Royal Ballet Triple: Viscera/ Infra/ Fool’s Paradise, Covent Garden, November 2012

This wonderful evening of dance featured two interesting works receiving their first performances by the Royal Ballet.

First came Viscera by Liam Scarlett, commissioned by the Miami City Ballet and premiered in their home-town during January 2012. With costumes by Scarlett himself, beautifully pure lighting by John Hall, and music for piano and orchestra in three movements by American composer Lowell Liebermann, this was riveting.

Nuñez and Hirano in Viscera, all images ROH/ Andrej Uspenski

Music in the first movement was fast. A flurry of turns and lifts, swiftly accomplished by the sixteen dancers led by Laura Morera moving and interchanging with one another, produced a visceral impact. Then suddenly as the lighting turned from red to turquoise the tempo changed to a mood of great tranquillity, and the piano, ably played by Robert Clark, started the second movement with the orchestra directed by Barry Wordsworth joining in later. This section was a pas-de-deux, beautifully performed by Ryoichi Hirano and Marianela Nuñez as they cut interesting poses expressing a great spiritual attraction between them. As she leaves, he walks off, and the final section starts. Slower than the first, but as the lighting changed to pink, so the music changed to a bolder form. The choreography of arm movements was intriguing, and the colours changed again: a moment of turquoise changed to red, and firm chords from the orchestra led to a final denouement. It was all superbly danced, and this 20 minute ballet formed a terrific start to an evening that ended with Fool’s Paradise by Christopher Wheeldon.

Watson and Hamilton in Fool’s Paradise

This 30 minute ballet was first performed in 2007 by Wheeldon’s own company, to music by Joby Talbot, who later delivered the score for Wheeldon’s full-length ballet on Alice in Wonderland. Lovely flesh coloured costumes with subtle highlights by fashion designer Narcisco Rodriguez were complemented by distant lighting from high above by Penny Jacobus, with fluttering white leaves descending to the stage. It all starts with two men and a girl standing at stage rear. As she moves to join them in a pas-de-trois the action warms up, and couples come into play, moving and disappearing. Beautiful partnering here by Federico Bonelli with Sarah Lamb, Edward Watson with Melissa Hamilton, and Steven McRae with Yuhui Choe in the sensual choreography underpinned by Talbot’s mellifluous music, which at times sounded like early Schoenberg. After complex variations among nine dancers, they come together at the end to form an extraordinary tableau of bodies, arms and legs.

Fool’s Paradise final tableau

The second item of the triple, Wayne McGregor’s Infra with its interesting music by Max Richter, was surrounded by two half hour intervals, making a good dinner interlude for those who are already familiar with it. But this triple bill, superbly danced and with two works new to the Company, is worth every penny of the tickets at bargain basement prices. Terrific value and very well worth seeing.

Performances continue only until November 14 — for details click here.

Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, July 2012

This triple bill, inspired by three Titian paintings currently on view at the National Gallery (Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon, and The Death of Actaeon), is a tribute to Monica Mason who is retiring as artistic director of the Royal Ballet. The three ballets involved seven choreographers!

Nuñez as Diana with nymphs, all images ROH/ Johan Persson

The theme of the paintings finally came to life in the last ballet Diana and Actaeon, beautifully choreographed by Liam Scarlett, Will Tucket and Jonathan Watkins. Here we see Actaeon and his hounds, Diana and her nymphs, and witness the clash between them when he enters their space. The transformation scene where his purple hunting outfit converts to brown with dark legs, like a stag, was very well done, and when his hounds attack him, blood soaked pieces of ragged flesh appear round his haunches. The choreography was intriguingly inventive, and the pas-de-deux between Federico Bonelli as Actaeon, and Marianela Nuñez as Diana, amply expressed confusion on both sides until she finally takes command, and her nymphs come on to effect the transformation.

The set designs by Chris Ofili were fabulous, with bold colours expressing an otherworldly forest scene, reminiscent of Bakst’s dramatic designs for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Dramatic dancing too from the large cast, in which Bonelli and Nuñez were exceptional. Music by Jonathan Dove, beautifully conducted by Dominic Grier, was wonderfully expressive, and the singers Kim Sheehan and Andrew Rees were excellent. This final item of the triple bill will surely stand on its own in the future and I look forward to seeing it again.

