Rojo’s beauty shines from within. Her peasant Giselle is a creature of joyous innocence and grace; her mad scene is brilliantly judged and frightening; then, transformed into a ghostly Wili, her compassionate love radiates through her equally compelling appearance of otherworldliness. Acosta’s characterisation of the duplicitous Albrecht is finely crafted, his technique effortlessly virtuosic, his every move and gesture filled with noble bearing. Seeing these two dance together is more than a joy, it is a privilege. The pas de deux in the second act — ravishingly paced and phrased to Adolphe Adam’s music, under the baton of Boris Gruzin — could only be called sublime.
It was an excellent cast all round: Zenaida Yanowsky as a Myrtha of icy beauty and imperious implacability; Thiago Soares a dramatically effective Hilarion; Laura Morera and Sarah Lamb leading the dazzling ensemble of Wilis; Belinda Hatley and Yohei Sasaki bright and precise in the peasant pas de six. Everyone, in fact, was perfectly in place to reveal anew why this ballet is such a great work of art.
So, too, is Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s masterpiece The Sleeping Beauty, which English National Ballet (ENB) is currently presenting at the London Coliseum. This is the late Kenneth MacMillan’s production, created in 1987 for American Ballet Theatre. It is sumptuously designed, with Nicholas Georgiadis’s original costumes and lovely new decors by Peter Farmer. Unfortunately, there has been no change, in the course of 50 performances, to David Richardson’s perversely gloomy lighting, which I complained about at ENB’s Southampton premiere in October. The Vision scene opens with Prince Désiré scarcely visible; and why, in the palace garden, do ladies carry parasols when there is a complete absence of sun? MacMillan’s staging has many virtues, preserving the sweep and grandeur of the traditional choreography, with some additions of his own. This is a big-scale work and a testing challenge, with its many classical solos. Of the seven casts dancing Princess Aurora and the Prince, I had admired the superb partnership of Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur months ago; for London, I chose Daria Klimentova and Dmitri Gruzdyev. She danced a triumphant Rose Adage, and together they gave a performance of authority and distinction. The fairy variations were brightly done, and Maria Ribo Pares was a statuesquely malevolent Carabosse (although I wish adult members of the audience would not boo this character at the curtain calls).
The Canadian Cirque du Soleil is back at the Albert Hall for its 10th London season with a reprise of the 1994 show Alegría. The pleasures and irritations remain as before — among the latter, the pretentiousness of presentation and the often deafening and mostly awful music. Nor do I care for the leering, hunchbacked ringmaster and his weirdly dressed, strutting attendants (one of whom remarkably resembles Dame Barbara Cartland).
Impressive acrobats are saddled with glitzy costumes and androgynous white frizzy wigs. Clowns do some nice business with paper aeroplanes, but a lot more with much gibbering that isn’t very funny. At one point, small children could be heard asking what was happening, and I was far from clear myself.
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Still, one boggles at the brilliance of the acrobatic skills. I enjoyed the synchronised bouncing on trampolines, with cross- cutting diagonals and multiple somersaults, and the astonishing double act of Karl Sanft and Maui Sumeo twirling blazing batons. A pair of petite and boneless oriental contortionists make fascinating shapes by locking their bodies into each other. Trapeze artists fly at the summit of the dome, and the big climax number is an aerial ballet of swinging, hurtling and catching. The night I went, there were a couple of misses and plunges, which added to the thrill, even when there were safety ropes and a net. My companion, who can’t stomach such excitements, spent a good deal of time with his eyes closed. He probably wasn’t alone.