Royal Ballet Swan Lake Leeds Showcase, 2 March 2025, 14:00
On 27 Feb and 2 Mar 2025, cinemas across the United Kingdom screened a recording of Liam Scarlett's Swan Lakethat had been made at the Royal Ballet and Opera House on 24 Apr 2024. With Yasmine Naghdi as Odette-Odile, Matthew Ball as Siegfried and Thomas Whitehead as von Rothbart, it was a very polished production. I saw it at the Leeds Showcase, a multiscreen complex in a shopping and entertainment centre a short distance from the M62.
Watching images of dancers on a screen reminds me of the prisoners in Plato's cave, but the screen has a few advantages. One is an opportunity to hear the artists discuss their work. That was something that the Bolshoi did exceptionally well because they employed the TV journalist Katerina Novikova to interview dancers and others in three languages. The quality of the Royal Ballet's interviews has improved significantly since Petroc Trelawny was engaged. Trelawny also brings out the best in Darcey Bussell, who contributes her memories of her performances.
One illuminating interview was with Naghbi. She discussed Legnani's 32 fouettés in the seduction scene, which is the most spectacular bit of the ballet. She likened the movement to that of a plane and herself to a pilot. Naghdi was a powerful Odile but also a sensitive Odette. Not every ballerina can carry off the two roles equally well, but Naghdi was one who did.
Naghdi was supported gallantly by Ball, a strong but graceful dancer. The role of Rothbart has been greatly extended by Scarlett in that he is head of the royal household as well as an evil magician. His appearance reminds me of President Putin, whoever dances the role. This is a great character role, which Whitehead performs well.
Sadly, the producer of this version of Swan Lake is no longer with us, but Gary Avis, Laura Morera and Samantha Raine have implemented Scarlett's vision. Often overlooked is the orchestra which is one of the strengths of the Royal Ballet. It was as impressive as ever conducted on this occasion by Martin Georgiev.
Should this recording ever be screened again or otherwise made available it is well worth watching.
Standard YouTube Licence Royal Ballet Swan Lake Royal Opera House 22 May 2018 19:30
The curtain fell for the last time at about 22:35 yesterday and it is now 03:22 on Wednesday. Since then I have travelled 180 miles by rail and another 32 by road. I have read the programme from cover to cover. Yet I cannot sleep because I am still excited about Liam Scarlett's new production of Swan Lake.
There are hardly any gimmicks in this production. There are no new characters. The story is unchanged:
"Prince Siegfried chances upon a flock of swans while out hunting. When one of the swans turns into a beautiful woman, Odette, he is enraptured. But she is under a spell that holds her captive, allowing her to regain her human form only at night. The evil spirit Von Rothbart, arbiter of Odette’s curse, disguises his daughter Odile as Odette to trick Siegfried into breaking his vow of love. Fooled, Siegfried declares his love for Odile, and so dooms Odette to suffer under the curse forever (see the Royal Opera House's website).
There are, of course, John Macfarlane's brilliant new designs which I shall discuss later. For me the most striking innovation was the elevation of Baron von Rothbart from scary cape waving sorcerer on a rock to a an even more menacing scheming court insider reminding me just a little bit of President Putin. Although he appears in the prologue the baron's first intervention in the story is as the queen's adviser. It is obvious that he exerts considerable influence over her. The idea that the prince should marry may even have been his idea. He throws his weight around when he is alone with the prince. He reminds Siegfried of his mother's command to choose a bride. When Siegfried is about to leave the stage with his crossbow, von Rothbart gestures to him to put it down. This enhanced role for the baron affects the dynamic of the story and in my view makes it much more realistic. Particularly the third act when von Rothbart promotes his daughter as a possible royal bride.
