Graham Watts OBE, Culture Editor at bThere Magazine reviews ‘A Centenary Celebration’ at the Royal Opera House, where The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and The Royal Ballet School came together for an evening of dazzling performances, new choreography and a spectacular finale.
I arrived at this celebratory evening with concerns about the length of the programme, just short of three hours (including two intervals), and so kudos to the Royal Opera House backstage and front-of-house teams for bringing it in before 10-30pm, the witching hour as far as the orchestra is concerned! It must have been another logistical challenge to get dancers from The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and The Royal Ballet School together to rehearse this long agenda of dance.
Initially, I felt that the programme included a couple of pieces that were unnecessary, notably the Manon Bedroom pas de deux and the Black Swan pas de deux but they were so superbly performed that it was a pleasure to relive these veteran gala favourites one more time. There was sizzling chemistry between Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé in the former, prefacing their opening night performance in the full-length ballet just a few nights’ later.
Although I generally dislike seeing the Black Swan performed without all the accompanying guests at Siegfried’s betrothal ball (Von Rothbart in particular) I don’t think that I have EVER seen it performed with such sublime technique as by Vadim Muntagirov and Fumi Kaneko. Muntagirov’s double tours into a solidly balanced arabesque are never short of perfection as are his triple, double-double tours down the centre. Like Kaneko’s pointe work in her variation, it’s a masterclass of precision. I think she rattled of 36 fouettés (it was certainly more than 32) and seamlessly pulled back from the brink of an error when raising her arms in a double fouetté early in the sequence without batting an eyelid. I suspect that virtually the whole audience would not have noticed her momentary discomfort.
There were new and rarely seen small pieces to enjoy, notably Christopher Wheeldon’s Beautiful Shadow, danced sublimely by Lauren Cuthbertson and Lukas B. Brændsrød, both sensitive and strong; Cathy Marston’s Night Falling, a dreamy duet for Matthew Ball and William Bracewell; and Unforgettable was an Elvis Presley tribute ballet, created on three of his songs, by Joshua Junker. The evening was also memorable for a main stage debut for fast-rising choreographer, Loughlan Prior, with his outstanding Danse Russe for Steven McRae and Sarah Lamb, accompanied by Vasko Vassilev on the violin: a quick and welcome reminder of the recent McRae/Vassilev evening in the Linbury Theatre.
The programme of short works and world premieres that comprised the second act, included reprisals of snippets of timeless ballets uppermost amongst which were the Southern Cape Zebra episode from David Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at The Penguin Café, with Yasiel Hodelín Bello as the tragic final specimen; Yaoqian Shang and Mathias Dingman gave an impassioned account of MacMillan’s Winter Dreams pas de deux; and a mix of dancers from both companies (Miki Mizutani, Sae Maeda, Joseph Sissens and Tzu-Chao Chou) made up a quartet from Wayne McGregor’s Nimbus, accompanied by Jeanette Wong on the piano.
Act One contained two lengthy pieces, beginning with the Checkmate Suite, a distilled version of the ballet by Ninette de Valois, featuring dancers from both The Royal Ballet and the School, and led by Mayara Magri as the Black Queen, Reece Clarke as the Red Knight (he’s very knightly) and Christopher Saunders as the decrepit and vulnerable King. This was followed by Frederick Ashton’s Birthday Offering, as a composite of dancers from both companies with gorgeous solos from Marianela Núñez, Katherine Ochoa, Anna Rose O’Sullivan, Yasmine Naghdi, Rosanne Ely, Akane Takada and Yu Kurihara. Their consorts, led by Patricio Revé, have considerably less to do, mostly framing the ballerinas for a large part of the piece.
The evening finished on a massive high with a huge scale, concours-style mass movement piece entitled Centenary by Valentino Zucchetti for what seemed like the whole entourage of the two companies and the school. After a career of sixteen years as a Royal Ballet dancer, Zucchetti left this month to pursue his choreographic and producing career and this was a remarkable leaving present. The backstage was opened up, as not seen before, to accommodate such a huge number of bodies coming downstage in wave after wave of carefully coordinated movement, from the youngest students to the most-established principal dancers. Due to the logistical challenge, I find it hard to believe that it will ever be performed again but it was a spectacular conclusion to a glittering evening and, appropriately, the end triggered an explosion of glitter.
Review by Graham Watts – images Tristram Kenton.
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