BIRTHDAY BALLET WITH SPRING! IN ITS STEPS
Spring! (Dextera and Elite Syncopations), Scottish Ballet, Theatre Royal, Glasgow Verdict: Short but sparkling ★★★★✩
A FIFTIETH birthday is always an excuse for a party – so why should a national ballet company be an exception to the rule?
Scottish Ballet certainly doesn’t intend to be – as is obvious from the programme that kickstarts its half-century season.
Spring! is a short but sparkling double bill comprising a new work, Dextera, and the 20th century classic Elite Syncopations.
Created by former dancer Sophie Laplane, Dextera celebrates the twin virtues of creativity and hard graft through the recurring motif of the hands.
Although essentially an abstract ballet, Miss Laplane brings an almost narrative discipline to the various sections of Dextera – reinforcing those themes. The dancers have bought into her vision, and Sophie Martin and Thomas Edwards particularly caught the eye in the section entitled Mea Culpa.
Given her first opportunity to employ the full Scottish Ballet Orchestra, it is no coincidence Miss Laplane chose the music of Mozart, as no composer was more creative. The exuberant Elite Syncopations was created by Sir Kenneth MacMillan for the Royal Ballet in 1974. Danced to the music of Scott Joplin and his contemporaries, it rode the wave of the early Seventies ragtime craze, and audiences have always loved it.
It is a kaleidoscope of colour and a riot of sound and it hasn’t dated a day in 45 years.
The dancers of Scottish Ballet approached it with the required gusto. Constance Devernay and Luke Schaufuss were eye-poppingly hot in the extremely sexy Bethena waltz.
Diminutive Jamiel Laurence was literally in the shadow of the tall Grace Horler, who towered over him in the Alaskan Rag.
Spring! made the Theatre Royal more like the Hope Street Fun Factory. It was a cracking start that can only bode well for the rest of the 50th birthday party.
Spring! (Dextera and Elite Syncopations); Scottish Ballet, His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, until tomorrow; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, May 2-4.