Melissa Hamilton and others in Trespass

It was particularly welcome after the second item, Trespass, featuring dull choreography by Alastair Marriott and Christopher Wheeldon to some dreary music by Mark-Anthony Turnage, conducted by Barry Wordsworth. The dancers did their best with it, and the set design by Mark Wallinger featured a huge, curved, two-way mirror, apparently inspired by the idea that Diana is goddess of the moon, and that Actaeon is trespassing on a lunar landscape. The effect of the mirror probably depended where you sat, and I suspect the ballet looked far better from the Stalls, than the Amphi.

Machina/ Acosta and Benjamin

The first item, Machina, had a more direct appeal. Here was Diana represented by designer William Shawcross as a massive industrial robot, with a light at the end of its arm. Its arm movements were so interesting one could almost miss the dance choreography. Nico Muhly’s wonderful music, very well conducted by Tom Seligman, formed a fine basis for the choreography by Kim Brandstrup and Wayne McGregor, and the only problem, as in many of McGregor’s pieces was the distraction of the clever lighting. The huge robot with the light on its arm rather overwhelmed the dancers towards the end, and the lighting by Lucy Carter showed an intriguing use of shadows as the machine moved gradually from invisibility to superb clarity. The main dancers, Leanne Benjamin, Tamara Rojo, Carlos Acosta and Edward Watson were simply superb, exhibiting the choreography to huge advantage.

But where were the flowers for Tamara Rojo and Leanne Benjamin? Huge bouquets greeted the female principals in the other two works, but there were none here. This is becoming standard practice where Rojo is concerned, and if the Royal Ballet were a less confident company one might suspect some machinations behind the scenes, since Rojo is leaving to become Artistic Director of the ENB. Surely there is another reason, particularly since this was a great tribute to Monica Mason, who appeared on stage at the end looking absolutely delighted.

The next performance is a live relay on July 16 to BP big screens, and two other performances follow on July 17 and 20 — for details click here.

Royal Ballet Triple: Polyphonia/ Sweet Violets/ Carbon Life, Covent Garden, April 2012

This was an entirely twenty-first century triple bill.

Polyphonia, all images by Bill Cooper

The first work, Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, set to ten piano pieces by Ligeti, was first shown in New York at the start of the century, January 2001. The large Covent Garden stage gave space to the spare minimalism of Wheeldon’s choreography, with darkness sometimes surrounding a spot for the dancers. It has the sense of a sequence of études created for four couples, and along with the pas-de-deux work there is a section for three female dancers and another for two males in contest with one another. The silences between the ten sections and the purity of the piano sound give it a contemplative feel, and it was beautifully danced. It was only spoilt by some handkerchief-less members of the audience who couldn’t control their tousserie.

Leanne Cope and Thiago Soares

Sweet Violets is such a pretty title, quite in contrast to the content of this brilliant new work by Liam Scarlett. It starts with an incident on September 11^th, 1907 when a part-time prostitute named Emily Dimmock was murdered in her own home. Her partner returned the next day to find her throat slit from ear to ear. Nothing had been taken, the motive was a mystery, and this infamous Camden Town Murder was never solved. What inspired Scarlett was a series of paintings and drawings by Walter Sickert, who specialised in portraying the deep, dark underworld of London. His role was performed with admirable understatement by Johan Kobborg, whose friend was the murderer in this take on the story. Sickert’s friend, very well portrayed by Thiago Soares, obviously has two sides to his nature, and the fight with the prostitute was wonderfully realistic as he grappled with Leanne Cope, superb as the unfortunate Emily Dimmock. But that is only the start. This is a full-length story in one act, intense, brutal, and with ramifications at the highest level.

Kobborg as Sickert and McRae as Jack

The story has been set in the late 1880s when Queen Victoria’s grandson Eddy was still alive, and Lord Salisbury was prime minister. Both or them appear here, portrayed by Federico Bonelli and Christopher Saunders, to say nothing of Jack the Ripper, played as a very sinister character by Steven McRae. Laura Morera, Alina Cojocaru and Tamara Rojo danced beautifully, the first two as historical characters, and Rojo as an alluring artist’s model. This was a fabulous performance by an all-power cast, and a senior member of the Company told me the other cast is equally terrific.

Rachmaninov’s music for piano, violin and cello was beautifully played, and John Macfarlane’s designs, with David Finn’s lighting, gave a sombre, threatening atmosphere to the whole business. The clever use at one point of a stage and audience within the stage allows us to see the backs of the performers, making it feel as if we are looking in at things we should not really see. I shall go again, and again. Scarlett’s inspired new work is worth the whole triple bill.

Carbon Life

The third item, Carbon Life was a new creation by Wayne McGregor. Like his other work it involved unusual lighting design, this time by Lucy Carter, and I loved the clever way in which the dancers at the start appeared to glow in the dark. The whole thing was in several parts, with rock music and rap performed by musicians behind the dancers. Costumes ranged from simple swimming trunks to elaborate black outfits having pointed hoods, with cross-dressing allowed. The overall impression was of a very high quality music and dance video. Fun, balletic, and full of frivolity.

Performances of this triple bill continue until April 23 — for details click here.

Royal Ballet Triple: Limen, Marguerite and Armand, Requiem, Covent Garden, October 2011

Having seen Limen two years ago, my main memory was of blue number lights at the rear of the stage in a confusing on-again-off-again pattern, along with dancers barely visible in a half-light, but that is only in the second part. The first half is better, and I like Kaija Saariaho’s music, I love the use of bright colours in Lucy Carter’s lighting, and I rather like the video projections of liquid crystal numbers floating in a blue background at the start. Wayne McGregor’s choreography was brilliantly executed by Steven McRae and a first rate cast, but the last part in half light is dull, overshadowed by the bright blue lights at the rear, and I was glad of the interval before the main two items of the evening.

Rojo and Polunin, photo Tristram Kenton

Frederick Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand is a beautiful ballet based on Alexandre Dumas’s La Dame aux Camélias, with designs by Cecil Beaton. He wrote it for Fonteyn, partnered by Nureyev, who was almost twenty years her junior, and it was performed here by Tamara Rojo with the 21-year old Sergei Polunin. Her dancing, reminiscent of Fonteyn herself, showed huge emotional commitment, and her pain is palpable as he throws her aside in anger. Hers is a characterisation of the role it will be hard to beat. Polunin’s stage presence and physicality were wonderful, and the rest of the cast gave fine support, with Gary Avis as a most engaging Duke, like a lightly bearded version of Bruce Forsythe, and Christopher Saunders as a very solid father. When Ashton originally wanted to create this piece the right music evaded him until he heard Liszt’s piano sonata in B minor on the radio in 1962, and the ballet followed the next year to an orchestrated version of the sonata. In this performance Barry Wordsworth conducted the orchestra, but with Robert Clarke sounding overly sententious on the piano the music failed to match the heights of emotion reached by the dancers.

Leanne Benjamin in Requiem, photo Johan Persson

Finally in Requiem, to Fauré’s music, the emotion of the dancers is more restrained but very much the essence of the piece. Kenneth MacMillan created this ballet as a tribute to another wonderful British choreographer, John Cranko of the Stuttgart Ballet. The board of governors of the Royal Opera House originally turned down the idea of creating a ballet to Fauré’s sacred music, but MacMillan turned to the Stuttgart Ballet itself, which performed it as a memorial to the loss of their inspiring leader. The dancers exhibit collective grief, and the evening cast was wonderful together, with Carlos Acosta exhibiting enormous physical presence, and Leanne Benjamin riding high above the company as they carried her. These are dancers whose very presence is a tribute to dance, and the performance of the Sanctus by Leanne Benjamin and Rupert Pennefather was beautiful. The company danced with utter conviction, and perfect placing, and the pas-de-trois with Pennefather, Acosta and Benjamin at the end was superbly done.

Carlos Acosta in Requiem, photo Johan Persson

Requiem is really something to behold, and this triple bill is an opportunity to see highly emotional work of Ashton and MacMillan in the same programme. Don’t miss it. There are four more performances until October 20 — for details click here.

Ballo della Regina/ Live Fire Exercise/ DGV:Danse à Grande Vitesse, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, May 2011

This triple bill made for a rather fragmented evening, because the first two pieces took only 36 minutes between them, while the two intervals lasted half an hour each.

DGV, Royal Ballet photo by Johan Persson

But it was all worth it because the final item, Christopher Wheeldon’s Danse à Grande Vitesse, was wonderfully invigorating and performed with great energy. A clear stage seems to roll up at the rear into twisted metal sheets, though these are not quite what they seem when light later bleeds through. Wonderful designs by Jean-Marc Puissant, and beautifully lit by Jennifer Tipton, with subtle changes of hue. The lighting yields a very clear view of the principal dancers on the front stage while giving a more subdued feel to those who appear behind, and this is all part of the choreographic effect. The dancing was marvellous, the four principal couples being Zenaida Yanowsky with Eric Underwood, Leanne Benjamin with Steven McRae, Melissa Hamilton with Gary Avis, and Sarah Lamb with Federico Bonelli. All eight danced superbly, as did the dancers in the corps, and I thought Hamilton and Avis particularly stood out, though that was partly the choreography. The music by Michael Nyman was conducted with energetic precision by Daniel Capps, who did a very fine job of uniting music and dance.