A character who is so crucial to the story requires an artist who is as much as actor as he is a dancer and Bennet Gartside performed that role exquisitely. As I could spare the time (and money) for only one performance of the new Swan Lake I chose last night in order to see Federico Bonelli and Lauren Cuthbertson. They are two of my favourite dancers at the Royal Ballet. When I saw them in Giselle three years ago they quite took my breath away (see Cuthbertson's Giselle3 April 2016). It was on the strength of that performance that I chose Cuthbertson as my ballerina of 2016 (see The Terpsichore Titles: Outstanding Female Dancer of 201629 Dec 2016). Bonelli was on stage yesterday and he was as gallant and dashing as ever but sadly Cuthbertson was indisposed. Just before the start Kevin O'Hare came on stage to announce that she had been injured and invited us to join him in wishing her well which I, for one, certainly do. He also announced that Akane Takada. who took Cuthbertson's place, had danced Odette-Odile for the first time the previous Saturday. All I can say is that she was enchanting. While I hope to see Cuthbertson in that role soon I was not in the least disappointed by the casting change.
There were many other dancers who impressed me last night but this already over-long review would become as turgid as a telephone directory were I to include them all. But James Hay stood out for me as the prince's mate Benno. Not quite as big a role in Scarlett's Swan Lake as inDavid Dawson's but the character does not appear in many productions. Perhaps because I have tried to learn the cygnets' dance (see KNT's Beginners' Adult Ballet Intensive - Swan Lake: Day 116 Aug 2015) I feel a special sense of fellowship with whoever dances on it on stage. I therefore gave Elizabeth Harrod, Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Romany Pajdak and Leticia Stock who performed that piece an extra loud clap prompting an old fashioned look from the lady next to me as if to say "What's so special about them?" It would have taken me far too long to tell her. I also liked the Neapolitan dance. Anna Rose O'Sullivan and Paul Kay were lively and sparky. They performed that divertissement in the way that Wayne Sleep and Jennifer Penney used to do.
This was a ballet in which every artist performed well. Especially the corps who were magnificent. Not every man shared that view. On the stairs up to the Paul Hamlyn Bar in the first interval a pinstriped gent was holding forth that the boys were alright but the girls seemed somewhat under-rehearsed. I was amazed by that criticism. "What had he seen that I had missed?" I wondered. For me it was pure delight from beginning to end. The lady who was with the opinionated gent didn't agree. She urged him to stop it and she struck him more than once with her rolled-up cast list.
Having said that it was a very funny audience last night. Nobody joined me in clapping the principals when they first appeared. Hardly anybody applauded Takada as she was approaching her 32nd fouetté. Folk were leaving Florida style even before the first curtain call "It was only 22:30" I thought to myself, "If I can get home to Yorkshire tonight surely there must be trains to Penge." The dancers and musicians gave us there all and they deserved better from the crowd. Ballet Black got a well-deserved standing ovation in Nottingham last week as did Teac Damsa for their Swan Lake in Manchester. "What is it with stuffy old London?" I mused. Those artists deserved a flower throw and when the flower market was next door they would have got it.
I promised to say a word about Macfarlane's designs. Well, they are good. The backdrop of swirling waters for the prologue gave way to the palace gardens for act 1. Seamlessly they morphed into a lakeside with a full moon for act 2. The ballroom scene with its throne was magnificent. However, the most dramatic setting of all was the lakeside at the end. A monochrome landscape dominated by a rock. Those scene changes required ingenious lighting design and David Finn delivered it. The costumes were magnificent particularly Siegfried and Benno's and the uniforms for the men.
Scarlett shows that you don't need bikes on stage, male swans, new characters or even a new libretto to rejuvenate Swan Lake. His work is already pretty close to my favourite Swan Lake though I would hate to have to choose between it and David Dawson's. They are both excellent with their rspective strengths. I loved Anthony Dowell's Swan Lake but I think we were ready for this change.
Royal Ballet Bernstein Centenary (Yugen, The Age of Anxiety and Corybantic Games 17 March 2018, 19:30 Royal Opera House Covent Garden
This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein, one of the most popular classical composers ever. One of the reasons for his popularity is that he did not work entirely in the classical idiom. Consequently, many of his tunes appeal to an audience who have never entered a concert hall. They are simple and memorable - easy to sing, hum or whistle. To celebrate the anniversary the Royal Ballet revived Liam Scarlett's The Age of Anxietyand commissioned new works form Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon, namely Yugenand the Corybantic Games.
