The Daily Telegraph - Features
The most moving dance you will ever see
Ballet
MacMillan Celebrated
Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, London WC2
★★★★★
From a playful abstract sketch to a harrowing narrative work and a divinely inspired requiem, the Royal Ballet displays the astonishing creative range of its former artistic director Kenneth MacMillan in this trio of one-act pieces. Several cast changes due to illness also illustrate the depth of talent in the ranks as dancers such as first soloist Isabella Gasparini step confidently into the spotlight.
Gasparini is the charming centre of the thoroughly delightful opener, the plotless 1955 work Danses Concertantes. This was MacMillan’s first commission for the company, and its success convinced him to make the leap from dancer to choreographer.
This remarkably assured debut uses Stravinsky’s spiky score to punctuate ever-changing kaleidoscopic patterns. Classical elegance is coolly disrupted, and mixed with exuberant jazz, from a Broadway kickline to a tapper’s soft-shoe shuffle. Nicholas Georgiadis’s neoclassical, carnivalesque designs are still eye-popping, and the whole enterprise is blessed with wit.
There’s rather less cause to chuckle in the challenging middle piece, 1984’s Different Drummer. This grey, gloomy affair is based on Georg Büchner’s 1836 play Woyzeck, about a desperate soldier who becomes a medical guinea pig to support his partner, Marie, and their illegitimate child. Capped off with a murder/suicide, it’s a damning indictment of how the establishment exploits the poor.
That social critique is the weakest element in MacMillan’s version, but the psychological complexity given to the lead pair is the saving grace, and a feverishly committed Marcelino Sambé and Francesca Hayward act the hell out of it. Sambé expresses a crushing despair with every facet of his being; in an agonising sequence he slides down into the splits and drags himself up, again and again. The pair are so tender, until poison seeps into their love.
It’s bizarre to think that in 1976, the Royal Ballet rejected MacMillan’s Requiem, a tribute to the late dancer and choreographer John Cranko, because it uses Fauré’s sacred music. How absurd: this is the most respectful, moving and soulful piece of dance I have ever seen. Watching it is truly a religious experience.
MacMillan’s movement is exquisitely restrained, leaving space for the music (beautifully performed by the Royal Opera chorus and orchestra) to build, and asking us to sit in the emotion, from grief to salvation. The spine-tinglingly ethereal Lauren Cuthbertson and deeply expressive Matthew Ball, who finishes his solo kneeling in supplication, are the standouts, but this is a company triumph: a celebration of MacMillan’s legacy as much as the man himself.
In rep until Apr 13. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk