Iconic but flawed: La Bayadère the Royal Ballet

La Bayadère: Kingdom of the Shades scene Artists of The Royal Ballet © 2018 ROH. Photographed by Bill Cooper

Petipa/Makarova/Minkus/Lanchbery La Bayadère; Royal Ballet Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 November 2018
Revival of Petipa's Orientalist fantasy with its iconic 'Kingdom of the Shades' scene

Ballet is a curious art-form, with few other genres would we accept as standard that what we see is the work of a number of different hands, based on the choreographer's original (just think how art historians obsess over whether a painting is by an artist, attributed or studio, though the process is accept to a limited extent in music, just think Cherubini's Medea). The fact is that until the invention of accurate choreographic notation, productions relied on memory and it was accepted that new generations would change and improve.

These thoughts occurred to me as we watched the recent revival of the 19th century Russian ballet La Bayadère by the Royal Ballet (seen 9 November 2018) at the Royal Opera House. The production is billed as conceived and directed by Natalia Makarova, with choreography by Natalia Makarova after Marius Petipa, with music by Ludwig Minkus orchestrated by John Lanchbery, though the work's actual heritage is even more complicated than that. We saw Sarah Lamb as the heroine, the temple dance of the title, Nikiya with Ryoichi Hirano as the hero Solor, Claire Calvert as Gamzatti, Thomas Whitehead as the High Brahmin, Bennet Gartside as the Rajah and Tristan Dyer as the head fakir. conducted by Boris Gruzin, who joined the Mariinsky Theatre in 1992 so presumably has this ballet in his blood.

Petipa first mounted La Bayadère in 1877 and the final production that he supervised was in 1900, which was notated in the Stepanov notation (a 19th century choreographic notation system which, if imperfect, allows us access to some of the choreographer's original thoughts). But all modern productions of the ballet derive from the Kirov Ballet's 1941 staging which severely trimmed the balled and reduced it to three acts from four, re-purposing Petipa's Grand pas d'action from the last act (of which he was very proud) to earlier on in the ballet. And even before 1941, details were changed by great dancers associated with the roles, and some of these changes became accepted as writ, a part of the standard ballet.

Natalia Makarova danced in the Kirov version as a young dancer, and so based her version on it. Similarly Rudolf Nureyev mounted a version of La Bayadère for the Paris Opera in 1991, and his has similar origins.

So why bother with the ballet at all?

Well, La Bayadère contains one of the great ballet scenes of 19th century Russian ballet, the 'Kingdom of the Shades' scene, a scene so influential that it was often given alone, and before the Royal Ballet took Natalia Makarova's production in 1989 it played Nureyev's version of the 'Kingdom of the Shades' scene as a stand alone ballet (first mounted  in 1963 and last given in 1985 when I saw it).

Marius Petipa's final revival of La Bayadère, with the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre shown in the scene The Kingdom of the Shades. In the center is Mathilde Kschessinskaya as Nikiya, Pavel Gerdt as Solor and the Corps de ballet.

New dance double bill from New English Ballet Theatre & The English Concert

Jenna Lee: The Four Seasons - New English Ballet Theatre (Photo Deborah Jaffe)

The Four Seasons | Remembrance Max Richter, Handel; Jenna Lee, Wayne Eagling, New English Ballet Theatre; Peacock Theatre Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 September 2018 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A double bill of new ballets showcasing the engaging presence and energy of this young company.

New English Ballet Theatre is a relatively new company, founded in 2012 by artistic director Karen Pilkington-Miksa it is devoted to creating new work in the classical tradition. For its Autumn 2018 tour it presented a double bill of new ballets, The Four Seasons and Remembrance (seen 29 September 2018 at the Peacock Theatre. Jenna Lee's The Four Seasons (which the company premiered in 2017) to Max Richter's recomposition of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and Wayne Eagling's Remembrance to Handel's Ode for St Cecilia's Day performed by The Erebus Ensemble and The English Concert, conductor Harry Bicket, with soloists Fflur Wyn (soprano) and Joshua Ellicott (tenor). The sets for Remembrance were by Nina Kobiashvili, the costumes and lighting for both ballets were by April Dalton and Andrew Ellis respectively. 

Jenna Lee was the choreographer of Alexandra Dariescu's The Nutcracker & I [see my review], Wayne Eagling danced with the Royal Ballet from 1969 to 1991 and was artistic director of English National Ballet from 2005 to 2012.

Whilst the Handel was performed live, Max Richter's score for The Four Seasons was a recording. This is understandable in economic terms, but it would have been intriguing, to say the least, to have the Max Richter performed live by an amplified English Concert and it would have given the ballet the sort of lift that only live music can. These details were not specified in the programme, and it did not credit the recording of the work used.

Swan Lake at the Royal Ballet

Royal Ballet - Swan Lake - © 2018 ROH. Photograph by Bill Cooper

Is it really over 30 years since the Royal Ballet debuted Anthony Dowell's production of Swan Lake at Covent Garden (13 March 1987). I attended one of the early performances and was bowled over by the combination of choreographic textual fidelity (based on the Stepanov notations of the ballet brought out from Russia in 1919 by Nicholas Grigorievich Sergeyev), and designs by Yolanda Sonnabend which hardly looked like ballet at all. 

Now the Royal Ballet has revealed a new production created by Liam Scarlett  with designs by John MacFarlane. We caught the performance on Friday 1 June 2018 with Marianela Nunez as Odette/Odile, and Vadim Muntagirov as Siegfried, conducted by Koen Kessels. 

The new production has links to the 1987 one, both are set in early 20th century Russia. John MacFarlane has supplied some stunningly painterly designs for Acts One, Two and Four, with a startlingly realistic and very over the top marble and gilt interior of Act Three. Within this, Scarlett has re-thought the dramaturgy so that for Act One the prince's tutor has gone, and we have Prince Siegfried's friend Benno and Von Rothbart, disguised in human form and acting as advisor to the Queen. It makes a great deal more sense of the drama.

Within this Scarlett has created a very, very Romantic Swan Lake. Tutus are back (they were dropped in favour of something longer in the 1987 production). This, in itself, gives the white acts their very, very traditional look.

Royal Ballet - Swan Lake - © 2018 ROH. Photograph by Bill Cooper

The music that forms the basis for Swan Lake is in fact not Tchaikovsky's original score, but the score as arranged and adjusted by Riccardo Drigo to suit the requirements of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov's new production in St Petersburg in 1895.

Apropos Anastasia

Kenneth MacMillan - Anastasia (1971), Lynn Seymour
Photo © Leslie E. Spatt

Perhaps it was Lynn Seymour's first entrance on roller skates, or perhaps it was back-flip that did it, but Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Anastasia has always held a special place in my heart. It wasn't the first MacMillan ballet I had seen, we saw Romeo and Juliet (with Natalia Makarova), but seeing Anastasia with Lynn Seymour in 1975 made a really big impression. This is partly because after 1978 the full three-act ballet passed out of the Royal Ballet repertoire so I never got chance to see it again until 1996 when Deborah MacMillan supervised a new production (with Viviana Durante). Now this has been revived and we caught the performance given by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden on 28 October 2016 with Lauren Cuthbertson in the title role and Sarah Lamb as Mathilde Kschessinskaya, conducted by Simon Hewitt, with Viviana Durante and Jonathan Cope credited with the principal coaching.

Anastasia was MacMillan's first three act ballet using a new story (it was preceded by Romeo and Juliet and versions of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake). Its strength and weakness is that MacMillan uses Tchaikovsky symphonies (nos. 1 and 3) for the first two acts, this means that MacMillan has the advantage of a coherent score which really works in musical terms, but which limits the manoeuvrability when it comes to the dramaturgy. His later ballets in this vein, Manon and Mayerling used scores assembled and arranged (from Massenet by Leighton Lewis for  Manon and from Liszt by John Lanchberry for Mayerling) so that though the score lacks the real coherence and music-drama of a specially composed entity, the shape of it can be made to fit the necessity of the drama. It is a shame that MacMillan's only commissioned score in this vein was from Richard Rodney Bennett for Isadora, which mixed dance and speech and which has never found an entirely satisfactory form. MacMillan's final full length ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas showed what he could do with a fine commissioned score, even against the intransigence of the Britten Estate in not allowing him to cut the score (something which changed on revivals after his death).

Strapless - Christopher Wheeldon triple bill at the Royal Ballet

Natalia Osipova in Strapless © ROH 2016.
Photo by Bill Cooper

Christoph Wheeldon Triple Bill Arvo Part, Ezio Bosso, Mark-Anthony Turnage; Marianela Nunez, Thiago Soares, Natalia Osipova, Edward Watson, Federico Bonelli, cond: Koen Kessels; Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 16 2016
Star rating: 4.0
Triple bill of ballets by Christopher Wheeldon

The Royal Ballet’s new triple bill of works by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, which we saw on its third outing on Tuesday 16 February 2016, includes one brand-new work and two further works which are new to the UK. Wheeldon’s Strapless is a new ballet to a specially commissioned score from Mark-Anthony Turnage with designs by Bob Crowley, it was teamed with the Royal Ballet’s new productions of Wheeldon’s After the Rain to music by Arvo Part (Tabula Rasa, and Spiegel im Spiegel) with costumes by Holly Hynes and lighting by 59 Productions, and Within the Golden Hour to music by Ezio Bosso, with costumes by Lynette Mauro based on the original designs by Martin Pakledinaz and lighting by 59 Productions.  

