A Special Ballet for a Special Day

Louis XIV as Appollo in Le Ballet de la Nuit

Source  Wikipedia

Birmingham Royal Ballet, The King Dances, Birmingham Hippodrome, 20 June 2016

As I noted In Praise of Bintley 21 June 2015, last Saturday was a very special day. It was the 25th anniversary of Birmingham Royal Ballet's move from London and the 20th anniversary of David Bintley's appointment as artistic director of that company. A special day deserves a special ballet and what could be more special than one inspired by Louis XIV's appearance as Apollo in Le Ballet de La Nuit.

We know quite a lot about that ballet as I indicated in The King Dances 23 May 2015. We have the score, pictures of the dancers and eye witness accounts of performances of Le Ballet de la Nuit. The ballet could easily be re-staged if anyone wanted to do that. However that wouldn't be great box office. The ballet went on all night and nearly all the roles were danced by men. In The King Dances Bintley has created a new ballet with a new score that lasts no more than 35 minutes. Nevertheless it gives modern audiences a very good idea of what Le Ballet de la Nuit must have been like.

The curtain rises to a set lit only by naked torches held by Les Messieurs: Yasuo Atsuji, Fergus Campbell, Matthias Dingman and Brandon Lawrence. This is the first watch from 18:00 to 21:00 as Night displaces Day. Night  represented by La Nuit (Ian Mackay) gradually assets his authority.

The second watch between 21:00 and midnight represents the pleasures of the night. The king (William Bracewell) enters and dances with the ladies.  But are Mesdames really ladies? From my seat towards the front of the stalls they seemed feminine enough but I knew that from my reading on Le Ballet de la Nuit not to mention the cast list and a tweet the night before from Ruth Brill that almost all the roles were danced by men. They turned out to Alexander Bird, Jonathan Caguioa, Tzu-Chao Chou and Max Maslen. So good was the dancing and indeed the wardrobe that I was confused.

The king then spots an image of Selene (the goddess of the moon) in the disc and that is the only bit that did not quite work for me. She came to life as Yijing Zhang and there was a lovely duet between them. That is the only female role in the ballet that is actually danced by a woman.

The scariest and most memorable portion of the ballet is the third watch between midnight and 03:00 where nightmares occur. First there are devils besporting themselves like monkeys. It is at this point that Stephen Montague's score is most effective for the music resembled the calls of cackling monkeys. The decision to commission a score from a modern composer was not appreciated by the lady who sat next to me and one of the subscribers to BalletcoForum wrote that the scariest three words in ballet were "specially commissioned score." Having listened to a little bit of Philidor on YouTube I am very glad that Bintley turned to Montague. His score may be 21st century but for me it worked.  The devils were danced by Kit Holder, Lachlan Monaghan, Benjamin Soerel and Oliver Till. They were followed by witches (Bird and Tzu-Chao), werewolves (Caguioa and Maslen) and finally Satan himself danced by Mackay.

The fourth watch between 03:00 and 06:00 when Day returns was such a relief. Day was represented by an enormous disc that parted to reveal the King as Apollo this time clad in gold. He was joined by the original torch bearers who transformed into Honour (Atsuji), Grace (Lawrence), Renown (Campbell) and Valour (Dingman). Night (Mackay) is revealed as Cardinal Mazarin. I am not sure of the significance of that. Mazarin was Louis XIV's chief minister during his minority and early adulthood and he was not well liked partly because he was Italian and partly because of his ruthlessness and personal extravagance. Le Ballet de la Nuit was danced in 1653 while the cardinal was still alive and at the heart of his power so I don't think his appearance can be regarded as satire.

Bintley is to be congratulated on this production. I had to give up a lot to see this ballet - English National Ballet's Choreographic and two new works by Tindall and Vigier who are two of my favourite young choreographers (see Three into Two won't go 20 June 2015). Today at class I was told by folk who had stayed in Leeds that the choreographic sharing was wonderful. I can't say that I didn't feel a tinge of regret when Gita told me that there were opportunities to meet Vigier and Hampson. But on Saturday the Hippodrome was probably the best place in the universe for a ballet fan and I think I would have kicked myself for ever had I not been there.

Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin

The Lowry, Manchester, 28 Feb 2013

It is not every day that a new ballet is premièred.  Between the end of February and the beginning of March 2013 there will have been two:

• Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin at the Birmingham Hippodrome on the 15 February; and
• Northern Ballet's The Great Gatsby at The Grand Theatre in Leeds tomorrow.

I hope to see The Great Gatsby in Leeds on 7 March 2013 and I shall review it as soon as possible afterwards. Yesterday evening I saw Aladdin at the Lowry in Salford, near Manchester.

The Birmingham Royal Ballet is one of the world's great ballet companies.  Founded by Ninette de Valois the company was and remains the Royal Ballet touring troupe.   It adopted its present name in 1990 when it moved from Sadlers Wells to the Birmingham Hippodrome.   It is directed by David Bintley who choreographed Aladdin.

Aladdin is one of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights which are rarely read to children nowadays. Most of us in the United Kingdom will have been taken to a pantomime by the name of Aladdin which is about as far removed from the original story as a value burger is from a cow.   I remember being taken to The London Paladium or some other West End theatre in the late 1950s or early 1960s where the principal characters - Aladdin, Widow Twankey (his mother) and Wishee Washee (his brother) -ran a Chinese laundry. There was very little of that in Bintley's work.   It was far closer to Andrew Lang's compilation which was to be expected given the production's funding from the Houston Ballet Foundation and its original creation for the National Ballet of Japan.

Having said that there were certainly members of last night's audience who thought they were at a pantomime which manifested itself in an initial booing of Iain Mackay who danced The Mahgrib (or wicked magician) magnificently though those boos were quickly transformed into well deserved applause. More annoying, there was an intolerable level of coming and going, shuffling in the seats, unwrapping of sweets and even illicit photography  which required more than a little concentration to blot out.

Fortunately, the brilliance of the work did blot out those distractions.   Bird's sets and Blane's costumes were captivating.  You can get some idea of that brilliance from the Creating Aladdin website - the hustle and bustle of a Chinese street, the stalactites and stalagmites of the cave that glowed in different colours as the scene progressed, Aladdin's home, the Sultan's palace, Aladdin's castle after his marriage to the Princess Badr and Morocco.

However, it is the choreography, music and the artistry of the dancers that generate magic for audiences and for me and my companion it all worked wonderfully.   Having developed my love of ballet while Frederick Ashton was the Royal Ballet's choreographer I am very hard to please.   But pleased I was.   The pas de deux that Bintley created for Aladdin and the Princess danced yesterday by Jamie Bond and Jenna Roberts reminded me a lot of Ashton.   So did the powerful roles for the djinn (Matthias Dingman), Mahgrib and Sultan (Rory Mackay).   Also, the sweet role for Aladdin's mother danced delightfully by Marion Tait - no Widow Twankey she.   Other lovely touches - and very familiar to Manchester with our famous Chinese quarter - were the lion and dragon dances.   It is probably unfair to single out any of the other dancers because all excelled but I was impressed particularly by Céline Gittens who danced Diamond.   Finally, Davis's score with its oriental allusions was perfect for Bintley's choreography.

This show will stay at The Lowry until tomorrow after which it will move to Plymouth, Sunderland and the Coliseum.   If you are near any of those venues - or even if you are not - you should try to see this work.   I think it will become an audience favourite along with the 19th century classics which very few modern works do.