I liked all the ballets in the programme. Yugen and The Age of Anxiety appealed immediately. Corybantic Games was different. I admired the choreography, the geometric sets and, of course, Bernstein's music and I am an enormous fan of Lauren Cuthbertson but I think I will have to see it again and probably more than once to appreciate it properly. Happily I will get that opportunity when the programme is streamed to cinemas on 28 March 2018.
Recently Gary Avis, the work's ballet master, tweeted that Yugen was breathtakingly beautiful. On seeing the tweet my first reaction was that he would say that - but he was right. I literally gasped for breath from the moment the stage revealed the geometric set with the dancers clad in red at first glance almost exactly alike. McGregoor had interpreted Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (extracts from the psalms including the 23rd sung in the original Hebrew) in movement and the result can only be described as sublime. I was enchanted by the whole performance.
The Age of Anxiety could not have been more of a contrast. According to the programme notes it is based on W H Auden's poem which I have yet to read. Wikipedia states:
"The poem deals, in eclogue form, with man's quest to find substance and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialized world. Set in a wartime bar in New York City, Auden uses four characters – Quant, Malin, Rosetta, and Emble – to explore and develop his themes."
Well everybody must have got the New York bar bit but the coming to terms with industrialized world bit bypassed me. The ballet seemed to be about 4 people getting progressively drunk until the barman throws them out. They repair to Rosetta's flat with a magnificent view of the New York skyline. One of them passes out. The last scene reveals Manhattan at dawn and the dancer's wonder at the sight.
Well Rosetta was obviously Sarah Lamb and she was splendid in that role as she always is. Luca Acri was Emble, Yorkshireman Thomas Whitehead was Qant and James Hay was Malin. I always give Whitehead an extra loud clap or cheer whenever I see him on stage because ........ well, we Northerners have to stick together, don't we.
For some reason or other the Corybantic Games reminded me of Ashton's Symphonic Variations even though Bernstein's music is so different from Cesar Franck's as is Wheeldon's choreography from Ashton's. I think it may have been because of the classical allusions. I seem to remember my old classics master telling me that the Olympic games were only one of a number of games in which the Greek city states competed. I surmised that the Corybantic Games must have been another. The dancers were clad simply as athletes and their movements were pretty extraordinary too. The work was divided into five movements with Matthew Ball, William Bracewell, Yasmine Naghdi accompanying Cuthbertson in the first. Beatrix Stix-Brunnell on her own in the second, Navarra Magri and Marcelino Sambé in the third, Cuthbertson, Naghdi, Ball, Ryoichi Hirano, Stix-Brunnell and Bracewell in the fourth and Tierney Heap leading the ensemble in the fifth.
The crowd applauded politely at the end of Corybantic Games - especially when the leading ladies received bouquets - but the applause ended before the lights came on again. Nothing like the sustained clapping and cheering for the other two works. I think the Wheeldom will become a well loved staple of the repertoire in time but audiences need to get to know it better. Perhaps a different title would have helped.
Standard YouTube Licence Ballet Central, Mixed Programme, Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre 28 April 2017 Ballet Central has aways been good and, having met Christopher Marney at several Ballet Black and London Ballet Circle events, seen him speak, and, most importantly, watched him work I expected great things from his first season as the company's artistic director. I had been dazzled by Marney's dancing as Count Lilac in Sir Matthew Burne's Sleeping Beauty. I have been awed by his choreography, particularly War Letters which he created for Ballet Black. On Friday I discovered his prowess as an artistic director. All I can say without gushing hyperbole is that Friday's mixed bill greatly exceeded my highest expectations.
We were presented with a varied programme arranged in three parts:
the triumphant return of Solor in the first act of La Bayadḕre;
Christopher Bruce's fascinating Mya; and
Michael Pink and Christopher Gable's spine-chilling Dracula.
After another interval, the programme ended with a major part of Sir Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling, awitty but slightly disturbing reworking of La Sylphide.
