Balanchine, in common with many of his fellow emigrés, must have grieved the loss of the rich culture of pre-revolutionary Russia. Arriving in the New World, to a new life, with an established reputation due to his five years with Diaghilev, a less imaginative man might have been tempted to recreate that beloved Petipa grandeur in his own ballets, but Balanchine was not just any man.
His imagination and creativity enabled him to seize the opportunity to lay the foundation stones for a new, classical but innovative form of ballet; his catalogue of work is of the most extraordinary importance to the history and future of the art form and his influence permeates the work of choreographers around the world. Looking at Serenade, made in 1934 for the students at the school he insisted should be established ahead of a company, one never ceases to wonder at the piece’s freshness.
Opening The Royal Ballet’s Perspectives triple bill, it could not fail to delight. As always The Royal Ballet’s dancers got inside the work and pulled out all the stops; perhaps there were some ragged edges in the corps but we can put this down to first-night jitters. In the leads, Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov were unalloyed joy; she is the very essence of a communicative, technically immaculate ballet artist and Muntagirov’s intelligent progression, from the tentative nineteen year old in Derek Deane’s Swan Lake to a fully mature true artist, has been thoroughly rewarding to watch. Melissa Hamilton gave an excellent performance in choreography that might have been made on her and Leticia Dias attacked her challenging jumps with alacrity, if with a somewhat subdued demeanour.
Cathy Marston is a choreographer whose work I generally admire, although I feel she is at her best when working with a small group of dancers, so I was glad to see that her new Against the Tide has a cast of only seven men and one woman. I was also intrigued by her choice of music, the Britten violin concerto. Britten’s work is so very dense and it can be difficult to enjoy its complexity when movement is happening alongside it.
In the event it was fascinating that her “swimmer against the tide” is a man conflicted on two levels: his own sexuality, and the coming war and what it might mean for him to conform and join the army as his five-member peer group eventually do, conscripted by a more senior official (Nicol Edmonds). All this is discernible in the music and was well served by Marston’s movement and Edward Kemp’s dramaturgy.
A solitary man (William Bracewell) in brightly coloured shades of turquoise, struggles to fit in to his peer-group of men in sludgy earth tones, and is tempted away by a charismatic outsider (luminously danced by Matthew Ball). Back and forth he goes between the influences of Ball and Edmonds, supported by the gentle counsel of his mother (Melissa Hamilton). Finally, he climbs onto the rocky bridge that forms the set (beautifully designed by Chloe Lamford with gorgeous lighting by Fabiana Piccioli) and sets off towards the unknown, rather than be subsumed by societal norms.
Choreographically, the solos for Bracewell are crafted with a clear emotional intent, and he makes the most of them, using his elegant lines and steely physical strength to control his balance while working off-centre. The duets for Bracewell and Ball are very well made, with lovely curving lines and insightful partnering craft. I intuited from the comments I heard in the interval that this might not be a work for everyone, but personally I enjoyed it greatly and particularly appreciated the links between composer and plot.
Everywhere We Go is among the most popular ballets Justin Peck has made for New York City Ballet. In the auditorium at Lincoln Center one is virtually blown out into the Plaza by the energy emanating from the stage. Peck has a way of separating the work of the torso and upper body from the leg and foot work and of clicking them together like cogs in a machine – very clever. For me, two dancers in the cast understood this particularly well: Luca Acri and Téo Dubreuil, both of whom invested their work with pinpoint accuracy and freedom in the core that facilitated the aforementioned dynamic clicking-into-place of the the two halves. Acri has developed rapidly over the last two seasons into a versatile and committed performer who is now ready to bring his individuality to a whole raft of roles. I also admired Sae Maeda and Daichi Ikarashi.
Everywhere We Go, with its propulsive score (by Sufjan Stevens) and its dynamic choreography, was approached by The Royal Ballet with the refinement and elegance characteristic of this great company. I had the sensation of watching a different ballet from the one I had seen on several occasions in New York, but this need not matter as long as service is being done to the choreographer’s intentions and the audience is entertained, and that was certainly the case here.
Overall, a mixed bag, appropriate for a bill entitled Perspectives.
