The art of curating a triple bill can be both vexed and vexing, allowing the possibility of either a seamless or disjointed evening of dance. This was somewhere in between.
Consistency came in the historical symmetry of works by a triumvirate of the titans of twentieth century anglo-american ballet: the two British choreographic knights, Sir Frederick Ashton and SIr Kenneth MacMillan; and that man who joined Broadway with ballet, Jerome Robbins. Only his mentor, Balanchine, was missing, although Symphony in C featured in the previous triple bill, just last month.
Content is where the seams showed. Winter whimsy gave way to the tragedy of Winter Dreams and then, bizarrely, onto the madness of a concert where people became the pupae that surreally transform into multi-coloured butterflies. So, an emotional slaying via a dawn duel in a Russian field gave way to swapping deckchairs in “Central Park”. It was that kind of an evening.
Robbins’ The Concert is the most dated of the three pieces. Made in 1956, it was the first of his work to be set to Chopin–- he was to make three more, the most enduring of which is Dances at a Gathering (1969). This was the era of zany American comedy – Abbott and Costello, Jerry Lewis – which may explain Robbins’ predeliction with slapstick farce, complete with 50s gender stereotypes and comic-book humour: the henpecked – Groucho-Marx lookalike – husband creeping up behind his domineering culture-loving wife, wobbly knife in hand, could have been a caricature of Wile. E Coyote in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Despite the Chopin Preludes (played superbly onstage by Robert Clark, who threw himself into the comedy acting as a pretentious pianist), it’s a work that doesn’t play well to the social mores of 2018, including dizzy girls being carried around – and patted on the bottom – by hunky men. Nonetheless, Lauren Cuthbertson has a ball in an ebullient performance rich in charisma and comedy, letting her hair down (literally) to play ballet’s equivalent of a stand-up comedienne with gusto while exuding oodles of fun. Laura Morera is a great foil as the uptight wife with Nehemia Kish as her malevolent husband with the comedy knife! The centrepiece of a corps de ballet in which one dancer is always out of step or moving in the wrong direction is a masterpiece of comic timing. The work may be dated but these excellent performances kept it entertaining.
Winter Dreams is late MacMillan vintage, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in 1991 (the year before he died). Inspired by Chekhov’s Three Sisters, it concerns the lives and loves of these women, stuck in a provincial Russian garrison town at the turn of the last century. The middle sister, Masha, respectably married to a man she does not love, is seduced into an affair with the local army commander, Colonel Vershinin. A sub-plot concerns the rivalry of two men for the younger sister, Irina (Yasmine Naghdi), which leads to the aforementioned duel. A Spartan set has the small balalaika and mandolin ensemble, together with the pianist – Clark again, this time playing Tchaikovsky – upstage behind a curtain.