Revivals and Innovation at the Royal Ballet

LONDON: The Royal Ballet went into autumn in a blaze of Spanish sunlight as Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote joined the repertoire. This ballet, a stalwart for so many companies, has never found a secure home in London but Acosta, with his persuasive powers and world class talent is just the man to make this change.

 The production is literally stuffed with dance; the village square offering more competition than Strictly Come Dancing. If the drama is a little thin and even, dare I say, hammy, the audience ignored this in the swirl of toreador capes and the flutter of fans.

I missed the opening night but caught up on a performance from Fumi Kaneko and Thiago Soares. Kaneko promised to be a delightful Kitri in a snappy opening solo, her eyes flashing wickedly, then disaster struck as she sustained an injury and the curtain was brought down.  Thankfully Marianela Nuñez was watching the show and after an extended pause she was in costume and on stage; without her lipstick but with such a radiant smile who cares?

Nuñez and Soares are real life partners but don’t often dance together and were obviously thrilled when the opportunity presented itself. They gave of their best in virtuoso performances; the few partnering blips amply compensated by a performance of joyful exuberance.

The Dryad Scene offers a lyrical interlude and Melissa Hamilton in the role of the Queen interpreted the contained beauty in fine classical lines while Elizabeth Harrod, a neat soubrette, danced a chirpy Amour of precise musicality.

Hayley Forskitt, who danced for several years in Oslo before joining the Royal Ballet, proved a dramatic Mercedes while William Tuckett gave a solid performance as the Don and Jonathan Howell tagged along as the mistreated Sancho Panza. But this is a ballet all about dance and in that department, the Royal Ballet did it proud.

November’s Mixed Programme was an unwieldy mix of the dated and the modern. Notable it marked the return of David Dawson to home ground. Born just minutes from Covent Garden, he trained at the Royal Ballet School and started his career with Birmingham Royal Ballet and has since established himself as a major choreographer on the international scene. His premiere at the Royal Ballet is a work of twenty-first century dance powered by a throbbing romantic heart. London has waited a long time for this homecoming but The Human Seasons was worth the wait.

The thrilling opening picture of women held aloft in arabesque and slowly rotated seems to freeze time. This image of arabesque in flight returns in the closing moment thus securing classical technique as foundation to the ballet and within this formalist frame Dawson carves new symmetries from traditional forms. The theme of the ballet, the transience of human emotions, is captured in a fleeting glance, the pain of loss or in ecstatic joy.

It is the men who get the fireworks. Steven McRae has a blistering opening solo and Edward Watson too, gets his moment of personal virtuosity. But the pas de deux are the jewels in the crown and in Dawson’s inventive couplings the women sweep and soar. There is tenderness too, beautifully visible in the contact between Lauren Cuthbertson and Edward Watson while  Marianela Nuñez plumbs the depths of emotion in her duet with Federico Bonelli.

Greg Haines commissioned score was full of surprises from the opening minimal notes to the full swell of the orchestra. Eno Henze’s bare structural set frames the work in austere neutral tones punctuated by shards of LED lights co-habiting with Burt Dalhuysen’s lighting. Costume designer, Yumiko Takeshima has created yet another theme on the ubiquitous leotard as fine detail along the arms sculpts and complements the ports de bras.

The programme opened with a revival of Wayne MacGregor’s Chroma, (2006) one of his best works: a classy fusion of design (by John Pawson) and dance set to Joby Talbot’s thumping good score. It features many of the same dancers as Dawson’s work and interestingly highlighted the difference in the two choreographers’ use of extreme movement. MacGregor maintains his clinical distance in abstraction while Dawson, unusual for a modern choreographer, never denies the humanity.

Kenneth MacMillan’s Rite of Spring, (1962) closes the bill and sadly looked its age despite Zenaida Yanowsky’s supreme sacrifice.

Maggie Foyer
2 December 2013