Curated by Carlos, Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler’s Wells

Posted: December 4th, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Performance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Curated by Carlos, Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler’s Wells

Curated by Carlos, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells, November 4

Birmingham Royal Ballet Curated by Carlos
Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet in City of a Thousand Trades (photo: Johan Persson)

The Birmingham Royal Ballet program at Sadler’s Wells is titled Curated by Carlos, a branding that links the identity of the company to the personality and reputation of its new artistic director, Carlos Acosta. One of the selling points of the program is a ‘new duet’ with Acosta and Alessandra Ferri, but the solipsistic branding and the promotional focus on Ferri hardly constitute Acosta’s unqualified confidence in the image of the company he now leads. Uncannily, the effect of the three works he has curated, by Spanish and Latino choreographers, also serves to downplay the individuality of his dancers and promotes instead a uniformity that effaces them. 

The company metamorphosed from the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, settling in Birmingham in 1990, a city with a burgeoning cultural life that already counted Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as one of its calling cards. The term ‘levelling up’ had not been invented at the time but BRB’s change of home was part of a politically favoured redistribution of cultural assets. As an art form, ballet is independent of its home city, but the company’s presence and achievements bring the city reflected pride and prestige in the way the late Pina Bausch gave the industrial city of Wuppertal an international reputation. Acosta has brokered a more direct relationship with Birmingham by offering a dutiful gesture of appreciation to the city in the first work on his triple bill, City of a Thousand Trades co-directed by choreographer Miguel Altunaga and dramaturg Madeleine Kludje, currently the associate director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Its title is taken from a nineteenth century description of the city at a time when immigration and industry spurred its enormous growth. The multinational cast of BRB already acts as a proxy for immigration, but Giulia Scrimieri’s set focuses uniquely on construction as the representative industry; scaffolding poles and wheeled wooden forms become the city’s leitmotif, handled throughout with balletic grace. The co-direction effectively divides the work’s focus: Kludje celebrates the value of the city’s individuals shaped by oral histories and recorded poetry by Birmingham Poet Laureate, Casey Bailey, while Altunaga celebrates the city’s homogeneity through the value of a corps de ballet. Mathias Coppens’ score serves both approaches but cannot unite them. City of a Thousand Trades is studious in its reverence but fails to deliver the kind of spontaneous reward for which the city might be remembered.

Birmingham Royal Ballet Curated by Carlos
Eilis Small with artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet in Imminent (photo: Johan Persson)

Daniela Cardim’s Imminent, to a lush but emotionally predictable score by Paul Englishby, starts from an existential questioning about the role of the individual in a society affected by calamitous environmental and political issues. With help from dramaturg Lou Cope, Cardim has extruded these questions into an abstract balletic form with Eilis Small as the individual in a flock of classically trained dancers in tunics for whom the answer to everything is either an arabesque or a pirouette. Only April Dalton’s set — a backdrop of white papier-mâché cliffs inset with an incongruous hinged door — gives any kind of direction to the work: a choice for the dancers of either passing through the open door into the mysterious light of the unknown or remaining in the comfort of unknowing. Some do, some don’t. It’s all a bit banal and underwhelming, questioning less the role of the individual conscience in society than the relationship between choreographer and dramaturg. 

Birmingham Royal Ballet Curated by Carlos
Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet in Chacona (photo: Johan Persson)

Goyo Montero’s Chacona is evidently designed to be the ballast that will anchor the entire program. Choreographed to a full-blooded transcription by Ferruccio Busoni of Bach’s Chorale Prelude No. 3 and to three instrumental interpretations of the chaconne from Bach’s Partita No.2 in D Minor, Montero’s opening geometric corridor of dark-clad bodies sculpted in light has the brooding suggestion of a clandestine obsession. Imposed on the rectangular geometry of the dancers is a triangle with musicians at each apex: pianist Jonathan Higgins and a Steinway grand at the back with Robert Gibbs on violin and Tom Ellis on classical guitar on either side. Into this muscular environment Montero introduces the lithe Alessandra Ferri for a brief appearance with Acosta as her partner but they have no influence on the complex choreographic monolith that engulfs them; Ferri’s appearance and artistry are subsumed into the shadowy darkness of the stage. No sooner do they appear than we start to wonder where she and Acosta have gone; this is the reality of the much-hyped duet, a short interpolation that Montero has deftly concealed within his original construction. While it leaves the choreography intact the company recedes into its oppressive, sometimes brutal embrace. 

