Triple bill has all the Rite moves
ENGLISH NATIONAL BALLET Sadler’s Wells, EC1
ANOTHER bold statement from Tamara Rojo’s English National Ballet, now the first British company to perform Pina Bausch’s powerful Rite of Spring, the 1975 interpretation of Stravinsky’s almighty score portraying an ancient sacrificial rite.
It’s the finale of a strong triple bill that starts with William
Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, a ballet full of power poses and hard-edged sexiness. ENB’s dancers tackle it well — Cesar Corrales makes a particular impact, urgently attacking the steps — but it demands a kind of arrogance that could still do with some coaxing.
Artistic director Rojo makes an intense appearance in Hans van Manen’s Adagio Hammerklavier. It sounds ostensibly romantic: three couples, Beethoven, wafting dresses, but it’s actually a stark, solemn piece, with bodies (and relationships) full of tension and distance.
And then, the Rite, a chilling work, evoking a community living with an abiding sense of fear, ruled by something they don’t understand and can’t control. That terror is thick in the room and in the cowed bodies of the vulnerable women as they are pulled by the will of the mass into pounding rhythmic repetitions, feet stamping a stage covered in earth.
At first the dancers don’t seem quite feral enough, they’re not totally moving as one, but they become more and more subsumed by the world of the work as it goes on — and so do we — until tiny Francesca Velicu dances to her death, with desperate cries from her body. It’s gruelling to watch, but utterly compelling.
Until April 1 (020 7863 8000, sadlerswells.com)