English National Ballet's Swan Lake: Kanehara conquers the Empire

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English National Ballet Swan Lake Liverpool Empire 23 Nov 2018, 19:30

There are a lot of shows that call themselves Swan Lake but unless they turn on the impersonation of Odette, the deception of Siegfried and the breaking of the spell they are not Swan Lake.  You can strip out all the divertissements, have swans of both or either gender, dispense with feathers and tutus, dump them in a tank of water and even substitute a Kalashnikov for a crossbow but so long as you have an Odette-Odile danced by the same artist it will still be Swan Lake.  Take her away and it is something else even if you keep cygnets and feathery white tutus.   It may still be a good show (and many of them such as Graeme Murphy's are) but give it another name.  Monkeying with such a perfect piece of theatre really makes my blood boil far more even than stick toting wilis in disused garment factories

On Friday I saw a very good Swan Lake at the Liverpool Empire and what made it good was the performance of Rina Kanehara in the lead role.  Where did she come from?  I must have seen her before as she is a soloist but she has never grabbed my attention as she did on Friday night.  She was a lovely Odette. As delicate as Dresden porcelain.  As light as a lily.  And I felt that she was living Odette and not just dancing it.  How could she possibly change into the imperious, scheming, seductive magician's daughter of the black act after just 20 minutes interval?

But change she did.  When she reappeared in her black blue flecked tutu she was magnificent.  Clearly, she was the same woman but quite a different character and she seemed to live that role too. She was very strong, robust and as indestructible and flexible as wire appearing to deliver Legnani's 32 fouettés effortlessly.   The English National Ballet has a star in Kanehara and I will seek out her performances from now on.

A good Odette needs a good Siegfried and the company produced one in Ken Saruhashi.  Like Kanehara he is a soloist though it appears from his biography that he has danced leading roles before.  He is tall, slender and very strong.  He lifted Odette as if she were weightless and some of his jumps in the betrothal pas de deux drew my breath away.  The crowd loved him.  I heard loud Russian type growls from behind me in the auditorium, the sort you hear regularly in live streaming from Moscow or even occasionally in Covent Garden but hardly ever outside London.

A lot of dancers impressed me on Friday night and it would be invidious to single out any for special praise. It was good to see Jane Haworth as Siegried's mum and Michael Coleman as his tutor and master of ceremonies again.  I liked Erik Woodhouse, Anjuli Hudson and Adela Ramirez in the pas de trois.  Ramirez was also one of the cygnets with Alice Bellini, Katja Khaniukova and Emilia Cadorin all of whom were good.  Hudson delighted me with her Neapolitan dance in Act III where she was partnered by Barry Drummond.  This is a delightful piece which I am sure Sir Frederick Ashton created for the Royal Ballet for it has all his hallmarks on it.  In fact, I remember Wayne Sleep in that role with (I believe) Jennifer Penney.  The Royal Ballet no longer seem to do it and it is good to know that our other great national company does.  Finally, I congratulate Isabelle Brouwers and Tiffany Hedman as lead swans.  I noticed Skyler Martin whom I remember from the Dutch National Ballet and it is good to welcome him to these shores.

English National Ballet's website quotes The Sunday Express in describing the production as "One of the best productions of Swan Lake you are likely to see."  I don't agree with that newspaper on much but I think that its dance critic was right on this point.  I have seen a lot of Swan Lakes in nearly 60 years of regular ballet going including Liam Scarlett's and the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's with Denis Rodkin this year but this is definitely the best Swan Lake of those three and one of the best of all time. I like Peter Farmer's designs and the ENB Philharmonic under Huddersfield trained Gavin Sutherland. I always give him a cheer for that though I would anyway as he is good.

Altogether it was an excellent show in a fine auditorium with an appreciative crowd.  This is not the first time I have seen an outstanding Swan Lake at the Empire.  David Dawson's very different but equally good production for Scottish Ballet was performed there (see Empire Blanc: Dawson's Swan Lake 4 June 2916).  The Empire's audience seems passionate about dance and quite a few rose to their feet at the curtain call.  I think that the crowd lifted the dancers on Friday.  It was everything a night at the ballet should be.

Tamara Rojo at Last! Le Jeune Homme et la Mort and La Sylphide

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English National Ballet La Sylphide and Le Jeune Homme et la Mort  19 Jan 2018 Coliseum

Having chosen to see La Sylphide and The Song of the Earth on 14 Oct 2017 in order to catch Tamara Rojo I was disappointed to watch The Song of the Earth over a flickering monitor with the sound turned down in a noisy bar. The reason for my banishment to the bar was that I arrived at the Palace Theatre a few minutes after the performance had begun. That was because Manchester City Council in its wisdom had seen fit to close Albert Square to traffic without  adequate warning or diversion signs just as crowds were streaming into the city for a night out. The result was chaos and although I found a way round the traffic I could not avoid it entirely.  That was my only low point of the evening and the pleasure of meeting Sarah Kundi, one of my favourite dancers, after the show went a long way to making up for it (see Always Something Special from English National Ballet: La Sylphide with Song of the Earth 18 Nov 2018).