Capps also conducted the first item, Ballo Della Regina (The Queen’s Ball) giving it a suitably regal tone while maintaining just the right rhythm for dance. It’s a Balanchine work set to music that was cut from Verdi’s opera Don Carlo, and involves a sequence of variations, first with twelve girls in blue, then two principals in white, joined by four soloists in violet. The principals, Marianela Nuñez and Sergei Polunin, danced exquisitely, well supported by Yuhui Choe, Emma-Jane Maguire, Samantha Raine, and Akane Takada as the soloists, and the other twelve girls from the corps. Watching this was a real pleasure, and I look forward to the Company doing it again.

Federico Bonelli in Live Fire Exercise, photo by Bill Cooper

After this short ballet was over we had to wait nearly twice as long again for the second item, Wayne McGregor’s new work Live Fire Exercise. This looked rather intriguing at first, with small trucks and other heavy vehicles moving noiselessly in a window at the back of the stage. Then six silhouettes walk on and there is a silent explosion creating a plume of fire. The images by John Gerrard are wonderful and it was only after the fireball that I realised they were projected onto a screen in 3-D. The surroundings on the screen slowly rotate and the images move forward, becoming larger. It was fascinating, but seriously distracted from the dance going on at the same time. This distraction is a feature of some of McGregor’s other ballets, such as Infra and Limen, and I wonder why he does it. Perhaps he feels the choreography is not sufficiently interesting to fill out twenty minutes, but the images were, and I liked the plume of fire turning to smoke as night falls, and it all seemed to become more focused as the light showed up the dancers. Eventually dawn arrives, the vehicles leave, the silhouettes reappear and suddenly scatter. The music is the Corelli Fantasia by Michael Tippett, conducted by Barry Wordsworth. It’s lovely music, with a strong pastoral feel towards the end, though the whole thing never really came alive despite the terrific dancing.

The high standard of dancing in this triple bill is a great credit to the Company, and I admire the fact that they put on a new ballet and two others that are not standard repertory, but the intervals were enervating, and the hour and twenty minutes between the end of the first work and the start of the last — three quarters of it interval — would have been a good time for dinner.

Performances continue until May 25 — for more details click here.

Royal Ballet Triple: Chroma, Tryst, Symphony in C, Covent Garden, May 2010

This triple bill was beautifully danced, and the first and last items are very strong ballets. What a shame there were so many empty seats, but those who are eligible should be aware of the student standby tickets, where excellent seats on the main floor could have been purchased for £10.

Chroma, photo by Johan Persson

Chroma is a modern dance work choreographed by Wayne McGregor for four women and six men. It’s strikingly asexual, in the sense that boys and girls frequently make the same movements and are clothed in identical grey costumes. The opening was very well danced by Mara Galeazzi and Edward Watson, I loved the pas-de-deux performed by Steven McRae and Yuhui Choe, and there are plenty more such male-female duos, but male-male ones too. For example in one scene there are five seemingly identical couples on stage, but only four female dancers. There is also a pas-de-trois for three boys, and later three simultaneous male-female-male pas-de-trois. The ballet lasts just under 25 minutes, and the leaps, twists and multiple partnering works well. The music was composed partly by Joby Talbot, partly by Jack White III, all arranged by Joby Talbot and orchestrated by Christopher Austin. The six male dancers were: Ricardo Cervera, Steven McRae, Ludovic Ondiviela, Eric Underwood, Jonathan Watkins and Edward Watson, with the four females being: Yuhui Choe, Mara Galeazzi, Sarah Lamb and Laura Morera. The dancing was first rate, and Daniel Capps conducted the music with lyrical energy. My only question is why it’s called Chroma, meaning ‘colour’ in ancient Greek, but as the lady next to me said, ‘achroma’ would be more suitable in view of the grey costumes and white background. I’m told the background gives a different effect from the main floor, but from the Amphi it’s just flat and white.

