performed by
Leanne Benjamin, Yuhui Choe, Helen Crawford, Tristan Dyer, Mara Galeazzi, Bennet Gartside, Melissa Hamilton, Nathalie Harrison, Paul Kay, Hikaru Kobayashi, Brian Maloney, Sarah Lamb, Stephen McRae, Laura McCulloch, Marianela Nunez, Ludovic Ondiviela, Rupert Pennefather, Ivan Putrov, Johannes Stepanek, Leticia Stock, Akane Takada, Lara Turk, Eric Underwood, Edward Watson
Although Limen, the new work from the Royal Ballet's Resident Choreographer, Wayne McGregor, is the piece that has caught the headlines, the two other ballets that make up this triple bill are equally strong, creating an overall programme that could not be more delightfully varied if it tried.
The evening begins with Stravinsky’s final, though nevertheless groundbreaking, ballet, Agon, choreographed by Balanchine. Designed as a ‘Concerto for the dance’, it was written in 1953 at a time when the composer was exploring Arnold Schoenburg’s method of 12-note serialism.
It opens with four men in a line, their limbs moving fluidly, their white t-shirts contrasting with the blue backdrop to create an air of constrained excitement.
As eight women join them, a quartet of white tops and two quartets of black leotards form, before the movements of individuals acting against the group dynamic serve to mix and blend the colours.
Elsewhere, Yuhui Choe delivers an almost precociously brilliant turn in a pas de trois with Bennet Gartside and Johannes Stepanek, and Nathalie Harrison and Eric Underwood perform a captivating pas de deux. At one point, their two sets of arms wrap around each other, and as they appear almost to climb through the resulting ring, it makes their entire dance feel like an out of body experience.
Glen Tetley’s Sphinx, inspired by Jean Cocteau’s 1934 play, La machine infernale, focuses upon Oedipus’s encounter with the Sphinx. It shows how this merciless guardian of the pass above Thebes suddenly succumbs to love, and consequently perishes. The ballet is rather too clever for its own good, and I found myself simply marvelling at the beauty of the movements as Marianela Nunez’s Sphinx interacted with Rupert Pennefather’s Oedipus, rather than analysing the Sphinx’s demise in microcosm.
But what beauty there is. Nunez is lyrical, and every now and then there is a wonderful moment when her body hits a point mid-movement where it suddenly forms a single diagonal line from head to toe. Pennefather is agile, muscular and all conquering, whilst Edward Watson makes up the trio as Anubis. A master at applying stylistic integrity to his movements, it never occurs to us that he is consciously thinking about his steps. Instead his body flows freely through space and the overall effect is of one swimming frenetically through air. The power of the performance is also aided by Willa Kim’s ‘minimalist’ costumes, conductor Barry Wordsworth’s considered approach to Martinu’s score, Henry Roche’s insightful solo piano playing, and the sumptuous Art Nouveau-style ramp on stage, itself forming a Greek Sphinx.
And then comes McGregor’s Limen. Using Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s cello concerto, Notes on Light, which captures a solar eclipse, there is a strong sense in which we are witnessing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of a main event that remains tantalising intangible. As with all McGregor’s works, there is no one single meaning and the characters do not move in straight lines from a narrative viewpoint.
With set and video design by Tatsuo Miyajima, the piece opens with the dancers performing behind a blue screen upon which numbers float, as if the dancing is taking place within a trigonometrical cosmos. Throughout, the dancers jerk and tumble – and lift, support and pass each other – in a series of routines. At the end, all fifteen dancers appear in flesh coloured costumes and adopt poses that possess all the sweeping grace of a Canova sculpture, but also a fluid vitality that no statue could ever deliver.
The piece does not feel quite as revolutionary as McGregor’s Infra did on its first appearance in 2008 (perhaps because it follows it so quickly), but it does seem a degree more accomplished, the next step forward on McGregor’s exploratory path. It may not be long before the Royal Ballet stages an ‘all-McGregor’ triple bill, and, also on the basis of such works as Chroma and Nimbus , such an evening would surely be as pleasurable as this one.
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