The Lanterns Studio Theatre again played host to Ballet Nights, bringing an innovative programme of cabaret ballet to London’s Docklands through the unusual combination of intimate performances on a capacious stage. The entrepreneurial artistic director, Jamiel Devernay-Laurence, reprised his role as an engaging and informative compère introducing each danced work.
Topping the bill on this ‘Friday Night at the Lanterns’ were headline performances by Yasmine Naghdi and Reece Clarke, who don’t dance with each other at The Royal Ballet, so here was a rare opportunity to witness two of the UK’s brightest star dancers performing together. They opened with the challenging Spring Waters pas de deux by Asaf Messerer and closed with an arresting performance of the balcony pas de deux from Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.
Spring Waters was created in 1954, for Natalia Filipova and Evgeny Nikitin to show off their flamboyant virtuoso skills and athleticism (it has since been restaged by Messerer’s nephew, Mikhail). Although it is one of the best-known concert pieces produced during the Soviet era, it is rarely seen in the UK, and its inclusion in Ballet Nights was something of a coup. In this short but explosive piece, Clarke and Naghdi exhibited the grand Bolshoi style impressively, accentuated by being viewed in such close proximity that one could vicariously experience every stretched sinew.
By contrast, the MacMillan pas de deux seems to be in every gala! Clarke has performed it six times in the past year alone although it was just his second time with Naghdi as his Juliet (I was also privileged to see the first during the Osipova gala in Dubai, last November). They are a great match and despite the absence of any context or set, the pair sold the essential narrative of the early yearning of adolescent love with great intensity. I’d love to see them perform the full ballet together and that sense of anticipating great things is a delightful side effect of the Ballet Nights experience.
Also to be savoured was the Nerve Wire duet, choreographed and performed by James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight, to music composed by Sean Pett (James’ brother). These dancers have a strong symbiotic relationship on stage, expressing an incontrovertible and deeply intense shared experience that draws the audience into their intriguing metaphysical adventures. Their full-length show Imago will be the first in a new Spotlight presentation under the Ballet Nights brand, to be shown at the Lanterns Studio theatre over two nights (26 and 27 April).
Another performer to catch my eye was Felicity Chadwick who performed Joshua Junker’s excellent 324a (his address when choreographing this work during the pandemic) dancing to music by Bach played live by resident concert pianist, Viktor Erik Emanuel who also opened both acts with superb virtuoso pianism, performing works by Ravel and Schumann. Billed as an Emerging Artist, Chadwick – a recent graduate from the Rambert School – is a tall and hyper-flexible performer with a style that bridges classical ballet technique with contemporary movement, suggesting a sure potential affinity with the choreography of Wayne McGregor.
Jordan James Bridge already has an impressive array of McGregor’s work in his CV (including the soon-to-be-reprieved Autobiography), and as a choreographer in his own right, Bridge continued his regular collaboration with both Ballet Nights and Erased Tape Records in a solo to music by Rival Consoles, using his sinuous body as a tool of great expressiveness in And So The Rhythm Goes.
Laurel Dalley Smith returned to her homeland from the Martha Graham Company (of which she has been a member since 2015) to dance the solo named after her in Sir Robert Cohan’s final work, Seven Portraits, commissioned by the Yorke Dance Project and choreographed over Zoom during lockdown. The intimacy of that digital connection during a time in which loss and isolation were dominant forces carried over into Smith’s powerful onstage performance.
Sussex-based Cydney Watson and Barbadian Liam Woodvine danced a world premiere, simply entitled Watson & Woodvine. Both performers have come through the Lanterns Studio Theatre’s professional development programme and were paired together for this debut performance that was earnestly given. Showcasing new artists is to be applauded but I thought that both the duo and their work needed more polish.
Chloe Keneally, an artist at English National Ballet, got a rare chance to shine in the spotlight of two solos: respectively from Paquita and The Sleeping Beauty. Her performances were given little favour by low and imprecise lighting, tinny recorded music and the lack of any context on the bare black stage, but she ably demonstrated a command of the challenging technique in both variations.
A new development appears to be a “Mystery Guest” performer although Devernay-Laurence didn’t have to look too far for the first of these since it was his brother, Guy Salim, a musical theatre performer who was, true to his billing, hitherto unknown to me. He performed an arduous tap solo that was undoubtedly challenging but delivered with little or no expression. The programme would have been improved by adding another dimension to the strict diet of solos and duets.
