A lyrical assault course for the Royal Ballet’s rising stars
Ballet Frederick Ashton triple bill Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, London WC2 ★★★★
Frederick Ashton (1904-1988) was the genius founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet. He developed a painstakingly refined and lyrical strain of neoclassical choreography (which came to be known as “the English style”), packed with incredibly intricate detail – in the footwork as much as in the use and carriage of the upper body – as well as lightning-fast, counter-intuitive changes in physical direction. He was also, in his many story ballets, an insatiable and instinctively theatrical deployer of props.
This all conspires to make him uniquely challenging to perform. When the titanium-confident Rudolf Nureyev joined the Royal Ballet after his defection in 1961, he admitted to being startled by the sheer complexity of Ashton’s choreography. And Francesca Hayward, now the Royal Ballet’s single brightest star, recently told me that his
Rhapsody is “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”.
A dazzling, upbeat abstract showpiece, Rhapsody (1980) is the climax of the company’s new allashton evening, which begins with a more measured nugget of abstraction (1948’s Scènes de Ballet) and centres on the heart-breaking 1976 Turgenev adaptation A Month in the Country. It’s a superb piece of programming, showing Ashton at his most mercurial and magnificent. And, on Tuesday evening, it also served as a fascinating assault-course for five dancers making their debuts in various roles. I emerged rejoicing in how much young talent there is in the company, while also reflecting anew on how fiendishly hard Ashton is to get exactly right.
Set to Stravinsky, the Euclidinspired Scènes de Ballet sees Ashton in cool, almost Balanchinian mode, the dancers more ulta-chic cyphers than individuals. Principal Fumi Kaneko delivered much of it with an efficiency at times bordering on brusque, but certainly didn’t put a foot wrong. As her partner, 6ft 2½in first soloist Reece Clarke is a big fellow to be tackling Ashton, but his technique proved as strong as his partnering.
Rhapsody found Hayward – a well-nigh perfect Ashtonian, épaulement and all – responding resplendently to the Rachmaninov score, firing off the footwork with Swiss-watch precision but also finding the role’s necessary insouciance and warmth. Her (also off-stage) partner, the always rewarding Cesar Corrales, echoed her crisp musicality and “line” and turned like a spinning-top, even though he looked a little rushed in some of the footwork, and fudged a trio of revoltades.
Tuesday’s other two first-time performances came in A Month in the Country, a romantic drawing-room melodrama that plays out to John Lanchbery’s succulent Chopin orchestrations and sits very comfortably indeed between the two plotless ventures. A mere corps member he may be, but Liam Boswell shone in the puckishly demanding role of young Kolia – a promising future there – while William Bracewell (another first soloist), delivered an immensely creditable star performance as Kolia’s handsome tutor, Beliaev, who sets all hearts a-flutter.
As for that most thrillingly unpredictable of principals, Natalia Osipova, I confess I feared she might rather overegg things as Natalia Petrovna, the frustrated lady-of-thehouse who (mutually) falls hook, line and sinker for the comely beak. In fact, she was terrific, leaning (both literally and figuratively) into the part with great passion, but also relishing in nuance. Natalia and Beliaev’s climactic pas de deux shimmered with exactly the right languorous-but-fragile ecstasy, and she danced as though she profoundly understood her character’s heartbreak. Her final moments left a real lump in the throat, proof that she was doing something very right indeed.
In rep until May 2. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk