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The best choreographers are versatile — George Balanchine once wrote a polka for circus elephants — and the Royal Ballet‘s latest mixed bill, Ballet to Broadway, celebrates the wide-ranging talents of its artistic associate Christopher Wheeldon. Friday’s opening was strongly cast and impeccably danced. Odd choices caused it to sink in the middle but it ended on a five-star high.
The programme opened in ballet mode with Fool’s Paradise, written in 2007 for Wheeldon’s shortlived Morphoses troupe and acquired by the Royal Ballet in 2012. The score, by regular Wheeldon collaborator Joby Talbot, had begun life as a piano trio accompaniment to Yevgeni Bauer’s 1917 silent film The Dying Swan but was expanded by Talbot for a string orchestra.
The cast of nine — five men, four women — are drably clad in pinky-beige Lycra by fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez. They inhabit a spartan stage enlivened by the occasional trickle of golden confetti. Friday’s dancing was as sleek and seamless as Wheeldon’s choreography. William Bracewell, Liam Boswell, Giacomo Rovero and Téo Dubreuil joined forces to manoeuvre Akane Takada, Viola Pantuso and Annette Buvoli through a series of fluid and mysterious duets and trios and there was an eerily well-synchronised dialogue for Marianela Nuñez and Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød. The 30 minutes has always had its longueurs but the penultimate sequence — four couples interrupted and reformulated by the arrival of an outsider — remains intriguing and the closing tableau of tangled limbs lingers in the mind’s eye.
The dud of the night was 2020’s The Two of Us, which had Lauren Cuthbertson and Calvin Richardson coming and going in a series of exquisite but vapid exchanges in chiffon pyjamas. With such a rich back catalogue to draw from — Polyphonia, Corybantic Games, Within the Golden Hour (at a pinch) — this seemed a strange choice.
The piece was set to a clutch of Joni Mitchell ballads orchestrated by Australian composer Gordon Hamilton. Pop songs seldom emerge unscathed from this kind of classical makeover and Mitchell’s songs were drained of life and poignancy by the big-band treatment, despite the best efforts of Koen Kessels and the onstage orchestra. A technical glitch was apparently to blame for Julia Fordham’s feeble-sounding vocals but it made for a toe-curling 20 minutes.
Us, a short male duet created for the UK’s BalletBoyz in 2017, brought the show back to life. It was delivered with drama and edge by Matthew Ball and Joseph Sissens, the latter fresh from his lovestruck and polished debut as Romeo earlier in the week.
The orchestra was back in the pit for Wheeldon’s Tony Award-winning take on Gershwin’s An American in Paris — the 30-strong ensemble and Bob Crowley’s dazzling geometric designs need every square inch of space. Our heroine, a wannabe ballerina in postwar Paris, was the sharp-footed Anna Rose O’Sullivan, unrecognisable under a chic black bob. Cesar Corrales was on scene-stealing form as the Travolta-esque hero, powering through great arcing leaps and tight, ice-dancer spins and sliding his cheek the length of his partner’s raised leg. Sexy but never vulgar and a crowd-pleasing end to a frustrating evening.
★★★☆☆
To May 27, rbo.org.uk
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