After the Rain featured Marianela Nunez and Thiago Soares, Strapless featured Natalia Osipova, Edward Watson and Federico Bonelli, Within the Golden Hour featured Sarah Lamb, Stephen McRae, Lauren Cuthertson, Matthew Golding, Beatriz Stix-Brunell, and Vadim Muntagirov. Koen Kessels conducted the orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

Raven Girl and Connectome

Alastair Marriott - Connectome - Royal Ballet, 2014 - photo Bill Cooper

Wayne McGregor, Audrey Niffenegger, Gabriel Yared Raven Girl, Alastair Marriott, Arvo Part Connectome; Edward Watson, Sarah Lamb, Lauren Cuthbertson, Steven McRae, cond: Koen Kessels; Royal Ballet at Covent Garden
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Oct 6 2015
Design and choreography to the fore in contemporary double bill

Raven Girl was choreographer Wayne McGregor's first narrative dance piece, produced in collaboration with the writer and illustrator Audrey Niffenegger, with music by Gabriel Yared and designed by Vicki Mortimer. We caught the first performance of Royal Ballet's recent revival of the work at Covent Garden on 6 October 2015 in a double bill with Alastair Marriott's Connectome to music by Arvo Pärt designed by Es Devlin and Jonathan Howells. In Raven Girl, Edward Watson was the Postman, Olivia Cowley was the Raven, Sarah Lamb as Raven Girl, Paul Kay was the Boy and Thiago Soares was the Doctor. Connectome featured Lauren Cuthbertson, Steven McRae and Edward Watson. Koen Kessels conducted the Royal Opera House Orchestra.

Wayne MacGregor Raven GirlSarah Lamb
photo Johann Persson

Described as being based on a fairy tale by Audrey Niffenegger, Raven Girl started as a series of illustrations with text which Niffenegger and McGregor developed into a dance piece which McGregor prefer to call visual theatre rather than narrative ballet.

Composer Gabriel Yared, who is best known for his film scores (from Betty Blue to The English Patient), wrote the specially commissioned score which mixed a live orchestra with electronics to striking effect. The result was eclectic, moving from some strikingly edgy sounds where you could not tell what was live and what electronic. But Raven Girl is quite a dark tale, given quite a stark look by the designs and lighting, and it seemed that Gabriel Yared's music did not always match this. Too often he produced something softer edged, veering to the popular which had me reaching for that lazy description 'film music'.

McGregor's choreography was superb for the crowds, the weird faceless people, the ravens in their stunning costumes. And some individual solos were striking. Edward Watson as the Postman was wonderfully all edgy elbows and joints. Sarah Lamb looking stunning as the Raven Girl both with and without her wings, giving a truly mesmerising performance

But a sense of character seemed missing in places, the Doctor (Thiago Soares) and the Boy (Paul Kay) were underdeveloped despite both performers giving strong individual performances. And at the end all problems evaporated in a mysterious fashion and we had a final pas de deux for Sarah Lamb and Eric Underwood as the Raven Prince (a characters who had not previously featured in the plot). Here both Wayne MacGregor and Gabriel Yared seemed to struggle to find the right language to suite the rest of the piece.

Miracle in the Gorbals

Miracle in the Gorbals - photo Bill Cooper

Flowers of the Forest triple bill; Birmingham Royal Ballet; Sadler's Wells Theatre
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Oct 17 2014
Star rating: 4.0
Thrilling revival of the Helpmann/Bliss/Burra Miracle in the Gorbals at centre of an imaginative evening of dance.

Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) brought its latest triple bill to London, at Sadler's Wells Theatre on 17 October 2014. Shadows of War featured three ballets, each with its own echo of war. Kenneth MacMillan's La Fin du Jour to Ravel's Piano Concerto, with designs by Ian Spurling depicted the bright young things of the 30's just before war started. David Bintley's Flowers of the Forest to Malcolm Arnold's Four Scottish Dances and Benjamin Britten's Scottish Ballad, with designs by Jan Blake and John Goodwin, contrasted a post-card view of Scotland with a darker reality. The centrepiece of the programme, and the source of great interest, was Gillian Lynne's revival/re-creation of Robert Helpmann's Miracle in the Gorbals to designs by Adam Wilshire after the original Edward Burra designs, with an original score by Arthur Bliss was a war-time ballet having been first conceived and performed by the Royal Ballet in 1944. Paul Murphy conducted the Royal Ballet Sinfonia with Jonathan Higgins as solo in the Ravel, and Higgins and Ross Williams as soloists in the Britten.

Sir Robert Helpmann was one of the main-stays of the Royal Ballet (then the Sadler's Wells Ballet) during the Second World War, because as an Australian he was not eligible for military service. A talented dancer and actor, his presence as the ballet's leading man and the shortage of choreographers led him into choreography as well and he produced a group of major works during the war. Of these only Hamlet, to music by Liszt, seems to have survived in the repertoire (I saw it at its revival in 1981). Unfortunately Miracle in the Gorbals did not (it seems to have last been performed in 1958). Rather bravely Birmingham Royal Ballet invited the choreographer Gillian Lynne, who had danced in the ballet under Helpmann, to re-create it. Lynne (who is now 88) admits in a note in the programme book that none of those survivors who danced in the original could remember a step, so she had to start from scratch. Neither do Edward Burra's designs survive, we just have black and white photographs, and Adam Wilshire had to do some similar archaeology, including sourcing 1940's street clothes from vintage shops.

