Northern Ballet are back at the Linbury for a brief season titled Three Short Ballets, encompassing a varied and vibrant mix of choreography, most of which was new to London audiences. The dancing was superlative but the recorded music was less successful. This was particularly apparent in the opening piece.
Rudi van Dantzig created his Four Last Songs in 1977 for Dutch National Ballet. It is full of well-crafted passages of fluid choreography and manages to look fresh and current. The music, by Richard Strauss, here in a recording of the Berlin Philharmonic with Gundula Janowitz singing and Herbert von Karajan conducting, is the driver. Music of such beauty needs the dance to reflect the deep emotion it evokes and somehow the sound reinforcement seemed a little thin compared to the broad strokes of the dancing.
Four exquisitely executed pas de deux, overseen by an Angel (Bruno Serraclara), each had their own merits and high points. I particularly liked Sarah Chun and Jonathan Hanks in the third duet, who managed a surprise flip lift deftly and seemed to inject a palpable emotional connection into the movements. While Serraclara guided the dancers to a certain extent, the strength of their partnerships meant that his role seemed superfluous to the action. However, he wrapped up the closing moments majestically.
After a short pause, Kristen McNally’s Victory Dance brought some real joy into the theatre in an exuberant, lively pas de trois for guest artist Joseph Powell-Main, Archie Sherman and Yu Wakizuka (definitely one to watch). To infectious and cheery music of the same name by the Ezra Collective, this was a display of virtuosity and creativity.
In the time since suffering a serious accident, Powell-Main has already proved that disability should not act as a deterrent to dancing and it seems that wheelchair and crutches have become an inventive tool for a different shape of choreography. His manoeuvres drove the other two dancers to interact in clever ways and overall it projected as a smooth piece of synchronised dance. It helped that all three have charming and winning personalities but as Powell-Main fearlessly attacked pirouettes on wheels at great speed, so Sherman and Wakizuka echoed his triumphs with panache. Enormous fun!
The final piece, by Mthuthuzeli November, showed the company at its energetic best. Inspired by the warring families of Romeo and Juliet, Fools is loosely based on R.L. Peteni’s novel Hill of Fools. November sets the story in a township in South Africa. With a score by November and Alex Wilson, the plot and the dancing move at a terrific pace. It tells of the love affair between a Thembu man (Harris Beattie) and an Hlubi woman (Chun again), a forbidden love and how her violent and controlling brother (Antoni Cañellas Artigues) comes between them.
Every single dancer in the large cast seemed entirely invested in their characters and the powerful, propulsive choreography was riveting. It was reminiscent not just of Montagues and Capulets but the Jets and Sharks of West Side Story and the brutality of gang mentality. Cañellas Artigues’ treatment of his sister was shocking.
With barely a moment to take stock and catch a breath, all elements of the ballet came together to create a rousing and moving narrative. Beattie, who had already shone in the first duet with Saeka Shirai in Four Last Songs, gave a heartrending account of the young man, his every thought transmitted with the utmost sincerity. Chun too, expressed it all with a deeply felt honesty. Ideally cast as the ruthless brother, Cañellas Artigues showed a natural gift for unmannered acting, bringing an unselfconscious physicality to every gesture.
The company as a whole were breathtaking in the delivery of high-octane, non-stop sequences that involved running, stamping, thrusting and an excess of zeal. This is a tremendous addition to the repertoire for a company that looks to be in fine form.