Lee's ballroom scene was a beautifully crafted classical piece though with original reinterpretation of some of Prokofiev's most popular music. It is very dramatic and very clever. In that regard, very like Marney. It was very different from the work that appears on Lee's YouTube channel and website which
"..... pushes the boundaries of classical ballet, by fusing world-class ballerinas with more modern art forms such as break dancing and beat boxing, providing a world of professional bespoke entertainment for any event."
Cira Beautiful Misfitsfeaturing one of my very favourite dancers from Ballet Black and Confluxwith a beatbox Swan Lake are examples. Commissioning Lee to revisit Shakespeare and Prokofiev where Lavrovsky, Cranko and MacMillan already walk tall and create a 20-minute work to open the show was an imaginative and risky but, as it turned out, spectacularly rewarding step. I long to see the rest of the story. I wonder how Lee would rework the bedroom scene when Romeo or the conflict of emotions when Juliet learns that her husband has dispatched Tybalt. I do hope someone commissions that talented choreographer to finish the ballet.
Lee had the perfect Juliet in Amy McEntee. She seemed born for that role. An actor and storyteller at least as much as a dancer. she enchanted us with her knowing glance to Romeo and galvanized us with her expression of horror as Romeo squared up to her brother. Central has trained a disproportionately large number of my favourite dancers and choreographers, including Marney himself. I think we saw several future stars on Friday one of whom is definitely McEntee.
Dzierzon's Sleepless was a complete contrast. Beginning with a huddle of dancers in subdues lighting the work exploded into vigorous movement. Dzierzon had 10 dancers in that work - 9 on stage and one at the piano. My seat was at the far right hand of the second row next to the pianist and though I tried to concentrate on the stage I could not help my gaze returning to the composer and pianist Phil Feeney. His score was vibrant and exciting as indeed was his playing of it. But those on stage were great too. Representing the spray can wielding shadows of my youth who transformed every carriage of the New York subway, those kids darted around the stage one scribbling letters on the shirts of the others. A real frisson of subversion.
Yet another change of mood with Liam Scarlett's elegant Indigo Children to the music of Philip Glass. A work created for Ballet Black - Beautiful Ballet Black, as I like to call the company - it was lovingly re-staged by Cira Robinson and Damien Johnson. McEntee shone in this work too as did Craig McFarlane who had been her Romeo.
Although I have only seen two complete performances of La Bayadḕre I love that ballet. I have even tried to dance little bits of it. Last Autumn I saw the Dutch National Ballet's performance of Makarova's version with the magnificent Sasha Mukhamedov in the title role. I had expected Ballet Central to perform the entry into the kingdom of the shades which is probably the best-known scene from the ballet. Instead, Marney chose the triumphant return of Solor to Golkonda which was an opportunity to show off the corps as well as Kanon Kihara and Jaume Ruiz who danced the principal roles. A word of commendation to Dante Baylor who designed the costumes. I loved those outfits: trousers and turbans for the men and pantaloons and scarves for the women.
On Friday I had complained that we had been deprived of Marney when I wrote All that was missing from this Evening's Performance was a Ballet by Marney ......In fact, I had not read the programme carefully and, in any case, I should have recognized his mark. It was a masterly restaging of a much-loved work. May we have some more of that beautiful arrangement, please?
Christopher Bruce's Mya turned out to be my favourite work of the evening. Three dancers clad head to foot in tightly fitting, somewhat shapeless, almost colourless gowns moving to Arvo Pärt'sSpiegel im Spiegel(literally mirror in the mirror). But what could it mean? The costumes reminded me of the chrysalis of a butterfly and there was a touching moment when the limbs of one of the dancers began to emerge from the constraint. An analogy with the human condition? The composer is Estonian whose nation has emerged like a butterfly from the Soviet thrall. Doesn't matter. The music is haunting. The choreography compelling. The performance enthralling.
