In 2017 Crystal Pite created, for The Royal Ballet, a piece that redefined the role of dance in expressing the zeitgeist. Flight Pattern was her eloquent response to the ongoing refugee crisis, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as a work of genius. Having set Flight Pattern to the first movement of Gorecki’s Third Symphony (also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs), she began to wonder about the possibility of expanding the work into a full-evening piece, using the other two movements. These are short – the whole evening is only an hour of dance with a half-hour interval – but the emotional impact is so huge that it is enough.
Gorecki’s three laments are on the theme of death, the first and third inspired by the agony of a mother losing a child, the second by an inscription written on the wall of a Gestapo prison in Zakopane by an 18 year old girl, entreating her mother not to cry for her as she will be safe in the arms of the Virgin Mary. Pite takes a wider, more universal approach, developing the first lament as an examination of the misery of the refugee, the second as a study of a child’s loss of parents, and the third as the transition from life to death: “the final border crossing,” as she says.
Pite’s full-length Light of Passage premiered in 2022. She is seemingly incapable of making work that is anything less than throughly gripping, and that’s certainly true here, but I have one small reservation, which is that the opening piece is the most searingly emotional, and so ingeniously crafted that the other two, each beautiful and meaningful in their own right, are marginally paler in comparison. Theatrically this is an unusual experience, but it doesn’t detract from the importance and relevance of this tremendous achievement, and at the end of the opening night of this first revival there was a standing ovation, comparatively rare at the Royal Opera House.
All three sections are ensemble pieces, using the device of individuals emerging from a crowd (36 dancers in the first and third sections) to illuminate the shared experience. In Flight Pattern, the movement is simple but the shapes and patterns formed as the dancers move around the stage, sometimes running around the central huddle, sometimes pushing out from the centre of it to take up a new station on the outer edge, are mesmerising and immersive, reflecting Gorecki’s repetitive beats. Kristen McNally breaks out of the group to perform an agonised solo about the loss of a child; Joseph Sissens, Isabella Gasparini, Benjamin Ella and Ashley Dean also have small solos or duets. As the piece approaches its conclusion and the main group disperses through an aperture in the black-panelled set where a shaft of light shines down through falling snow, Marcelino Sambé has a gut-wrenching solo in which he immerses himself so thoroughly that we can ourselves feel his agony, rage and fear. What a dancer he is, and what an artist.
In Covenant, the middle piece, the curtain rises on a small boy marching on the spot centre-stage, dressed in white against a gorgeous backdrop in shades of rich red, with a tulle-like creamy cloud above. The effect is of a fiery dawn rising over a mountain-range as the night-mist disperses. The boy is soon joined by five other children (from the Royal Ballet’s Junior Associates Programme) and as they are supported, guided and carried by the 24 adult dancers, Pite depicts the burden and the joy of our shared responsibility to care for lost or struggling children. Again, the ingenuity of the structures and patterns Pite creates is extraordinary.
In Passage, two performers from the Company of Elders (Isidora Barbara Joseph and Christopher Havell) feature among the corps of Royal Ballet dancers to show the final journey we must all take. Couples emerge to dance loving pas de deux highlighting the bonds that feel indissoluble; Pite says she was influenced by Mary Oliver’s wonderful poem In Blackwater Woods about letting go. Perhaps the trees in the poem are referenced by the beautiful pillars of light that dominate the set; scenic design and lighting design (both superb) are by Jay Gower Taylor and Tom Visser.
The dancers of The Royal Ballet perform with outstanding commitment and insight. The “corps” includes names that are at the forefront of the art form; the presence of principals such as Matthew Ball, Joseph Sissens and Calvin Richardson forms an integral part of the intention to show how groups and communities support each other as individuals.
Overall, Light of Passage is one of those glorious pieces where music, choreography and design meld together to make theatrical magic. It is an important must-see.
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