The Royal Ballet is a jewel in the crown – and this proved it
Within the Golden Hour
It was a declaration of hope, on the part of the Royal Ballet, to begin this 130-minute mixed programme with a brand new work. Scherzo, created by First Soloist Valentino Zucchetti to a glorious Rachmaninoff score, was danced by 16 young, as yet unfamiliar, company members. The nimble pointe work and quick asymmetric leaps were reminiscent of past master Frederick Ashton, peerless choreographer of the mid-20th century. Nevertheless here it was: the future. Not a miserabilist piece to remind us of lockdown but a bright-spirited declaration that this company is still, despite everything, raging with vitality.
Of course Within the Golden Hour was conceived in optimism and designed to be seen live. Instead, poor Kevin O’hare, the company’s director, was obliged to make another graceful, smiling speech about how he looks forward to seeing audiences back in the theatre soon. You bet he does. There is a dogged philistinism in this country that seems to resent the present agonies of the performing arts, as if its workers had wilfully chosen a parlous profession and have no right to their fears.
Yet even those who hold that view might be convinced, were they to pay £10 to watch this programme online, that the Royal Ballet is a remarkable jewel in the nation’s crown. The aim was to show as many possible facets in that jewel. After Scherzo came a succession of two- or three-hander excerpts, including straightforward crowd-pleasers such as the OdetteSiegfried Act II duet from Swan Lake, impeccably danced by Francesca Hayward and Cesar Corrales.
Ashton was strongly represented, as was the Royal’s other master
choreographer, Kenneth Macmillan. On the Ashton team, Akane Takada and Alexander Campbell performed an exquisite pas de deux from the late work Rhapsody, and Melissa Hamilton – switchblade limbs deployed to stunning effect in her catsuit – gave a star turn in Monotones II.
Batting for Macmillan, Yasmine Naghdi and Nicol Edmonds (plus solo pianist Kate Shipway) were outstanding in the second movement of Concerto. Naghdi is a wonderful talent, thanks to her gift of stillness, the assured quality of her lines and her ability to make abstraction emotive.
Then came the big guns: Natalia Osipova, Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov. It verges upon the obvious for Osipova – that supremely
committed, supremely Russian artist – to dance Fokine’s The Dying Swan, in which emotion is not abstract but blindingly literal. Yet melodrama was transmuted into art in her bourrées; the arms tugging at the air for life, the torso almost plastic as it wavered.
It was also, perhaps, obvious for Nuñez and Muntagirov to perform variations from Petipa’s Le Corsaire, with its circus trick leaps and fouettés. Again, however, the performers triumphed. The mature Nuñez is a scintillating glory and I have simply run out of superlatives for Muntagirov. If there is a greater ballet partnership in the world right now, I would pay a lot more than a tenner to see it.
The programme ended with Christopher Wheeldon’s 2008
work, Within the Golden Hour, created to music by Vivaldi and Ezio Bosso. The complex, typically intelligent ensemble movements are mesmerising, better perhaps than the three centrepiece duets – but this is not a time for nitpicking. Again the piece conveys hope, with its warm sunrise finale. And as conductor Jonathan Lo strode onstage to join the company curtain call – a bold stampede of applause from fellow members in the auditorium – watching through a computer gave the dangerous illusion of being as good as the real thing.
Within the Golden Hour is available to watch on demand at roh.org.uk