Central was founded by Christopher Gable who was the artistic director of Northern Ballet when I returned to Manchester. As a Mancunian in exile, I had read about Northern Ballet (then known as Northern Dance Theatre) in the dancing press but had never actually seen any of its performances. I thought I would miss Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells, the Coliseum, the Place ....... I did not do so at all, They continued to exist 200 miles away, of course, but on my doorstep was a wonderful company treating us to a succession of delicious works in that golden age of Northern Ballet. We were reminded of that golden age by Pink and Gable's Dracula. Not an easy watch but an enthralling one as Harker is first seduced then savaged by vampires. Yet another star in the making, Matthew Morrell, dominated the stage. Tall and menacing he induced teal fright, however, many times I reminded myself that this was only theatre.
The last work of the evening was act 2 of Sir Matthew Bourne's "romantic wee ballet" a Highland Fling. "Romantic" indeed with a woman hobbling about the stage her costume drenched in blood. Well, stage blood of course. It was Sir Matthew's take on La Sylphide which is one of the oldest ballets in the modern repertoire. I have often said that it ought to be our national ballet as it is set in Scotland. Bourne kept Løvenskiold's score but gave it a new twist portraying James as a drunken Glaswegian in a Highland glade cavorting with winged and kilted sylphs. I'm not sure what happened to Effie or Madge but Sir Matthew arms James with a pair of garden shears instead of a poisoned scarf with which he does even more damage. The sight of the wounded sylph was the second tummy turning moment of the evening, Dracula being the first.The sylphs get their own back on James after mourning their murdered sister for he sprouts a pair of wings in the last scene.
Marney chose this piece well. I have not always been a fan of Sir Matthew Bourne but I loved this work. I can well understand why Scottish Ballet currently performs Highland Fling but not the 1836 original. Much of the appeal of this work lies the designs as well as Bourne's quirky humour. Lez Brotherston, who had designed Scottish Ballet's, appears to have inspired Baylor who designed Ballet Central's production.
Sir Matthew staged that work himself. An enormous compliment to Marney but one he well deserves. Bourne would not be where he is today without an uncanny knack of recognizing talent when he sees it. He saw it in Adam Davies who danced James and Brittanie Dillion, his sylph. I don't know where they come from but they looked pretty Scottish, in fact totally Glaswegian to me. Especially the sylph with the suitcase wandering sheepishly hand in hand with James. So much to see in this work.
Ballet Central is making only one other appearance in the North on this tour. In Whitehaven on 13 May 2017 which I can't make because I am in Move It at The Dancehouse in Manchester. However, I am determined to see this year's mixed bill again. Even though I shall have to travel I just gotta see those fine young artists again.
Standard YouTube Licence Screening of the Royal Ballet's Frankenstein, 18 May 2016
I always look forward to my Wednesday evening ballet class at Northern Ballet or the University of Huddersfield and I have turned down invitations to posh receptions in order to attend one or other of those classes before now. Tonight, however, I skipped class to attend the screening of Liam Scarlett'sFrankenstein. I am very glad I did for rarely have I been more excited by a new ballet. I am metaphorically kicking myself for not getting a reasonably priced ticket in the amphitheatre stalls during the Friends' booking window when I had the chance. However, I did the next best thing by watching the HDTV transmission from Covent Garden in the National Media Museum in Bradford, which happens to be the home town of Thomas Whitehead who played a key role in last night's ballet.
As Darcey Bussell noted before the screening most of us know Frankenstein from Hollywood rather than Mary Shelley's novel and fail to appreciate its themes and subtleties. Scarlett has returned to the original in creating his ballet. Very briefly, a young medical student called Victor Frankenstein, grief stricken by the death of his mother in childbirth, becomes obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. In a neurology class in the anatomy theatre a lecturer applies Galvani's experiments with frog legs to human body parts and gets a limb to twitch after a current is applied to the nerve ends. That was possible with frogs but not with more advanced creatures at that time but never mind. That experiment gives Victor the idea that electricity is the life force. Instead of enjoying himself womanizing in the pub like all the other medical students he experiments with stitching together body parts and charging them with electricity. Eventually he succeeds in making a functioning composite cadaver which breaks out of the laboratory and terrorizes the public.