Happening at the Barbican: Circa and the Debussy String Quartet

Circa and Debussy String Quartet in Opus
Photo credit: Justin Nicholas

Opus: Circa and Debussy String Quartet Quartet: Barbican Theatre
Reviewed by Hilary Glover on Feb 18 2014
Star rating: 4.0
Circus and Shostakovich string quartets combine a remarkable theatrical circus.

Bound together by a love of Shostakovich, the resulting collaboration between the Australian circus/contemporary dance group Circa and the Debussy String Quartet from France, brought Opus at the Barbican Theatre to life. All the performers, whether dancing or playing, were on stage and took part in the event. More than just background the music and musicians were integral to the look and feel of the dance. And what a dance! More vaudeville than ballet, and more acrobatic than contemporary dance, these 14 dancers brought circus skills to a new level of artistry.

The Debussy String Quartet, Christophe Collette and Marc Vieillefon on violin, Vincent Deprecq on viola, and Fabrice Bihan on cello, met while studying at the Conservatoire de Lyon, France, and have been playing together since 1990. In 1993 they won the Evian International String Quartet Competition and in 1999 they founded ‘Les Cordes en Ballade’ a summer chamber music festival and school in the South of France at which they teach and perform. They became interested in dance and have worked with Circa since 2013 and are also currently collaborating with the contemporary dance group Compagnie Käfig.

A swashbuckling spectacular – Le Corsaire

Le Corsair English National Ballet © 2013 Guy Farrow

Le Corsaire: English National Ballet at the London Coliseum
Reviewed by Hilary Glover on Jan 14 2014
Star rating: 3.0
Lavish and luxurious if short on tunes.
A great night out is the only way to describe ‘Le Corsaire’ by the English National Ballet at the London Coliseum (14 January 2014). With its lavish staging and luxurious, bejewelled costumes this ballet may be short on hum along tunes but nevertheless provides a diverting film-like story and charming, enthusiastic dances. 
 

The story of ‘Le Corsaire’ was inspired by the 1814 poem ‘The Corsair’ by Lord Byron and originated in a libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, set to music by Adolphe Adam, (1803-1856) for Joseph Mazilier. First produced in 1856 it has since been stretched and expanded several times so that the composer credit now stretches to nine.

Many of the dancers were taken from the emerging performer ranks. Tonight’s performance cast Yonah Acosta as the pirate hero Conrad, and Max Westwell as Birbanto, his not to be trusted second-in-command. Both were dynamically charged and, especially Acosta, high leaping. Fernanda Oliviera as Medora, Conrad’s love, provided the skill and passion to bring the story to life and show the boys at their best.

Our Extraordinary World Gala - review

Galas are funny things, and must be a nightmare to put together; trying to assemble a a coherent evening around a series of snippets made tempting by the star names singing, but dependent on diaries and personalities. Last night's gala at Covent Garden, Our Extraordinary World (30 October), was given in the presence of HM the Queen and Prince Philip and was intended both to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee but also the whole of the Covent Garden enterprise, both on-stage and off. There was also the feeling that it marked the launch of a new era, with Kasper Holten as Director of Opera and Kevin O'Hare as Director of the Royal Ballet. The offerings of opera and ballet were evenly balanced, with some tempting new pieces being created specially for the occasion. Interleaved with all of this were short video compilations of interviews with everyone connected with Covent Garden, dancers, singers, backstage staff, Friends of Covent Garden, education, community, indeed a celebration of the whole enterprise.

The Prince of the Pagodas

Its something of a miracle that Kenneth Macmillan's choreography for The Prince of the Pagodas exists at all. The choreographer was interested in working on Britten's score, but the composer refused to help by making changes to the score. So, eventually Macmillan went ahead anyway, working with Colin Thubron to create a scenario that fitted the existing music. The basic problem is that John Cranko's original idea for the ballet, to re-create the world of the late 19th century Russian fairy-tale ballets, had ended up with far to much divertissement-like padding and rendered his final ballet unsatisfactory.

Macmillan's version was highly successful, and made a star of the young Darcy Bussell on whom the role of Princess Rose was created. But there was always the underlying feeling that there were moments when dance had been fitted to music, because it was there, and the drama still sagged. For this revival Monica Mason and Grant Coyle have persuaded the Britten estate to let them cut the piece. This means that, for the first time, the drama doesn't sag, the piece runs at a dramatic tempo throughout. This doesn't solve the problem that there is a slight mismatch at times between the relative emotional temperatures of music and dance, and that there are stray elements of Britten's musical narrative and leit-motifs which do not seem to march with Thubron and Macmillan's story-line. But these are relatively small points, Macmillan and his collaborators have created a potent dramatic ballet from one of Britten's most fascinating scores, his longest single orchestral score.

