues that most dancers are "balletically constructed individuals", overly disciplined and conformist. Perhaps it's only a strong sense of marginality that makes creativity possible in their world. Michael Clarke was marginal both culturally and sexually. While he might have been a major creative force, he was in the grip of his demons when he might have done his best work.

I wonder what is becoming of Jann Parry's MacMillan biography? It was due in 2003. In August that year her editor at Little Brown, Tara Lawrence, told me that there had been "some unforeseen delays". Now there is no mention of the book on the publisher's website. Perhaps this was one biography that needed to be written without authorisation: it is hard to see - given how the book was commissioned - how it could be as revelatory of MacMillan's inner life as was Julie Kavanagh's Secret Muses about Ashton.