London, UK - The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a ballet featuring a deformed Pope who rapes nuns that it had announced as one of the highlights of its Christmas schedule.
Last month the corporation said it would televise In The Spirit Of Diaghilev from Sadler’s Wells as part of a season of ballet programmes.
The tribute to the Russian impresario comprises four acts, each by a groundbreaking choreographer, with the entire production due to be screened on BBC Four next month.
Richard Klein, BBC Four Controller, promised viewers “a great watch”, hailing “the combination of one of the most inventive and musically exciting ballet scores being performed by one of Britain’s foremost dance groups”.
But it wasn’t until the production premiered at Sadler’s Wells that the BBC discovered that one of the acts, Eternal Damnation To Sancho And Sanchez by Javier de Frutos, centres on a group of “horny” priests and a fictional hunchback Pope, who rapes eunuchs and pregnant nuns. The act prompted boos from the Sadler’s Wells audience and a number of walk-outs.
After extensive discussions within the BBC, the corporation has decided to drop the de Frutos section. The three other acts will air as planned during the broadcast on December 18.
A BBC spokesman said: “We have decided not to show this particular work as it contains material unsuitable for the pre-watershed slot for which the programme was commissioned.”
The BBC said it could not show the “Pope” act in a separate late-night transmission, with a clear warning, because it would still be considered inappropriate for a pre-Christmas broadcast.
The BBC is keen to avoid another “blasphemy” row with Christian groups who complained bitterly over its decision to screen Jerry Springer: The Opera. Watchdogs rejected those complaints and said the BBC decision was justified.
Critics have accused the BBC of a craven attitude to potentially offensive material since “Sachsgate”. But the de Frutos sequence climaxes in what has been described as “the most graphic scenes of sex and violence seen on the dance stage”.
The BBC did not believe those scenes, especially in a religious context, could be justified given the offence certain to be caused.
In her review for The Times, Debra Craine dismissed the act as “a ludicrous piece of violent tosh”. She wrote: “The graphic duets are lurid and sexually abusive and some may draw the line at seeing a pregnant woman punched in the stomach and garrotted with a rosary. It’s not often you hear boos at the Wells, but these were well deserved.”
The BBC commissioned the work from Axiom Productions on the basis of a “broad outline” but it appears that the potentially offensive nature of the work was not clear to commissioners.
The three other In The Spirit Of Diaghilev acts, which have been favourably received, are not narratively linked so the BBC believes that viewers will not notice the cut.
De Frutos believes that his work would have met with Diaghilev’s approval. He said: “He wasn’t bothered by political correctness. Those were the glory days when people would sleep with you to get a job. And some of the best slept with Diaghilev.”
The BBC ballet season includes a specially commissioned new film of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring with the Balletboyz on BBC Three and a film examining the artistic and cultural legacy of the Ballets Russes.