Melissa Hamilton and Eric Underwood in Tryst, photo by Bill Cooper

The title of the next work, Tryst, is easy to explain. The choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon was driving across Scotland while the radio played a composition of that name by James MacMillan. It’s rhythmic intensity, coupled with a lovely adagio passage, struck him as being well-suited to ballet, so in April and May 2002 he created this work. The designs by Jean-Marc Puissant are beautifully asymmetric with splashes of colour, and the lighting by Natasha Katz shows interesting variations. I very much liked the central slow section, which started with Melissa Hamilton dancing a solo on stage while a silhouetted male figure walked slowly across the front. As the light changed it turned out to be Eric Underwood, and they danced a lovely pas-de-deux. The ballet is a mixture of classical and modern dance, so its second place on the programme is entirely appropriate, but it seemed a slight let-down after Chroma. The music, conducted by the composer, I found interestingly atonal. Apparently it began life as a folk melody for a poem of four verses called The Tryst by Scottish poet William Soutar.

Symphony in C with Pennefather and Nuñez, photo by Bill Cooper

Finally Symphony in C was a delight, as usual. George Balanchine created it in 1947 for the Paris Opera Ballet, to Bizet’s music of the same name, and recreated it in New York the following year. The original had different colours for the four movements, but in the recreated version the girls are all in white tutus with the men in black. This is a magnificent ballet requiring eight principals, sixteen soloists and a substantial corps de ballet, so it can show off a classical company to great advantage, and the dancing here was superb. The four principal couples, one for each movement were: Sarah Lamb with Steven McRae, Marianela Nuñez with Rupert Pennefather, Yuhui Choe with Sergei Polunin, and Laura Morera with Edward Watson. It seems almost invidious to single out anyone, but Sergei Polunin’s leaps were extraordinarily strong and graceful, and Edward Watson danced with terrific attack. This is a beautifully constructed ballet by Mr. B, and after we have seen all four sets of dancers, they return one after another, and then combine in a finale. Bizet’s music was well conducted by Dominic Grier.

My final remark is that putting on this triple bill is quite a feat. Three different conductors, dozens of dancers, many with difficult roles — the Royal Ballet surpasses itself, and the auditorium should really be full to bursting.

Triple Bill: As One, Rushes, Infra, Royal Ballet, February 2010

Acosta and Morera in Rushes, Royal Ballet photo; Bill Cooper

All three of these ballets are concerned with interactions between people, and the first one, a new work by Jonathan Watkins, was an optimistic vision of individuals living in a harmony with one another — to be as it were As One. At the start one dancer appears in an opening that expands to reveal a whole apartment building. In the foreground a few people dance outside it, and we are then transported into one apartment where a house party is going on. This then changes to a different apartment where Laura Morera and Edward Watson desultorily watch television, yet their sluggishness suddenly releases a burst of energy, and they dance with great spirit. Between the start of the ballet and the ensemble at the end there are five scenes, and the energy of the performers is palpable. Kristen McNally danced a wonderful solo, as did Steven McRae, who performed against a background of flashing names and numbers that looked to me like a huge train timetable, and this helped create a sense of activity in day-to-day life. McRae and McNally also danced together, and were superb. I liked the set designs by Simon Daw, the simple costumes by Vicki Mortimer, and I thought the lighting by Neil Austin was excellent. The music, by a young composer named Graham Fitkin, seemed to lack a sense of precision and attack, but this may have been due more to Barry Wordsworth’s conducting rather than the composer himself. The choreography called for the dancers to perform in very close proximity to one another, not always doing the same things, which must have been quite challenging. There was some raggedness in the ensemble pieces, but it was a new ballet and this was the first night. It will settle down, and is well worth seeing again.

The second item, Rushes — Fragments of a Lost Story, by Kim Brandstrup is a beautiful description of a relationship between a man and two women.  Carlos Acosta was the man, with Laura Morera as the sexy woman in the red dress, and Alina Cojocaru more demure in the grey dress. These were the same dancers I saw last time at the premiere, and once again they were wonderful, and entirely convincing in their roles. The story is uplifting in the sense that although the man is drawn to the woman in red, who attracts and avoids him, he eventually notices the woman in grey, who has been watching from the sidelines, and finds love with her. I was delighted to see this Brandstrup work again, and find Richard Hudson’s designs very clever in conveying the fragmentary nature of the story. A bead curtain splits the stage into a front and back half, and the dark lighting by Jean Kalman gives a sense of mystery and uncertainty, sometimes shining through the beads, sometimes deflected by them. Part of the inspiration for this work was the Soviet era in Russia, which was littered with fragments: unrealised projects, the banned, the censored, along with secret notebooks and sketches. In this context the music by Prokofiev, originally written as a film score for The Queen of Spades, fits perfectly. Prokofiev wrote it at the same time as he was working on Romeo and Juliet, and one hears a similar pattern to the music. For this ballet Michael Berkeley has done us a great service by arranging and elaborating Prokofiev’s music, and it sounded wonderful, being well performed under the direction of Daniel Capps.

