George Balanchine’s Jewels is the perfect vehicle to display a ballet company’s versatility, a shop window to showcase the different aspects, or facets, required in the clean-cut panels of this glittering 1967 triptych. Its three plotless acts – Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds – set to music by three different composers (Fauré, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky) and vary in mood, style and technique, acknowledging the French, American and Russian schools. So it’s a judicious choice by Artistic Director David Hallberg in bringing The Australian Ballet to the Royal Opera House for the first time in 35 years.
Hallberg is no stranger to Covent Garden, a frequent partner to Natalia Osipova when he was Principal Guest Artist with The Royal Ballet. He assumed the role as TAB’s eighth Artistic Director at the start of 2021 and this is the company’s first post-pandemic tour. Incredibly, they are new to Jewels, only taking it into their repertory three months ago. Staged by Sandra Jennings, it is a remarkably good fit.
Diamonds are forever (at least according to Shirley Bassey), but I have the softest of spots for Emeralds, the evening’s gauzy, unshowy opener. It pays its respects to 19th-century French ballet, a mysterious, misty daydream, set to the fragrant music of Gabriel Fauré. The costumes by Balanchine’s long-time collaborator Barbara Karinska evoke Medieval France, perhaps a shady forest, danced beneath a cascade of jewels in Peter Harvey’s original set designs. At one point, the corps de ballet are chained like a necklace, draped across the stage.
There was a dewy freshness to TAB’s performance. The women were superb, Sharni Spencer almost weightless as she floated in tiny bourrées across the stage. Her port de bras were exquisite in her La Fileuse solo, elegantly admiring her jewellery, and the wistful melancholy she brought to the central pas de deux (the Epithalme from Shylock) was especially sensitive. Valerie Tereshchenko brought tender elegance to her dreamy Sicilienne solo (Pelléas et Mélisande). The men, led by Callum Linnane, were more understated, but always noble.
Emeralds’ false ending is a heart-breaker – an ebullient ensemble leading to an applause-begging group pose, only to dissolve as dancers peel away, stepping backwards out of frame, the haunting La Mort de Mélisande concluding with just the three men left in the forest, searching, yearning for something untouchable. A memory?
Rubies is the antithesis of Emeralds – flamboyant, sultry, sexy, set to Stravinsky’s jazzy Capriccio, a work rooted in classicism but leaning towards the neoclassical, as does Balanchine’s choreography, which opens with dancers forming a “tiara” shape. Female dancers wear short scarlet skirts, accentuating the length of their legs – indeed, the second female lead is described as the Tall Girl. Isobelle Dashwood fits that description and leant into her lunges and hip flicks well, if a little anonymously.
Ako Kondo and Brett Chynoweth were sparky as the central couple, teasing and taunting in their sassy question and answer pas de deux, their pulls and balances stretched to the max. They were well-matched, razor-sharp with fast whipped turns, radiating character. Kudos to pianist Andrew Dunlop for his crisp, witty playing.
Diamonds was given the evening’s knockout performance. It is Balanchine’s tribute to Marius Petipa and the Imperial Russian ballet school of his youth, a dazzling white ballet in tutus that wouldn’t look out of place in Swan Lake. The music here is also Tchaikovsky (movements 2 to 5 of the joyous Third Symphony), wonderfully played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Jonathan Lo, well known here as a staff conductor but appointed as TAB’s Music Director earlier this year.
Balanchine liked to put his ballerina on a pedestal with the danseur as her admirer, nowhere more so than Diamonds where, in their pas de deux, she seems like a wild creature – a swan or deer – to be caught and tamed, only for him to end up enthralled, gently kissing her hand at the close. Benedicte Bemet and Joseph Caley were the epitome of classical style, she elegant and elusive, he eating up the stage in great leaps and crowd-pleasing pirouettes. The corps did a fantastic job; you really needed an aerial shot to appreciate Balanchine’s geometric patterns and their crisply executed lines.
The ballet ends with a celebratory Polonaise, the perfect setting for the company’s “diamond” anniversary, although Sunday’s gala provides the icing on that particular cake.