We attended the performance on Thursday 21 June when the cast was supposed to be Lauren Cuthbertson, Zenaida Yanowsky and Rupert Pennefather. In the event all three were injured (as was Ricardo Cervera who was due to play the King of the South). So we had Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Itziar Mendizabal and Ryoichi Hirano in the lead roles.

Alice in Wonderland

To Covent Garden on Friday for Christopher Weeldon's ballet, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with a score by Joby Talbot.

New full length ballets have always been scarce at the Royal Ballet and in the last few decades have become increasingly rare. Frederick Ashton did only three (Ondine, Sylvia and Cinderella) plus the 2 act La fille mal gardee; he also did Romeo and Juliet for the Royal Danish Ballet. Kenneth MacMillan did 6,  Romeo and Juliet, Mayerling, Manon, Anastasia, The Prince of the Pagodas and Isadora. Twyla Tharp did a full length ballet for the in the 90's and David Bintley did his first version of Cyrano de Bergerac. And that, is I think, just about the total sum since the war.

Of these only Ondine,  Isadora and Cyrano de Bergerac had commissioned scores. Ashton used existing scores for his remaining ballets and MacMillan came to rely on scores assembled. Mayerling uses the music of Liszt,  Anastasia uses Tchaikvovsky symphonies (plus a commissioned score for the last act, which was written first as a one-act ballet), Manon uses a patchwork of Massenet. Ashton's relationship with the Henze score for Ondine was not completely trouble free, but the score is one of the few modern masterpieces of the genre and deservedly iconic in its own right.

MacMillan's one commissioned score, from Richard Rodney Bennett for Isadora, was hardly typical because of MacMillan's decision to use an actress as well as a dancer to play Isadora so that the final work is an amalgam of music, speech and dance which is remarkable, but doesn't quite work. Efforts to create a single act fully danced piece from it, subsequent to MacMillan's death, have not really succeeded.

It is David Bintley who has created a significant number of full length ballets and commissioned some very significant scores, especially since his move to the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Paul Reade's scores for Hobson's Choice and Far from the Madding Crowd are brilliantly realised in a populist vein, whilst Edward II uses a score by John McCabe which continues the Henze tradition of lyrical modernist brilliance. In fact Edward II was commissioned by the Stuttgart Ballet and only mounted in England in 1998, 3 years after its premiere, once Bintley was in charge BRB. (Stuttgart had commissioned a number of MacMillan's significant one-act ballets, such as Requiem and Song of the Earth and he had difficulty getting them mounted at the Royal Ballet.) Bintley has gone on to work with McCabe again on the two full length Arthur ballets.

And what of Alice? Well, it brilliantly does what it was set out to do, entertain. The set pieces such as the tap dancing Mad Hatter at the tea party, the Indian caterpillar, the Red Queen's croquet match and the delightfully scary Red Queen dancing a tango; all these work superbly well and are firmly in the English tradition of character dances. The waltz sequence for the Flowers is beautifully done and clearly in the Ashton/MacMillan vein.

Wheeldon and Talbot deliberately do not mine the vein of dark, sexuality in the story. There are no particular undercurrents such as MacMillan might have picked on. The Red Queen, for instance, is done as an essentially scary, comic version of the Red Queen from Ninette de Valois's Checkmate, but without that character's threatening sexual aura; Wheeldon and Talbot's ballet is curiously sexless.

They have introduced a relationship between Alice and the Jack who stole the tarts, and Alice's adventure becomes, to a certain extent, a pursuit of Jack and a discovery of her adult sexuality. So far, so Freud and MacMillan. But the scenes with Jack, a couple of extended pas de deux sequences do no engage properly. They neither tug at the heart strings the way Ashton was able to do, nor do they pursue troubled psycho-sexual depth the way MacMillan did. Bintley has shown himself as being able to skate between these two and produce works which have a significant depth. But here, Wheeldon and Talbot seem to be content to skate along the surface of the story.

Talbot's score is written for an orchestra with a huge amount of percussion, much of it tuned; I don't think I have ever seen quite such a big percussion department in a ballet. And the score is entertaining and effective and beautifully done. I suspect that if I sat down to listen to it as a concert piece I would enjoy it immensely.

The performance we saw had many of the original cast with Lauren Cuthbertson as Alice, Federico Bonelli as Jack, Edward Watson as the White Rabbit, Laura Morera as the Queen of Hearts, Steven McRae as the Mad Hatter and Fernando Montano as the Caterpillar. It was superbly dance, with bravura, commitment  and a strong vein of lyrical story telling. The audience, many of them young, loved it.

