Rising in high style to the occasion
Ballet Kenneth Macmillan: A National Celebration Covent Garden ★★★★★
A“national celebration” this certainly is. To mark the 25th anniversary of the death of the great British choreographer, the Royal Ballet has invited Britain’s four other leading ballet companies to join it at Covent Garden to perform various programmes of his shorter works. And so, on Wednesday night, this mini-season of (in my experience) unprecedented détente opened with Birmingham Royal Ballet performing Concerto, Scottish Ballet doing
Le Baiser de la fée, and members of all five troupes (those two, plus English National Ballet, Northern Ballet and the Royal Ballet) finally barrelling into
Elite Syncopations.
The pressure, then, is particularly “on” for the visiting companies on this illustrious stage. But everyone did themselves proud, and BRB served up a particularly fine opening.
Set to Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto no 2, Concerto (1966) is a beautiful and very difficult piece. In the first movement, Momoko Hirata cut a delectably musical figure, partnered with muscular panache by Tzu-chao Chou. Perhaps even better, though, were Jenna Roberts and Tyrone Singleton in the slow, soulsearching second movement. She was exquisitely linear, he, very strong and centred, neither of them at all hurried – the effect was decidedly moving.
This fine collective effort was followed by another one, but in a lesser work. Created in 1960 for the Royal Ballet, Le Baiser de la fée is a queer, La Sylphide-like fish that has been seldom resuscitated, arguably with good reason.
That is not to say that this adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ice Maiden lacks craftsmanlike choreography. Nor is it to say that Scottish Ballet – here making their Covent Garden debut – gave it anything but their all.
Andrew Peasgood was convincing as the man torn between his brideto-be and the Fairy; Bethany Kingsleygarner typically lyrical in her upper body, and charm itself, as the fiancée, and the corps showed no signs of nerves. However, that first-rate dancer Sophie Martin was wasted as the Mother. And, although Constance Devernay was a model of crispness as the Fairy, she didn’t quite generate the aura of other-worldly magic that might have made the sprite so irresistible to the feckless fellow.
To those minor cavils, I’d add the more serious ones of a wafer-thin plot, over-long crowd scenes, lowoctane pas de deux, and a surprisingly yawnsome Stravinsky score. The strong dancing, and Gary Harris’s sleek set, were not enough to prevent several sections from dragging.
There are no longueurs, however, in Elite Syncopations. This 1974 piece is Macmillan in unusually upbeat, hip-swinging mood, a 12-section, gloriously inventive ragtime party for several soloists plus corps, with everyone clad in eye-poppingly cartoonish unitards by Ian Spurling.
The Royal’s dancers acquitted themselves in high style here: principals Ryoichi Hirano and Yasmine Naghdi made a super central couple, the three girls had a ball in The Cascades and the four boys rocketed through the Hot-house Rag. But what was so particularly winning was how wholeheartedly the other companies’ members, in most cases infinitely less familiar with this piece, dived into it.
Sure, there was a bit of fudging, but all the soloists rose to the occasion, while the heroine of the hour was from ENB. A lowly “first artist” she may be, but Precious Adams brought musicality, comic nous and a giddy but always tasteful sexuality to the bottom-wiggling Calliope Rag, in a real show-stopper of a performance.
Season runs until Nov 1. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk