Thirty years after its last visit to London, Boston Ballet has returned to the British capital in a celebratory mood. With the company opening its 50th season, the London tour has been planned both to launch the anniversary and to strengthen the growing international reputation of the company. For the lucky London audiences, the visit of the Bostonians is an exciting opportunity to enjoy ballet with an American flavour. Boston Ballet is proud to give its productions the qualities of energy, speed and sharpness that form the American style, and the programme for opening night at the Coliseum had two well-known works by George Balanchine and one piece by the current resident choreographer of the company, Jorma Elo, that are built upon these qualities. The only piece in the bill to honour the European past of ballet was Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun.
The evening started spectacularly with Serenade. The first ballet Balanchine created for his American students still provokes admiration for its beauty, harmony and elegance. Premièred in 1934, it is a signature work in the American ballet repertory and a masterpiece of dance history. It avoids any kind of plot or characterization, and rather rejoices in the power of dance to create emotions. It was conceived as a lesson on ballet technique for the emerging dancers Balanchine was then training in his school, and it is also an example of Balanchine’s distinctive understanding of the relationship between dance and music. Fellow travellers, they possess equal prominence in the production. On Wednesday, Tchaikovsky’s score sounded lively and warm in the hands of the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra conducted by Jonathan McPhee, and Balanchine’s choreography was enthusiastically embodied by the Boston Ballet dancers. They were sharply disciplined, quietly joyful and delightfully musical. I particularly liked the rubatos by Ashley Ellis and Nelson Madrigal in the pas de deux for the Waltz section. The whole ensemble deservedly received a warm welcome applause after their wonderful performance of Serenade.
The Afternoon of a Faun made less of an impact. Though Claude Debussy’s music and Nijinsky’s tableau-like movements still cause awe for their inventiveness and air of novelty, the performance of the title role by Altan Dugaraa did not extract all the emotive potential of the character. He opted for highlighting the animal features of the creature and very convincingly conveyed the sense of otherness in the Faun. The moment when he falls in love with the Nymph, intensely played by Lorna Feijóo that evening, was the peak of the production. It froze the moment, with a mesmerizing stillness recalling a powerful spell.