The final item of the evening was a revival of Wayne McGregor’s ballet Infra, which I saw in its previous run. On this second occasion I was sitting higher up in the house and I realised that the higher you sit the more the floor of the stage appears to take up the space within the proscenium arch. The best place to sit might be with the spotlights in the roof, where the animated figures moving across a horizontal strip on the backdrop would be invisible. They are intrusive and detract attention from the choreography, though perhaps that’s the idea, because Max Richter’s music is strangely dull and the choreography is more athletic than interesting. The highlight was the excellent pas-de-deux between Eric Underwood and Melissa Hamilton, and though there was certainly applause at the end there were also a number of empty seats for this third item.

Review — Royal Ballet Triple Bill: Agon, Sphinx, and Limen, 13th November 2009

Marianela Nuñez as the Sphinx in Tetley's ballet Sphinx, Royal Ballet photo by Bill Cooper

This was a second visit, my first being on opening night. The dancers were the same, partly because of injury, although Sphinx should have had an entirely new cast. But this time I was close to the stage in the Stalls Circle, so things looked different. I’ll say nothing further about Agon, but make a few more notes about Sphinx and Limen.

In Egypt sphinxes represented power and vigilance, guarding temples. In Greece however there was but one mythological sphinx, represented with a female head and breasts, lion’s body, eagle’s wings and serpent-headed tail. In short a monster that was said to guard the city of Thebes, killing any traveller who could not solve the riddle it asked. In Cocteau’s 1934 play La machine infernale the Sphinx challenges her own destiny. Weary of immortality she desires love and freedom, and takes the guise of a young woman. She falls in love with Oedipus and tells him the answer to the riddle, enabling him to continue to Thebes and follow his destiny. Glen Tetley’s ballet Sphinx was inspired by Cocteau’s play, which he saw in New York in 1950, and he composed the choreography for just three dancers: Oedipus, The Sphinx, and her guardian Anubis, who warns her against falling for Oedipus. Once again Edward Watson was immensely powerful as Anubis, and Marianela Nuñez was a superb Sphinx, but from close up Rupert Pennefather was disappointing. He seemed to be going through the correct motions, but the dance didn’t come from within. In a part like this he needs a greater identification with the character —he needs to own the role.

Wayne McGregor’s new ballet Limen is in two parts, and I liked the first half with the bright costume tops. These disappear in the second half where the lighting is low and the on-again off-again blue lights distract from the action. In the dim light some of the dancers are stationary with their backs to the audience, while one or two dance around them. Apart from the fact that the screen came to the front with its lights mostly on, there was no resolution, but I would have preferred one, particularly since this was the last work of the evening.

Triple Bill — Agon, Sphinx, and Limen, Royal Ballet, November 2009

Melissa Hamilton and Carlos Acosta in Agon, photo by Bill Cooper

Agon is a Greek word meaning ‘contest’, and this 1957 Balanchine ballet is for twelve dancers who perform in twos, threes, etc. without any story. The music by Stravinsky is interestingly varied, some parts strongly represented by wind instruments, and others very quiet. The main pas-de-deux towards the end was brilliantly performed by Carlos Acosta and Melissa Hamilton, who continues to impress as a rising star in the company. In the two pas-de-trois we had Johan Kobborg with Yuhui Choe and Hikaru Kobayashi, and Mara Galeazzi with Valeri Hristov and Brian Maloney. The dancers all performed beautifully, and Daniel Capps did an excellent job conducting the orchestra.

