Last year the Ballet Nights caravan ventured north of the Border for the first time to the Theatre Royal in Glasgow. It was, predictably, a sell-out, leaving us hoping that Jamiel Devernay-Laurence, the company’s indefatigable godfather and compère, might like to try Edinburgh next. Well, the gods of the Fringe were kind and we had a week’s worth of Ballet Nights at the Assembly Rooms. This was more of a taster performance, just an hour long and featuring mostly solo performers in new work.
First off was Joseph Taylor, late of Northern Ballet and more recently the resurgent London City Ballet, dancing Michel Descombey’s version of the ‘Dying Swan’, La Muerte de un Cisne. Against an initial soundscape of howling wind, Taylor’s male creature was perhaps more bird of prey than swan, swooping and turning in defiance, but once the familiar music kicked in, his tremulous hands were fighting fate.
Sarah Chun hails from Chicago and is now an Olivier-nominated Principal with Northern Ballet. Her contemporary solo Uhuru, choreographed by Mthuthuzeli November to an electronic score, was a strikingly in-yer-face piece about oppression in colonial Africa. High-energy staccato jerks and twists competed with a confident neoclassical delicacy in this short but powerful solo.
Ekleido, the ‘choreographic contemporary fusion sensation’, have been pursuing their signature club and underground styles for a few years now, notably with Splice. It’s an extraordinary piece, exploring balance and the limits of togetherness, in which the two performers (Oliver Chapman and Phoebe Dowglass) link arms, twist themselves into physical puzzles, knotting and untying bodies with bewildering speed and timing. Contortionists both, seamlessly together then breaking apart for solos, they were an exercise in contemporary cool.
Choreographer Jordan James Bridge’s String Theory, in which a sylph-like blonde Leila Wright shared the stage with viola player Dominic Stokes, could not have been more different. They circled each other, she bourréeing around and striking shapes, sometimes ignoring him, then encountering him with surprise, seeing him for the first time. Elegance personified.
Still, I forgot to say was perhaps Scotland’s saltire-waving event of the evening. Commissioned by the pioneering PCK Dance, now enjoying a two-year residency at Eden Court in Inverness, it was danced by Glasgow girl Amy McEntee, now enjoying a freelance career after eight years as a First Artist with Scottish Ballet. Remembering all those things you never quite got round to saying, hesitation and repetition competed in this sweet contemporary-classical piece.
Ballet Nights usually feature one non-dance piece, often as an opener, and this time they almost closed with one. Dominic Stokes, the ‘Live Viola Sensation’ returned with a fearsomely-fingered solo, Hindemith’s Viola Sonata op25, unfamiliar to most and probably un-danceable but a brilliant musical experience before the final act. It was a treat to encounter all the modern work, but finishing with the balcony pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet in Massimo Moricone’s version was a crowd-pleasing highlight. Serenely danced by Joseph Taylor and Sarah Chun, it sent a happy crowd out into the madness of Edinburgh…
