This French company, based in Nancy, is run by Petter Jacobsson, fondly remembered from his days as a dancer with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet). Its brief is to be experimental and for its short London season, in the studio space at the Royal Opera House, Jacobsson has chosen a double bill of work by choreographers relatively unknown to British audiences. It’s fascinating to encounter something so new and unexpected, but ultimately as a showcase for their talents this evening is a letdown.
The Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis contributes Shaker Loops, set to John Adams’s iconic minimalist composition. The music’s sharp and elegant agitations are met with dance that is messy and inchoate, filled with tiresome back-and-forth energies. A good-sized cast — 18 in all — is mostly used in small groupings whose physical exertion feels more like a mindless workout than a valid choreographic statement.
Itamar Serussi’s Cover is potentially far more interesting, for the Israeli choreographer has an eye for playful invention and striking novelty. The piece is inspired by Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (recorded, naturally) and the dancers are dressed — men and women alike — in long white dresses that give them the look of penitents and lends the work a devotional aura.
What follows is at first an intriguing portrait of bliss and horror, of beautiful sculptures and divine idiocy, of synergy and silliness, of overblown romance and melancholic introspection, all performed on a bare and open stage. If Cover had been 30 minutes long I would have walked away happy.
Yet with another 30 minutes to go Serussi wears out his welcome, allowing the choreography to wander off into self-absorbed tedium and empty-headed gesture that no amount of commitment on the part of Ballet de Lorraine’s strong dancers can overcome.
Box office: 020 7304 4000, to March 14