It should be the jewel in the crown of any company that owns a production. This year, there is no shortage of Beauties. English National Ballet has recently toured its new Kenneth MacMillan staging. In May, the Royal Ballet will re-create its landmark 1946 production as the focus of its 75th- anniversary season. In between, Birmingham Royal Ballet has revived Peter Wright’s beautifully crafted 1984 staging, which opened at the Lowry, Salford, and tours next month.
Wright is Britain’s classic producer par excellence — witness his Giselle, Swan Lake, Nutcracker and this Sleeping Beauty, which holds to the truth, magic, resonance and sheer grandeur (without fuss) of its spirit. Philip Prowse’s opulent marbled palace, with baroque decorations, and his romantic tangled forest are ideal. The Lowry’s internal decor is a mishmash of queasy hues, but on stage, here was a Louis XIV spectacle of impressive taste, including magnificent courtly costumes in gold, black and white, handsome purple for the hunting scene and lovely, understated colours for the fairies’ long tutus.
I never cease to marvel at the perfection of The Sleeping Beauty’s construction, musically, dramatically, choreographically. Especially in the birthday scene: the keen anticipation, the excitement as the court awaits the arrival of Princess Aurora; then the great Rose Adage, such a test for the ballerina, moments after her appearance; the gorgeously modulated solo that follows; and the drama of the finger-pricking.
At the performance that I saw, Ambra Vallo was a radiant, confident Aurora of accomplished technique, who breathed a thrill of wonder when the king told her she was to marry. Iain Mackay was her elegant Prince Florimund, and all their dancing together — including an immaculate grand pas de deux — was a joy. The fairy variations were stylish, Virginia de Gersigny’s Fairy of Modesty and Nao Sakuma’s Fairy of Joy prettily demonstrating their attributes.
Wright follows the original practice of making the Lilac Fairy a mime role, rather than the dancing part we have become used to. Silvia Jimenez plays her with benevolent grace. The wicked Carabosse is no hag; rather, in Marion Tait’s performance, in a stunning gown, she is darkly glamorous. A relief, too, that Catalabutte is not a comic act: David Morse’s major-domo is a figure of dignity. Everyone here, from king and queen to courtiers, knows their place, in the best sense, and Paul Murphy conducts the Royal Ballet Sinfonia with all honour to Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece.
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Rambert Dance Company has embarked on its 80th-birthday season, dating its origins from a 1926 performance by Marie Rambert’s original students that included a ballet by Frederick Ashton, the first of many choreographers nurtured within the Rambert fold.
The company’s annual workshop season gives its dancers the chance to create new work, some of which may enter the repertory. Mark Baldwin, the artistic director, who made his own first choreography for such occasions, is a staunch encourager — as we would all like to be. But I found last Tuesday’s programme of six short pieces at The Place rather dispiriting, despite the obvious hard work and commitment.
It was almost all intense and dark-toned, as if contemporary dance must be deadly serious — choreography as personal therapy. No joy, and little sense of theatre. You can spot the models — Forsythe, Cunningham, Russell Maliphant, Wayne McGregor — but too much looks the same. Hardly anyone choreographs to tuneful music. Why wasn’t Baldwin a model? Think of his recent, fun Constant Speed, to Franz Lehar.
Patricia Okenwa’s Idelu was eruptive and frantic, to wailing song and a deafening racket from an on-stage band, Big Linda. Melanie Teall explored space with a kind of possession in her own succinctly shaped solo, Transit. Alexander Whitley’s Tipping Point (with an impenetrable programme note), to music that increased in volume but not interest, was best at the end, when the dancers (in fiery lighting) seemed to teeter on the brim of a volcano.
Mikaela Polley, who already has a piece in the Rambert repertory, chose real (and urgent) Aaron Copland music for Triplicity, a strenuous female trio with complex weavings. Cameron McMillan deployed the largest cast, eight, for Verge, which featured writhing, lurching and jerking, with a lot of angst, on and around chairs (oh, those chairs again — a cliché of modern dance), to an off-putting commissioned electroacoustic score by Elspeth Brook, created from “the dancers’ physical sounds” (breathing, scrapes, bangs).
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Nest, a male trio by Ana Lujan Sanchez, to musical gurgles and thumps, used tackling and tussling in the Ballet Boyz mould — vigorous, certainly, but at the abrupt end, an orgasmic cry of “Oh my God” from a young woman in the audience seemed excessive. Perhaps she should get out more.