Premieres with potential
Is encouraged by the ideas and talent on show in the Royal Ballet’s
The Royal Ballet was founded on – and has a uniquely rich tradition of – comic, dramatic and romantic storytelling in classical ballet. Along with its wonderful dancers, it is this that still, for my money, makes it the most consistently rewarding ballet company in the world. Its inaugural bill in the Royal Opera House’s shiny new Linbury Theatre, however, has a very largely contemporary dance feel, with pointe shoes absent from half the pieces, no traditional narrative, almost no comedy and not a single character.
Whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that the company’s long-serving resident choreographer, Wayne McGregor, is entirely contemporarily inclined it is impossible to say. But, either way, the evening may well leave you hoping that the neoclassical genius of founding choreographer Frederick Ashton is encouraged to live on, not only in the company’s current rep, but as an inexhaustible fount of inspiration for the choreographic stars of tomorrow.
Still, the show also has plenty of virtues, and you could hardly accuse the Royal Ballet of not trying to give value for money. For its “christening” of the Linbury, it’s serving up a bill whose title – New Work New Music – says it all. On offer are six premieres, each one set to music never previously choreographed to, with two of these scores specially commissioned.
These sorts of evenings are extremely valuable: to give younger choreographers a platform, to allow experienced dancers in the company to try something fresh, to give relative newcomers some experience in the spotlight, and also for taking the artistic “temperature” of the company.
I should say straight out that the performances throughout are super. As for the works themselves, the choreography turns out to be generally good rather than great, promising rather than profound, the music on offer acceptable for dance but overwhelmingly forgettable.
Duets form the backbone of the evening, each one a dialogue of sorts with certain merits but no outright winner. From Kristen McNally (cherishable principal character artist with the company) comes based on ‘a’ true story, which opens the evening. I rather like this pointed exchange between young dancers Nadia Mullova-Barley and Harry Churches – coming across at times like a heated domestic between two sophisticated androids, its angular, spiky quality knits with Samantha Fernando’s apocalyptically melodramatic score.
By contrast, the other two duos are starrily cast. Circular Ruins – steps by Goyo Montero, rebarbative new score by Owen Belton – fields the always wonderful pairing of former real-life husband and wife Thiago Soares and Marianela Nuñez, pitting them against each other in a broadly drawn power struggle that turns out both pyrrhic and pointless.
There’s plenty of intimacy, too, in Two Sides Of (by Juliano Nunes), starring Lauren Cuthbertson – a five-star joy recently in Ashton’s The Two Pigeons – and Marcelino Sambé. The evening’s warmest offering, this New Work New Music breaks no new choreographic ground, but does at least give a satisfying impression of familiarity and shared experience.
Of the larger three works, Alexander Whitley’s Uncanny Valley
– named after the disquieting effect that close replicas of human beings often have on us – sees five boys articulately fall in and out of synch, and that’s kind of it. It’s an idea with real dance potential, but the steps here are never even half as disquieting as Under the Skin composer Mica Levi’s slithery strings.
Something Borrowed, by soloist Calvin Richardson, is a slightly dotty but also spirited and commendably ambitious eco-themed deconstruction of no lesser a subject than Western consumerism and existential angst, while the most substantial piece of all in terms of cast and length is also the last: Blue Moon, for seven girls.
For all the latter’s flaws, it’s hard to come down too harshly on any new work for the currently gyno-sceptic Royal Ballet that allows an all-female cast to show off their splendid technique and – heaven help us – personalities, as opposed to being hurled around by male dancers like bags of cement. It’s also far more enjoyable than much of the dross (by men) that’s graced the Covent Garden main stage of late.