Sphinx is a ballet by Glen Tetley to music of Martinů, originally choreographed for American Ballet Theatre in 1977. It’s based on Jean Cocteau’s La machine infernale, a reworking of the Oedipus myth, exploring the conflict between free will and fate. There are three dancers, the Sphinx, Oedipus and Anubis, the jackal-headed god who shepherds the dead into the Egyptian underworld. The choreography for the two men is intensely physical and both Edward Watson as Anubis, and Rupert Pennefather as Oedipus, danced like gods, while Marianela Nuñez was an attractively seductive sphinx. This was the first performance of the work by the Royal Ballet, and it used the original designs by the late Rouben Ter-Arutunian, with costumes by Willa Kim and lighting by John B. Read. The costumes were very effective, making the men look as if they were dancing naked, but with painted bodies.

Limen is a new ballet by Wayne McGregor. The title refers to the threshold of some physiological or psychological response, and we were presented at the beginning with dancers behind a transparent bluish screen. On the screen were projected single digit numbers of various sizes — like those on an LED display — that moved and changed value. The costumes by Moritz Junge were colourful tops with shorts, well set off by Lucy Carter’s lighting, which at one point showed thick bright coloured stripes from one side of the stage to the other. The choreography combined strong physicality alternating with moments of calm, but towards the end I found the production distracted me from watching the dancers. A screen with a matrix of small blue lights at the back of the stage moved very slowly forward, and as it did so some lights went out, while others came on. I’ve seen mysterious on-off lighting on stage before, but the trouble is that I’m always trying to work out the pattern and this distracts me from the dancing or singing that is the main point of the work. Obviously the lights were meant to recall the screen at the start, because as they came closer I could see that each light was a small single digit number. Presumably one has now gone over the threshold to a new level of reality.

The choreography fitted very well with the lovely music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, conducted by Barry Wordsworth, who was also the conductor of the previous ballet Sphinx. Since this ballet was brand new, it was danced by a very strong cast of fifteen, including Edward Watson, Steven McRae and Eric Underwood among the men, and Leanne Benjamin and Marianela Nuñez among the women. It works well, but Wayne McGregor seems to have too strong a predilection for screens that distract from his choreography.

Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, and Acis and Galatea by Handel, Royal Opera, April 2009

This was opening night for two new productions, featuring singers and dancers directed and choreographed by Wayne McGregor. The music was played by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Christopher Hogwood.

In Dido and Aeneas the dancers added colour, though not clarity, to what was otherwise a dull production that never really got to grips with the story. It’s a complex story to tell in a one hour opera, and I think the dancers hindered rather than helped our understanding of events. The essentials are that Dido, queen of Carthage, is miserable, but her spirits are raised when the Trojan prince Aeneas seeks her hand in marriage. In the meantime a sorceress, who is plotting the destruction of Carthage, sends a messenger, disguised as Mercury, to command Aeneas to leave Dido, who will then die of grief. The sorceress succeeds, and Aeneas leaves to fulfil his task of founding a second Troy, which will become the city of Rome. He changes his mind when he sees the distraught Dido, but she rejects him for having contemplated leaving her, and the opera ends with his departure and her death.

As to the singing, the best performer by far was Dido’s maid Belinda, delightfully sung by Lucy Crowe. Dido was Sarah Connolly, who was suffering from a cold and looked dreadful. The sorceress was Sara Fulgoni, Aeneas was Lucas Meachem, and Dido’s second maid was Anita Watson. The chorus was excellent and the music was well conducted by Christopher Hogwood.

Acis and Galatea is a beautiful work, musically speaking. It was not composed as an opera, but as a pastoral serenata, which means it would be sung without elaborate staging, though the performers would probably have worn costumes. Many consider it as the very best of its type. This staging by Wayne McGregor was far too elaborate, detracting from the beauty of the work, and I kept my eyes closed for much of the time. The nymph Galatea was strongly sung by Danielle de Niese, in a costume and wig that made her look like some latter day Heidi in the Swiss Alps, seemingly out of place with the others. Her lover, the shepherd Acis, was well sung by Charles Workman, and the wicked Polyphemus, who kills Acis out of jealousy, was sung by Matthew Rose who was also suffering from a cold. The unusual thing about this production was that each of the principal roles, including two shepherds, was doubled up by a dancer (Lauren Cuthbertson as Galatea, Edward Watson as Acis, and Eric Underwood as Polyphemus). The dancers were clothed in body stockings, and although they performed their roles with excellent control and precision, and much though I love the Royal Ballet, it added nothing for me. The recent tendency to multi-media extravaganzas may owe something to the popularity of musicals, but I find it unsatisfying, and in this case I think it seriously detracts from Handel’s glorious music, which was brilliantly conducted by Christopher Hogwood, with the chorus doing a superb job.