Last night we went to hear Kaija Saariaho's cello concerto, Notes on Light, Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor and Faure's Requiem. A slightly strange mixture for a concert, you might think, except that this wasn't a concert, it was an evening at the Royal Ballet. We tend not to think of the ballet from a musical point of view, but contemporary choreographers' choice of music can be quite interesting and challenging. I can remember when Glen Tetley's ballet Shadowplay was in the Royal Ballet repertoire which meant that Floral Street was probably the only place in London where you could hear Charles Koechlin's music live.

Last night, though, we were at the Royal Ballet principally for the dance and the choreographers. It was my first exposure to Wayne McGregor's fascinating Limen. Most of McGregor's previous work had been with dancers trained in modern dance, rather than with a classical vocabulary so that Limen is a work which seemed to stretch both choreographer and dancers as each accommodate the other. And it was also the first time that I had heard Saariaho's fascinating and, at times, luminous score, with the solo cello part played by Anssi Karttunen. The only drawback was that, from our seats, we could not see the cellist which was a shame.

The middle ballet was Marguerite and Armand, Frederick Ashton's celebration of the relationship between Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev. I saw the ballet when it was revived for Sylvie Guillem and then I found it rather forgettable, 'is that all there is...'. Perhaps it was one of those roles where we saw too much of Guillem's own personality rather than the characters. But for this revival we had Tamara Rojo and Sergei Polunin and they certainly made the stage sizzle in just the right way, this revival was pitch perfect. My only niggle was Dudley Simpson's orchestration of the Liszt piano sonata, neatly done though it was; I kept wondering what the ballet would have been like if pianist Robert Clark had been allowed to play the whole sonata in its original, unorchestrated, form.

One issue with listening to ballets is that, of course, the speeds are not necessarily what one wants, the conductor has to be generally sympathetic to choreographic and dancers requirements. I can remember a BBC TV programme about Les Noces in which the Royal Ballet danced Nijinska's choreography in a TV studio version of the ballet in their repertoire. Except that the conductor was Leonard Bernstein and some of the dancers said afterwards how taxing it had been because Bernstein's speeds, generally brisk, took little or no account of the needs of dancers feet!

This applied very much to the final work in the evening, Faure's Requiem. Barry Wordsworth paced this quite steadily and encouraged a massive, rather old fashioned performance from the Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra. I have heard the piece done at the opera house with a bought in chamber choir, but here we had the full, vibrato-laden operatic chorus approach which seemed to fit with the stately grandeur of the musical performance. Not that MacMillan's ballet is all stately grandeur, but it relies on the music's massive power and I do wonder what the dance would be like if accompanied by a chamber version of the music.

MacMillan's choreography is something that has accompanied the whole of my theatre going life. My first ballet was MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet which we saw when I was in my teens. After that I managed to see a remarkable number of his ballets as they were produced, though of course I did not see Requiem until it was finally done at Covent Garden. It never fails to amaze me how he manages to create so many places where music and movement combine in a heart-stopping moment. Last night was finely danced by Lauren Cuthertson, Nehemiah Kish and Federico Bonelli.

Royal Ballet Triple Bill

Last night we went to the Royal Opera House to see the Royal Ballet's latest triple bill, Frederick Ashton's Scenes de Ballet, Glen Tetley's Voluntaries and Kenneth MacMillan's The Rite of Spring. An interesting programme spanning the late 40's, 60's and 70's in choreographic terms, with each ballet being seen in its original Royal Ballet production.

Now here's a thing. If the English Opera Group was around today (and its successor did just about last into my opera going life-time), would they still be doing Britten's operas in their original productions? I think not. But somehow, this approach is acceptable in ballet, so that for the Ashton we got the very stylised 1940's look with a set which seemed to come from the background of a De Chirico painting. The choreography is a little to pointy-pointe for my taste, Ashton going too far in the direction of Balanchine. But more to the point is the fact that the Royal Ballet seem to be losing the ability to dance Ashton. Not so much technique, though there was plenty that was not quite right, but the sheer style. When I first started coming to the ballet the ballerinas were nearly all the generation trained by Ashton himself, now this is become more distant and the style is being lost. You can't help feeling that Monica Mason ought to arrange a 2 week intensive work-shop and have the whole company practising Ashton style before it is too late.

The difference with the Tetley and the Macmillan was very marked, though they might not have been technically perfect, the dancers were far more confident of the style. Both the two later works were, in their different ways, very stylishly done.

Glen Tetley's Voluntaries was created for Stuttgart Ballet with Richard Cragun and Marcia Haydee taking the lead roles, the same team who created MacMillan's Requiem and Song of the Earth. For me the 3 works all seem to live in the same universe, though of course Tetley's language and emotional world is different. But it is a terrific work, starting from silence with the lead couple (here Mariela Nunez and Rupert Pennefather) and concluding in the same way.

For me, the major problem with the work is the sound of the organ used in the opera house. An electric beast, it just does not sound like the real thing and has a blandly occluded sound, so much unlike the sound-world of Cavaille-Coll which Poulenc would have known. Also, it lacks a degree of power, part of the joy of Poulenc's piece is the way the organ can overwhelm the senses, and it doesn't here.

