English National Ballet’s Le Corsaire at London Coliseum

English National Ballet, Le Corsaire, London Coliseum, January 9

Handsome pirates and beautiful slave girls are the stuff of classic Hollywood films, where sensual aesthetics and genteel bravado were the prime movers of the plot and the prime interest in seeing them. Byron’s poem of 1814, The Corsair is a forerunner of this kind of blockbuster myth making, while Byron’s life might serve as its primary source. Anna-Marie Holmes’ production of Le Corsaire for English National Ballet, recreated from the ballet of Marius Petipa as notated by Stepanov in the collection of Konstantin Sergeyev, could well be a portrait of the passionate life, loves and political causes of Byron himself: a flamboyant adventure story, a stage full of virile men and exotic women, a deferential slave and a satirical portrait of a licentious Pasha. That the plot of the ballet and that of the poem diverge on so many details except the geography and names is the fault of the libretto for the 1856 Paris Opéra production of Le Corsaire by Julies-Henri de Saint-Georges and Joseph Mazilier. Subsequent productions in Russia by Jules Perrot and Petipa maintained the outline of the plot while revising the choreography, but as Jane Pritchard points out in the program, the provenance of this production gets more complicated. The well-known Le Corsaire pas de deux is neither Perrot nor Petipa but is based on a 1915 pas d’action by the St. Petersburg dancer (and teacher of the young George Balanchine), Samuil Andrianov. Like the life of Byron, this ENB production of Le Corsaire is a rich synthesis of influences. 

Bob Ringwood’s sets and costumes effortlessly bridge the poles of Hollywood cinema and Byron’s Ottoman exploits with dreamy textures, colours and vistas — including a wonderfully romantic vignette of a front curtain and a smokingly erotic opium apparition in the Dream section — while the composite score, tirelessly excavated from the work of ten composers by ENB Philharmonic’s music librarian and cellist, Lars Payne, and seamlessly reconstructed by conductor Gavin Sutherland, embraces the range of emotions that unfold on stage. Nothing would be seen without Neil Austin’s lighting which not only enhances the textures of Ringwood’s stage but highlights the narrative with its own arsenal of dramatic effects. 

This rich tapestry, however, is not unproblematic. In fact, how are we to approach Le Corsaire? Its orientalism is evident because the ballet is riddled with cultural tropes and stereotypes; we cannot change the attitude of a historical work, but it can certainly illuminate our current references. One might take issue with Holmes’ decision to turn the character of the Pasha from Byron’s villain (as portrayed in Russian productions) to Michael Coleman’s portrayal of a ‘doddery old, fat fool’ to balance the drama with some lightness; the balancing works, but the characterisation is gratuitous. Wherever the Pasha is involved, the ballet turns into a pantomime, but Coleman plays up his role so well that our enjoyment makes us oblivious of our own attitudes towards ‘the other’. 

Slavery is also an issue that looms large in a contemporary viewing of Le Corsaire; although it continues to play an insidious part in our society, its treatment in Le Corsaire masquerades as the objectification of women. While the male characters are involved in adventurous exploits, the female roles are featured choreographically as forced auditions for the Pasha’s harem or as apparitions in his opium dreams; while the women are on show, the men are showing off. 

What remains beyond the cultural and ethical considerations of the ballet is the impressive quality of ENB’s dancing. Due to illness, this evening’s principals Erina Takahashi as Medora and Francesco Gabriele Frola as Conrad had been called on to replace Alina Cojocaru and Isaac Hernandez on the opening night. Having also danced the dress rehearsal, the additional strain of a second consecutive night shows through at times, but Takahashi’s exquisite refinement and Frola’s expansive enthusiasm create a convincing rapport. Daniel McCormick, in serene and impeccable form as Conrad’s loyal slave, Ali, brings the house down in the second act pas d’action and Junor Souza’s effusive energy as the slave trader Lankendem extends to his spontaneous mime; the other men could learn from his clarity. The lyrical Emma Hawes is a melancholy Gulnare for whom the impetuous Henry Dowden as Birbantio takes a shine, and the steely self-confidence of Katja Khaniukova shines in her odalisque variation. Continuing its run until January 14, there are still plenty of opportunities to appreciate the myriad details of the production and the diverse qualities of subsequent casts.