One of its victims is Victor's little brother who is left alone blindfolded for a few minutes by his family. The monster plays with him gently at first but the boy dies of shock on seeing the monster's gruesome form. The boy's body is found by his nurse, Justine, who is accused of murdering him. The second act ends with the poor woman dangling from the gallows which to my mind is the most disturbing scene of the show. In the last act Victor marries his sweetheart, Elizabeth, but the monster shows up at their wedding knocking off first Victor's father, then his best mate Henry and finally Elizabeth. Desperate at the loss of everyone he has ever loved in his life Victor shoots himself. The last scene shows the monster cradling its creator.
This is a tremendous work making enormous demands of every single role player in the story. I suppose the greatest demands are made of the monster danced last night by Steven McRae. "McRae as a monster", I hear you cry. "He's the last dancer I would cast in that role. Ed Watson perhaps or maybe Muntagirov, but McRae is such a sweet, sensitive young man." Well let me tell you, McRae does monsters and how. The make-up and wardrobe department performed a minor miracle in dressing him with horrid gory stitch marks across his face and body. He was as horrible as anything out of Hammer Films. But this was a sensitive monster who was looking for love first from the little boy, then Elizabeth and finally his creator. Not so very far off McRae's other roles I think you will agree.
Federico Bonelli danced Victor Frankenstein. I have long been a fan of this dancer but he rose even higher in my esteem as he developed his character on stage from lost little boy, to swotty undergraduate, obsessed researcher, young master, gentle suitor and in all stages of the ballet tortured soul. The other big male role was Henry who played all round good egg from the moment he befriended Victor in medical school. Like Victor he had no time for drinking, carousing and having a nice time like all other sensibly adjusted students. He was danced last night by Alexander Campbell, and a very good job he did too.
The main female role was Elizabeth danced last night by Laura Morera who was Scarlett's muse in Viscera (see Au Revoir but not Adieu19 Nov 2015. I am a great fan of Morera and once had the pleasure of meeting her and telling her how much I admire her work (see Laura Morera25 Aug 2015). She is a fine actor well as a great dancer. She is a master of detail - remember her little mannerisms as she writes in Victor's commonplace book as he is about to set off for medical school - but also her mid-air rotations as Victor tosses her into the air without really looking at her. It must have been so scary for her to do those turns.
"And Thomas Woodhead? You say he danced a key role." Why yes, indeed, for he was the lecturer who demonstrated the life giving force of electricity to the students and gave Victor the idea for his research. We have all taken classes from lecturers like him. Brilliant. Sarcastic. Frightening for the callow undergraduate. I was reminded of my economic history classes at St Andrews. "Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died - not a day before time - in 1883" delivered in the cultured tones of Morningside "where sex is what the coal comes in."
A ballet like this requires a remarkable score and it was provided by Lowell Liebermann. It was a work of our times - not a pastiche - but it caught the flavour of the period where that was needed. It was one of the most beautiful new works I have ever heard and I long to listen to it again perhaps next time in the concert hall. If anyone wants to get me a present for Christmas I'll have a recording of the score as soon as soon as it comes out on DVD.
Equally impressive were John MacFarlane's designs, particularly his apparatus for generating static electricity and the electrodes for applying it to humans. This was one of the most realistic props I have ever seen on stage in any kind of show. And the gallows scene too which would have made me throw up had I visited the Kash before the show rather than after.
There is so much to write about this production but I have a living to earn and nobody pays me to write ballet reviews. There are still some seats available for the last three performances in London. If you can make the show then go. It will soon be staged in San Francisco. I'd say its worth the 9 hour flight if you miss it here and I am seriously contemplating a trip there.
Liam Scarlett is a remarkable talent. First, Vicera. then No Man's Land and now this. He is still a very young man. Imagine what he will be doing in 20 or 30 years time.