English National Ballet Emerging Dancer Award 2019

Posted: May 14th, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Competition, Performance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on English National Ballet Emerging Dancer Award 2019

English National Ballet, Emerging Dancer Award 2019, Sadler’s Wells, May 7

English National Ballet, Emerging Dancer Award 2019
Rentaro Nakaaki and Julia Conway in Flames of Paris (photo: Laurent Liotardo)

Appearances can be deceptive. On the cover of English National Ballet’s program for Emerging Dancer, the six contestants have been photographed by Laurent Liotardo (post production by Nik Pate) in various sharply delineated, sculptural poses. If the athleticism of these images were to represent the odds of winning, Shale Wagman and Rhys Antoni Yeomans would be in close competition for the prize. Even looking at them on stage as they enter with their respective partners for the pas de deux section, they embody the classical image of the male dancer; perhaps Yeomans has the edge in musculature. But shape is only one element of classical dance; moving between shapes in a rhythm that derives from music is another. Here both Wagman and Yeomans fail to follow up on the promise of their initial images. Wagman is lean and flexible — as he demonstrates abundantly in his contemporary solo — but since so much virtuoso male dance takes place in the air he needs to work on elevation. Yeomans has a better jump but while he can turn exquisitely on the ground he shares with Wagman a malfunctioning ‘spot’ in aerial tours. If ‘emerging dancer’ means the process of polishing rough potential into a physically expressive dancing body Wagman and Yeomans have applied the polish before the expression. Rentaro Nakaaki hasn’t yet arrived but his rough potential is exciting; there are times when his form shows through and he is not afraid to take risks. He has an arsenal of virtuoso steps that overflow with enthusiasm if not attention to line and shape and his character is refreshingly open. Even though he didn’t win he gained my vote for sheer ebullience in the process of emerging.

Liotardo’s photographs of the three women — Alice Bellini, Emilia Cadorin and Julia Conway — are less exciting and fail to distinguish the character of each; Cadorin’s and Conway’s are almost identical. Onstage, however, Conway emerges with the poise and control that deservedly earns her this year’s award. Interestingly she is paired with Nakaaki dancing a pas de deux from Vasily Vainonen’s Flames of Paris. It’s a size too big for Nakaaki at this point in his development but his youthful attack allows Conway to appear calm and assured in her own variations; he’s the storm and she’s its eye. Bellini is paired with Wagman in Victor Gzovsky’s Grand Pas Classique; he’s attending more to the audience than to her which unglues the partnership, but she has a lyrical quality that shines. Cadorin dances Coppélia with Yeomans who is a more boyishly attentive partner. On this occasion Cadorin’s spirit is strong but her upper back — and thus her port de bras — seems constricted so she cannot flow with the romantic sentiment in the music. 

The second stage of the competition requires each dancer to perform a contemporary solo of their own choice. Presumably the idea is for the judges and audience to see another aspect of each contestant in terms not only of physical ability but of individual expression. Unlike the classical variations, here the choreography for the most part draws attention to itself, leaving the dancers in the passenger seat; when they are driving there’s a touch of indulgence, as in Wagman’s solo by Sofie Vervaecke, Peculiar Mind. Bellini needs a far more theatrical vehicle for her talents than CLAN B, Sebastian Kloborg’s spoof on La Sylphide, and although Yeomans chooses a great solo by Forsythe, he is left somewhat deflated in the middle by not hitting those glorious accents in Thom Willems’ lush, percussive score. Fabian Reimair’s BAM! for Cadorin doesn’t achieve its title’s promise for her by not giving her enough traction, partly a problem with Reimar’s own score. Nuno Campos gives Nakaaki the one work of the evening that seems tailored for him, showing him in a lean, introspective light; it’s called, appropriately, Own. Similarly Miguel Altunaga’s Untitled Code gives Conway a vehicle for her clarity of expression and keen gestural sense that she carries over from Flames of Paris. 

On its tenth anniversary the Emerging Dancer Award celebrates after an intermission with a performance by Francesca Velicu and last year’s award winner, Daniel McCormick in the pas de deux from Act III of Don Quixote. McCormick is a fine dancer but my eyes are drawn to a quality in Velicu that has been missing over the course of the evening: the ability to make the music visible. All Gavin Sutherland’s efforts in the pit directing the English National Ballet Philharmonic have been rewarded.