That said, Thomas Trotter played magnificently. I just had to keep telling myself that this was not Poulenc's Organ Concerto but Glen Tetley's Voluntaries and to stop worrying about the organ sound.

Though The Rite of Spring is more commonly come across in the concert hall, I always feel that it makes more sense danced, you can get a good feel for the structure of the piece. I first saw Kenneth Macmillan's version when Monica Mason danced her final performances as the Chosen Maiden (probably some 20 or 25 years ago). She was the original Chosen Maiden and it was amazing to see her performing the role 20 or more years after the first production. Here the role (the Chosen One) was danced by a man, Edward Watson, and he certainly danced up a storm. Macmillan's steps can sometimes seem contrived, but this performance took on an emotional power all of its own so that the movement seemed a natural outcome of the music. Sidney Nolan's designs remain stunning and some of Macmillan's stage pictures stay with me whenever I hear the music.

The playing of the Royal Opera House Orchestra under Barry Wordsworth was exemplary, with The Rite of Spring receiving a tough, dramatic performance with lots of wonderful accents weighted down to earth.

Sylvia

To the Coliseum on Friday to see David Bintley's new version of Sylvia. I have always found Delibes' score to be delightful, the horn melody for the first appearance of the nymphs is one of the great ballet music moments. And there are more. Though Delibes is content to give us bonnes bouches and neither develops nor digs as deep as Tchaikovsky.

I had not seen Bintley's original 1993 version of the ballet, so don't know how much it differs from the new version. Bintley prefaces the classical myth with a prologue (danced the the overture and scene one) set in an Italian villa with badly behaved count and countess, nanny, valet, children and sundry guests. The gardener is Eros, in retirement and he presents the story of Sylvia as an instructive moral tale for the Count and his family. At the end they reappear, suitably chastened and each with their correct partner. This works surprisingly well and for the opening gives us one of the longest sequences of classical ballet I've seen where the women are all wearing stilleto heels!

The main telling of the tale uses Delibes music slightly differently to Ashton, the role of Diana (the Countess) is far bigger, there are no peasants and in Act 3 there are a hilarious group of pirates along with Eros pretending to be a one legged pirate, complete with peg leg. The classical dance is lovely and serijavascript:void(0)ous, but Bintley keeps the comic moments moving so that the result is charming and entertaining.

Roayl Ballet double Bill

To the Royal Ballet on Friday to see the double bill of MacMillan's Isadora and Jerome Robbins Dances at a gathering.

I saw Isadora when it was new, when it was a 2 act ballet which used a dancer (Merle Park I believe) and an actress to play Isadora and mixed spoken and dance sections. It was interested, but never seemed to gel. Now MacMillan's widow has digested it down into a single act of just over an hour. The staging uses a lot of film, much of it archive, along with Nichola McAuliffe's recorded voice as Isadora. The result flows a little better, but it still seemed disjointed and the dance never seemed to get time to build. Each number followed by spoken dialogue and film, effectively meant that any emotional tension was dispersed.

The same is true of Richard Rodney Bennett's score, which never seemed to develop much of a life of its own. It was not helped by the fact that some of the big numbers needed pastiche music (which Bennett does very well). But the more serious moments never seemed to have the emotional pull that the best bits of his Edward II score, for David Bintley, did.

I'm afraid that Isadora seems to be an honourable failure. We have to admit that MacMillan, if he had lived, would undoubtedly cast the work into a rather different form.

The companion piece was Jerome Robbins Dances at a Gathering. Set to Chopin piano pieces, 5 couples dance solos, duets and ensembles. The language is classical with some wry touches of humour. But after 40 minutes, though the dancers exhibited poise, grace and wit, I wanted something more; I longed for the Revolutionary Prelude, something which stretched the emotions somewhat. The ballet was enormously popular with the audience. But at around an hour and a quarter, it had left me behind long before the end.

Royal Ballet Triple bill

Friday's triple bill at the Royal Ballet included 3 works that I am particularly fond of. First off was Dame Ninette de Valois's Checkmate. The only one of her ballets to be regularly in the Royal Ballet repertory. It is a strong dramatic work and one that works well if there are strong performances from the Black Queen and the Red Knight. The Black Queen was danced by Zenaida Yanowsky and she gave a wonderfully icy, sexy performance. Benet Gartside was a last minute replacement as the Red Knight. He did not seem quite as bravura as some dancers in the role but conveyed well the characters conflicted nature when he fails to kill the Black Queen.

The performance of Ashton's Symphonic Variations was simply the best that I have seen at Covent Garden in a long time. Despite a number of replacements in the cast all 6 dancers succeeded in creating a classical unity with all of them managing to be uniform in their style of dancing. Something that you can't take for granted nowadays at the Royal Ballet when their dancers come from such wide backgrounds.