English National Ballet, She Persisted

English National Ballet, She Persisted, Sadler’s Wells, April 12

The title of English National Ballet’s second program celebrating female choreographers, ‘She Persisted’, may have derived, as Sarah Crompton writes in the program, from a 2017 statement by US Senator Mitch McConnell, but it also neatly references the company’s first program from two years ago, She Said. One of those works reappears here — Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings — alongside Pina Bausch’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) that ENB acquired in 2016. Although the program only partially addresses the persistently unanswered question of why there are not more new female choreographers in classical ballet, the one new work by company dancer Stina Quagebeur, Nora (after the character in Henrik Ibsen’s The Doll House on which it is based), marks the arrival of a distinctive, independent voice. 

It is immediately clear at the opening of Nora that Quagebeur has a choreographic imagination and the lighting of Trui Malten enhances it. Between them they introduce Nora (Erina Takahashi) engulfed in black walking though a door of light followed by five ‘voices’ (Alice Bellini, Angela Wood, James Forbat, Francisco Bosch and Rentaro Nakaaki) whose turbulent gestures form a constant expressionist chorus of Nora’s state of mind. Louie Whitemore’s isometric set with its tubular frame and suspended beams provides just enough volume to contain the storm of emotions the choreography unleashes. Quagebeur, however, hasn’t yet evolved a vocabulary that fully matches her imagination; the narrative tends to pull her in one direction and the pressure to devise steps in another. When Henry Dowden as the banker, Krogstad, first appears it’s easy to mistake him for Nora’s husband, Torvald, and she gives Joseph Caley as Torvald too much convoluted movement to arrive at a single expressive gesture. The subtlety and eloquence with which Antony Tudor pared back his choreography to transform narrative into gesture may serve as a useful guide for her next (much anticipated) work. 

Broken Wings has not been repaired since its first outing three years ago. It has vivid colour and a rich score but it seems — in contrast to the lives portrayed — choreographically quite thin. Ideas like the gender-fluid array of men and the dancing skeletons are brilliantly conceived but outshine their narrative importance; Broken Wings is all about Frida Kahlo and yet she barely manages to emerge from her own story. The stage is dominated by Dieuweke van Reij’s mobile cube that serves as Kahlo’s home, hospital and tomb and its manipulation by the skeletons from one manifestation to the next interrupts rather than informs the narrative. Lopez-Ochoa has clearly built her choreography on the relationship between Khalo and Diego Rivera and although their intense love and fiery intellectual bond appears too much as the stereotype of boy meets girl, the impassioned performances of Katja Khaniukova and Irek Mukhamedov give the broken wings an opportunity to fly. 

When it was announced that English National Ballet had obtained the rights to perform Pina Bausch’s Sacre du printemps it was a major coup, adding another level of prestige to the company’s profile under Tamara Rojo’s leadership. The challenges of performing the work at ENB, however, differ from those in Tanztheater Wuppertal; there the dancers are attuned to Bausch’s way of working whereas ENB’s broad repertory demands of its dancers a constant readjustment to its rigours. Bausch’s Sacre du printemps never was, nor can it ever be a trophy work. It marries savagery with lyricism to an extent the two qualities live within each other; there is no respite as one emerges from the other. Josephine Ann Endicott, who staged it for ENB, was one of the work’s original dancers. She describes the movements to Crompton as feeling ‘masculine and not pretty, but at other moments they are extremely soft, sensual and feminine. You run with your heart and forget all you have learnt before and just come out and be yourself. It has to be real. If you are not exhausted at the end, you haven’t danced it properly.’ This evening there are moments among the men — noticeably in the transitions to partnering the women — when this kind of commitment is missing, when the mechanics of performing a phrase get in the way of expressing it. The energy and focus of the women, however, continues to feed each other until Emily Suzuki takes on the mantle of the chosen one and pushes the limits of her endurance to a level of artistry the work demands.