English National Ballet, Lest we Forget Palace Theatre, Manchester, 24 Nov 2015
Yesterday's performance of Lest we Forget inManchester was superb. It was not an easy watch and for that reason I can't say that I enjoyed it but I was moved by it in a very special way. This was ballet at its best. It showed the unique power of dance to comprehend and find beauty in one of the greatest tragedies of human history. The end of the performance brought some members of the audience to their feet. I guess the only reason why more did not join in was that the audience was emotionally drained by the end.
The performance consisted of Liam Scarlett'sNo Man's Land, Russell Maliphant's Second Breath and Akram Khan's Dust. That was a shorter programme than the one premièred at the Barbican last year in that it omitted George Williamson's Firebird which I hope to see one day. All three were impressive works but the one that stood out for me was Scarlett's No Man's Land.
I had already seen a recording of Scarlett's Viscera earlier in the month (see Au Revoir but not Adieu19 Nov 2015) and was keen to compare it to No Man's Land. The two works could not have been more different. Set to excerpts from Franz Liszt's Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses that had been arranged by Gavin Sutherland No Man's Land was haunting and lyrical. The work remembered not only the men who served in the forces but the women who stayed behind to make the munitions in appalling and sometimes dangerous conditions. The setting for this work was a damaged but still operational building - possibly a factory or maybe a ruin on the front. The women were in simple flowing dresses. The men in green or brownish tunics with steel helmets at one point in the ballet. There was enchanting dancing by Begoña Cao, Junor Souza, Alison McWhinney,Fabian Reimair, Shiori Kase and Fernando Bufalá.
Maliphant's Second Breath was an opportunity for Tamarin Stott and Joshua McSherry-Gray to shine and they were incandescent in their duet though the supporting dancers were important too. The work was set to a score by Andy Cowton but not easy to absorb. There were pulses of sound that I found quite alarming though that was possibly the composer's idea. There were snatches of barely audible and even less comprehensible speech in the piece followed by a pretty clear rendering of Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night which seemed to be delivered by the author himself. Dark and disturbing this was the work that required most work on the part of the audience.
The most dramatic work of the evening was Khan's Dust. It began with an execution - or possibly the nightmare of an execution for the victim continued to writhe on the ground. There was some impressive human sculpture where the dancers' limbs became waves or possibly a production line. It was Khan's Kaashat the Lowry that prompted me to book for Lest we Froget but this work was very different in that any South Asian influences were much less noticeable to me at an rate. The music for this work was by Jocelyn Pook who also wove speech into her score. There was what seemed to be a phrase of Auld Lang Syne repeating itself on a scratched record. The lead dancers were Erina Takahashi with Reinar and Bufala, This piece won Khan a number of awards last year and its success seems to have led to his commission to create a Giselle. I look forward to it immensely.
The centenary of the First World War inspired the Royal New Zealand Ballet to create Salute, another mixed bill focusing in war. They two of their ballets from that production to Leeds which I reviewed in Kia Ora! The Royal New Zealand Ballet in Leeds5 Nov 2015 earlier this month. The Netherlands which was neutral in the conflict is commemorating the war in a different way with Ted Brandsen's Mata Hariwho was also a victim of that conflict.
Anyone who thinks that dance is a frivolous, frothy superficial art form incapable of dealing with difficult matters should think again. It is the synthesis of many arts and the whole is almost always greater than the constituent parts.
English National Ballet's newsletter Ready to Dance arrived earlier today with with a link to Osiel Gouneo's pirouettes in Don Quixote which the newsletter described as "jaw dropping". He will be joining the company as a guest artist this season.
The newsletter also has details of ENB's latest productions: Lest We Forget, Romeo and Juliet and Le Corsaire, They are bringing Lest We Forget to Manchester on 24 Nov for one night only and also Romeo and Juliet from the 26 to 28. Le Corsaire is coming to Liverpool between 18 and 21 November. Interestingly, Le Corsaire is also to be staged in Oman, one of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, next year.
Finally there are full details on the company's adult ballet classes which seem very similar to Northern Ballet's. Good to know that I shall be able to keep up my ballet if my work takes me permanently to London.
