A dozen talented dancers in the junior ballet company of the Brno National Theatre Ballet, known as Ballet NdB2, opened The Royal Opera House’s Next Generation Festival, which will run until 3rd July and features guest companies and schools from the UK and Europe.
Congratulations must go to the management at The Royal Ballet for opening up their facilities to showcase how ballet is developing in other countries, both in terms of performers and choreography. This young team from Brno didn’t disappoint in any way. It was both unusual and illuminating to see a programme of three works that were not only themselves new to me, but by choreographers also previously unknown.
One of the homes of the National Theatre Ballet is the Mahen Theatre, which has a special place in ballet history as it hosted the first ever ballet performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. That world premiere (on 30 December 1938) was at a time when Europe was hastening towards the second world war. The ballet moved to the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad in 1940, which provides a relevant segue into the opening piece of this mixed programme, which the Brno National Theatre Ballet director, Mário Radačovský choreographed to 35 minutes of The Leningrad Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Symphony No.7 Allegretto is a challenge for the full ensemble who vary their attitudes and performances from ordinary citizens in everyday clothes to the uniformed militia; marching and saluting. Radačovský conceived the work (specifically for this nascent company, only formed in September 2022) as his own symbol of the ongoing struggle against fascism. It is more than a tad ironic that Shostakovich dedicated the symphony to the heroism of the besieged citizens of Leningrad, but it is now performed at a time when the Russian defender has become the aggressor.
The work takes place against the backdrop of a photograph of an industrial landscape. The statue of a woman holding a sword aloft in victory appears on a building in the distance and imperceptibly, throughout the performance, this silhouetted image of “Victory” grows in stature until it eclipses a tree in the foreground. It’s a significant cipher for the slow burning, never-ending resistance to totalitarianism but unfortunately, I found no credit for the designer (suggesting that it may have been the work of Radačovský himself).
A group of young women in floral dresses and dull skirts danced in strong ensemble shape before the interruption of war. One girl (Rashmi Torres) collapses to the floor at the far right of the stage, to be forgotten for several minutes before re-emerging to dance a duet with one of the boys (Joshua Williams). Is he a soldier, a deserter or a revolutionary fighting fascism? It’s not clear but, to me, Williams seemed to be portraying a character reminiscent of George Orwell’s Winston Smith from Nineteen Eighty-Four, fighting the system alongside Julia (Torres). It may be a fanciful allusion, but it seemed well suited to their movement and the mere hint of a narrative within Radačovský’s dance.
One dancer had really stood out from amongst the ensemble with her crisp and striking movement, easy leg extensions and hyper-flexibility. Izabela Gracíkova made such an impression that I could easily identify her as the faceless puppet in Margaréta Štofčiková’s Pampúšik, which seemed a waste of those talents. This slight and whimsical work – at just 15 minutes – used the alienated device of the puppet to illustrate the human experience of moving out of childhood and into the less attractive routines of adult life. The puppetry effect was achieved by the simple device of a dark jacket pulled up and zipped over Gracíkova’s head, above which appeared the featureless face of a mannequin on a pole shoved down the back of her jacket. Although the choreography was unmemorable, the tight synchronisation of the ensemble was to be admired.
The programme closed with Distant Instant by Carolina Isach (a dancer in the main company), apparently inspired by Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid modernity’, a term coined by the Polish philosopher to illustrate the ever-changing relationships in today’s society. Isach’s fast-flowing, high-energy choreography did more than enough to justify this illusion to Bauman’s theory with frequently alternating associations amongst the eight dancers. A same-sex duet between Anastasia Lehmann and Laura Zelinová and another dance for Adam Baštař and the impactful Gracíkova were significant highlights although, once again, it was the fluidity of the group that was the most impressive. Kudos must be due to NdB2 director, Uladzimir Ivanou, and his team for their obviously effective coaching.
Taken together the three works were a cocktail of the weird and wonderful, morbid and joyful, whimsical and serious. I suspect that several of these dancers will make their way into the main company (part of the NdB2 process is to regularly perform with the National Theatre Ballet) and it would be a shame if any of them were unable to proceed professionally to the next level.