Had I seen The Song of the Earth on stage it is unlikely that I would have gone to London on Friday.  I would then have missed one of the most remarkable performances that I have seen in nearly 60 years of ballet going.  It is strange how something that appeared to be a disaster can sometimes turn out for the best. The performance of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort by Ivan Vasilev and Tamara Rojo was one of the most compelling that I have ever seen.

The work was created by Roland Petit shortly after the Second World War.  We don't see much of Petit's work in this country which is a regrettable because he was an important choreographer.   I have seen only one other work by Petit in a lifetime of ballet going. Petit's muse was his wife Zizi Jeanmaire who was a dramatic dancer with the most captivating eyes.  I never got to see her in real life though I saw her on film in Carmen and Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.  Sadly it is no longer possible to see Jeanmaire as the temptress in Le Jeune Homme et la Mort but we can still see Rojo.  I believe that the experience of seeing her in the role is very similar to seeing Jeanmaire. That is not to say that Rojo imitates her predecessor - far from it because Rojo has made the role her own - but she is at least as exciting to watch. Rojo, like Jeanmaire, is a dramatic dancer with striking features and an imperious manner both as the woman and as death.

As my eyes were riveted on Rojo from the moment she appeared at the door, I am not sure that I gave Vasilev the attention that he deserved.  He is another outstanding dancer.  I appreciated his strength and beauty. I marvelled at his virtuosity as he perched on the backs of chairs and leaped over furniture waiting for his visitor.  But it was only when he kicked away his support with his head in a noose that I focused on him fully. As the scene changed from garret to afterlife Rojo drew me back as she emerged as some angel of death.  A ballerina's ballet if ever there was.

I should say a word about Georges Wakhévitch's designs and in Karinska's costumes,  The young man is stripped to the waste in jeans but the woman wears a fluid, canary yellow dress and black gloves in life and a long white dress, death mask and red veil as death.  The next life appears to start on the rooftops of Paris. In the background stands the Eiffel tower advertising Citroën. I never knew that the Eiffel tower was ever used for advertising so I looked it up. According to Sophie Nadeau, it really did happen. For a time the tower was the biggest outdoor advertisement in the world (see Solo Sophie).

The rest of the evening was Bournonville's treasure La Sylphide.  I love that ballet so much. How I would enjoy dancing Madge.  As I said in my review of English National Ballet's performance of La Sylphide in Manchester, I greatly prefer that ballet to Giselle:

"I prefer Løvenskiold's score to Adam's any day and the idea of the ghosts of spurned maidens dancing their lovers - or indeed any other man who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time - to death gives me the heebie-jeebies. The story in La Sylphide is so much more reasonable even if it does have mythical creatures like sylphs and witches."

I had enjoyed the show in Manchester but I liked Friday night's performance even more. Rina Kanehara was a delightful sylph. Her loyal friend Anna was danced again by Sarah Kundi. I have followed her for years and it is always a pleasure to see her. Joseph Caley portrayed a headstrong James.  I can't help feeling sorry for him. Yes he may have been mean to Madge but he didn't deserve what happened to him.  Had I been Effy I would have forgiven him.  Caley had been one of my favourite dancers at the Birmingham Royal Ballet and it was good to see him in his new company.  Daniel Kraus was a scheming and devious Gurn.  Crystal Costa made a very successful debut as Effy. Life with Gurn. Hmm! Frying pans and fire spring to mind.  Madge makes or breaks a performance of La Sylphide for me and Jane Howarth was a splendid witch. One could almost hear her imprecations.

It had not been easy getting to the theatre from Holborn as the Piccadilly Line was up the creek. I arrived at Leicester Square squashed, squeezed, hot and bothered with hardly any time to spare to pick up my ticket, deposit a heavy brief case and find my seat. I was hardly in the most appreciative frame of mind for an evening at the ballet.  The drama, the choreography. Rojo's  dancing, the brilliance of the work blew all that away. The show finished at 22:00 and my train home was at 22:57.  Plenty of time for a few stops one would have thought. In fact, I needed every single minute as the Piccadilly Line had still not found its paddle by the time the theatres were emptying. And when I arrived at Doncaster I had to drive 35 miles on ungritted roads through falling snow. The excellence of the double bill was well worth those tribulations.