The Royal Ballet School Delights

Written on the faces of the dancers as they spin and leap in the ecstatic final moments of the Grand Défilé, is the smile that says, ‘I did it’. It’s what I look forward to year after year and it never fails to delight. The famous Royal Ballet School Matinee is the culmination of the school year and follows several weeks of school performances at the Linbury Theatre and Holland Park.

The Vision Scene from Don Quixote, severely cramped on the Linbury stage moves to the main stage and blossoms. The dancers maintained all the technical precision but got down to the important business of dancing. Milda Luckute was a commanding presence as the Queen of the Dryads, using her long limbs to full stretch and soaring on her jetés.

Katie Robertson had the necessary twinkling feet and musical punctuation for Amour while Taeryeong Kimas Kitri created a vision of beauty with lyrical ports de bras and a beautiful classical line for the bemused Don.

In the other classical works, notably in exerpts from Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour, the dancers show they are ready for twenty-first century ballet. Enzio Bosso’s music is complex and the speed is fast but the dancers, dressed in Jasper Conran’s radiant designs, took it in their stride ready to take their place on the professional stage.

Highlights were the central duet where Sierra Glasheen showed beautiful finish on her pointework while given strong support by Blake Smith in a mature partnership, and the rip-roaring male duet danced by Guillem Cabrera Espinach and Caspar Lench. Lench went on to give a five-star performance of Robert Battle’s Takademe. It’s an extraordinary solo built on the dynamics of Padhant as Lench’s fluid body matches the virtuosity of the rapid recitation of rhythmic syllables.

August Bournonville’s Konservatoriet gave evidence of the nerves of steel these young dancers possess. The opening grand plié is terrifying, but if was safely achieved without a wobble. It’s a challenging ballet and, based on the ballet class, offers excellent training as the dances need to show all aspects of their technique.

The cast included Juniors from White Lodge with soloists from the Upper School. Ptolemy Gidney, led the field dancing with the elegant grace of the period, displaying clean beats, soft plies and a buoyant jump.

The Four Seasons, an early work by Kenneth MacMillan, in contrast to his later dramatic ballets, was very traditional. It featured dozens of female dancers in pastels dresses who bourree endlessly while holding out hands to be kissed by the young men. However, they do later get down to some nifty allegro to Verdi’s lively tunes.

More interesting was Jiří Kylián’s Sechs Tänze, a comic interlude of eighteenth-century manners, semi-dressed, with powdered wigs and murderous intent. The wit is razor sharp, the movement brilliantly inventive and the students attacked it with glee and near-faultless precision. In contrast was the closing Pas de Deux from Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons. Sweet and sentimental it was given a poignant interpretation by Liya Fan and Tom Hazelby.

The Juniors, levels 7 – 11, were all included in Hora la Aninoasa choreographed by Tom Bosma and danced to Romanian folk music. Brightly costumed and expertly rehearsed, it was a joyous offering that showed a heightened sense of rhythm as the young students clapped or beat sticks to the unusual music.

Fast Blue by Mikaela Polley was a winner. Abstract with a dramatic subtext, it was ballet based with turbo-charged dynamics and the senior male students made it their own. The power, strength and precision in their dance was remarkable as was their teamwork which included exciting partnering. Goya Montero’s Bold, a large-scale work dressed in shiny black unitards, also needed close teamwork and the dancers, moving swiftly in ever changing formations, were impressive. Owen Belton’s dynamic score kept the pace on the move, and light-hearted snippets added a fun element.

The graduation progression is impressive with six dancers joining the Royal Ballet on the Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme and the rest of the cohort of twenty-four landing contracts with companies or junior companies from across the world. Thirteen students will progress from White Lodge to Upper School in September 2023. It’s been another good year for the RBS and congratulations are due to the dancers, teachers and staff.

Maggie Foyer
Royal Ballet School Matinee, Royal Opera House, London. 16 July 2023