The Royal Ballet is marking the centenary of the birth of the American choreographer Glen Tetley with a revival of his greatest work, Pierrot Lunaire, not seen at the Royal Ballet and Opera for nearly 20 years. Danced to the uncompromising sprechstimme by composer Arnold Schoenberg, and featuring three characters drawn from the commedia dell’arte, Pierrot Lunaire, with its amazingly spare designs by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, was first performed in 1962 and became the work that helped launch Tetley’s international career.
Tetley’s style of dance bridged the divide between contemporary dance and classical ballet in the 1960s and 1970s, and although his early choreography was seen by many as daringly adventurous, his later works (often performed beautifully by dancers wearing gleaming Lycra body tights) became overly slick and turgid. Nevertheless, Tetley played an important role in helping to modernise The Royal Ballet in the early 1970s, and it was entirely right that the company should pay tribute to him now.
Danced in, around and on a scaffolding tower that could be both a climbing frame or a cage, Pierrot Lunaire depicts a wide-eyed Pierrot, danced by the brilliant and highly expressive Marcelino Sambé, who swings back and forth on the bars of the frame like a child in a playground. He gazes in wonder at a moon the audience cannot see, delicately plucks flowers from the floor, and falls into innocent adoration of Columbine when she appears on stage. The couple court and set up home, like children in a Wendy House, only for Columbine to rebuff Pierrot and slap his face when he tentatively touches her breasts. He reels from the shock.
Columbine is an altogether earthier figure in Tetley’s ballet, an amalgamation of wife and mother, Madonna and whore, but her character takes on a far more sinister undercurrent with the arrival of the taunting and bullying Brighella. Partners in crime, the couple – danced with utter conviction and eroticism by Mayara Magri and Matthew Ball – team up to corrupt Pierrot and steal his innocence. A play fight with a toy sword becomes something dark and dangerous, and the pair then attach strings to Pierrot’s arms and legs so they can manipulate him like a marionette. As the 45-minute ballet concludes, Columbine and Brighella strip Pierrot of his clothes, and yet a semblance of hope remains as he gets up and climbs to the top of scaffold, finally embracing his tormenters and rising above them.
Pierrot Lunaire is a strange work dealing with the loss of innocence and growth into adulthood, and it is made all the more strange by Schoenberg’s difficult music. The ballet continues to make an impact, however, and it offers a marvellous role for its leading male dancer. No wonder Pierrot was, apparently, a favourite of Rudolf Nureyev, and Sambé, who continues to grow and grow as an interpretative artist, was fortunate in having Christopher Bruce, one of the finest interpreters of Pierrot, as a coach. Sambé, Magri and Ball – all of them tremendous – were given excellent musical support by conductor Yi Wei and the musicians Sergey Levitin, Amelie Roussel, Jonathan Aasgaard, Philip Rowson, James Burke, Thomas Ang. This was especially true of soprano Alexandra Lowe, who almost – almost – made Schoenberg’s challenging music sound beautiful.