Then finally, Song of the Earth with Catherine Wyn Rogers and David Rendall singing the vocal solos. The singers were placed on the stage, at the very edge at the front. This was, I think, an innovation and a welcome one; it was good to see the singers properly. The performance was simply magical; Darcy Bussell, Gary Avis and Carlos Acosta danced the 3 lead roles. The evening might have been memorable for the reception Bussell received at the end, but it will also stay in the memory for the quality of the dancing and the performance.

Ballet Triple Bill

Last night we went to the new triple bill at the Royal Ballet. The opening work was Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins with new choreography by Will Tuckett. The singing role of Anna was performed by Martha Wainwright; she was miked and sang the Auden/Kalman translation. Her diction was pretty good so we could follow things clearly (no surtitles!). The dancing Anna was Zenaida Yanowsky.

Tuckett and his designer Lez Brotherston set the piece in the sixties (beehive hair do's for the women). Tuckett presents the story quite straightforwardly, creating an involving narrative. There were moments when his use of standard ballet language seemed a little at odds with the music. There were some fine, sexy performances from some of the men.

The quartet of singers stood on a walkway above the stage, viewing the proceedings and adding their comments. The singers were Roderick Earle, Paul Goodwin-Groen, Philip O'Brien, Christopher Steele. They sounded good but their diction was a little occluded at times, perhaps because of their placing. Either Goodwin-Groen was chosen partly for his extreme height, or he was on stilts, but Mother was by far the tallest person on stage!

This was followed by Glen Tetley's Pierrot Lunaire, with Linda Hurst performing the solo vocal line. This was the first time I'd seen the ballet and heard the music live. I found Tetley's dance work entertaining and involving and rather poignant, with superb performances from Alexander Zaitsev (Pierrot), Mara Galeazzi (Columbine) and Edward Watson (Brighella). The costumes, by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, included some superb ones for Columbine.

For some strange, but presumably logical reason, Martin Yates conducted the Seven Deadly Sins, and Richard Bernas conducted the remaining works. It cannot be easy doing concert works like the Schoenberg and the Ravel as ballet scores, but Bernas did very well.

Then finally, La Fin du Jour, MacMillan's ballet to Ravel's Piano Concerto in G (with beteran Royal Ballet pianist Philip Gammon giving a superb account of the solo role). MacMillan's quirkly 30's inspired ballet has some difficult choreography and in the first 2 movements the dancers, particularly the soloists, were unable to make light of it. Thus instead of the piece being free, light and jazzy, it had moments which were too careful and studied. Let us hope that this performance heralds its return to the repertoire so that the dancers can bed it in properly. The final, Fred and Ginger type dance seemed to fit the dancers better and had the requisite fun and lightness.

The final

Catch-up

I've spent the last 2 days at All Saints Church, East Finchley, doing recording sessions for a new disc of my music. In 4 sessions over 2 days we managed to record The Testament of Dr. Cranmer, a group of motets plus some works for tenor and string orchestra including by Blake setting What is Man?. So naturally, I've not had time to devote attention to many other things.

On Sunday we went to Sadlers Wells to see Akram Khan and Sylvie Guillem's programme. I found much of it disappointing and not a little pretentious. I could have done without the pseudo ad-libs where Guillem and Khan talked to the audience. And some of the early choreography was a little un-inspiring. It was only towards the end, when Khan and Guillem did a series of duets that things took off. I enjoyed the music, but can't comment much on it as there was no actual music list so I have no idea what I was listening to at any one time. The programme lasted 75 minutes and was frankly quite long enough.

Tomorrow we are off to hear Solomon at the London Handel Festival and then on Friday its the new triple bill by the Royal Ballet with Will Tuckett's Seven Deadly Sins, with Martha Wainwright singing - can't wait.

Mayerling

On Friday we went to seen Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Mayerling at the Royal Opera House. Its a work I've been fond of (if that's the right word, given the subject matter) since seeing it during its first run, with David Wall as Prince Rudolph. Since then I've seen artists as varied as Irek Mukhamedov and Adam Cooper in the role. On Friday it was the turn of Carlos Acosta, with Leanne Benjamin as his mistress with whom he commits suicide in a powerful final pas de deux.

Much was written in the press about how the role did not really suite Acosta's personality. And that neither he nor Benjamin were ideally cast. Perhaps so, but I think that we will not see their final pas de deux danced so supremely well. They way she flung herself at him in those amazing flying leaps was astounding. MacMillan's choreography can often seem overly contrived, if the participants do not have it in their bones (or muscles). Here it seemed perfectly aposite.

Now, I want to see Edward Watson in the role, having read the reviews of his debut last week.

Regarding the music to the ballet, John Lanchberry's assemblage of Liszt pieces is masterly, but there are times when I feel that Liszt just does not create the right decadent atmosphere for the Austro-Hungarian court. An Lanchberry seems to have been very sparing with the sweeping melodies, though perhaps that was what MacMillan wanted.